EDM # 6 Toy

This might be stretching the definition of EDM #6 'draw your favourite well-loved object or a childhood toy' but I really enjoyed this! Midway through I had to go out to get Alex some new pencils and a pad for school. (He'll be doing some interesting things now he is at secondary school. They have some amazing work on display at the end of year art exhibitions.) As I've discovered a new love of softer pencils, I just had to stock up! Well, those soft pencils go down so quick don't they?! And while I'm at it I may as well get some pads too...

Anyway, I came back and started using a B pencil on this and I loved that dark line! I can't remember when I last used a B pencil but it may be a long time before I use a 3H again!

EDM # 2 (part 2)

It may not show in the photo but I added some darker areas and a darker outline with a B pencil to this last night. I'm not thinking about it any more! Thanks for the constructive comments yesterday!

EDM # 33 Eye

EDM #33 is draw an eye. Should be easy, I've been drawing eyes for years but...I just couldn't face doing an eye! I've no idea why so I've decided to cheat this week! This is a drawing I did of Paul a few years ago from a photo. He was a very happy baby and full of fun and I think the photo captured that in his face. He had very fine hair that stuck out at all angles that just added to the look! I left out the picture of Garfield that was on the balloon but it was symbolic - Paul has all the books and can almost recite all the jokes. Jim Davis has a lot to answer for because Paul has a wicked sense of humour! One of his teachers even mentioned it in his school report last year!

EDM # 2 Lamp

EDM# 2 is draw to draw a lamp so I've chosen Paul's lava lamp. I'm not sure why this drawing doesn't really work for me. Maybe it needs some darker shadows and brighter highlights or - horror!- colour. I'm no good at painting and I tried another sketch with watercolour pencils but it looks like something a 5 year old might do.

Thinking that a teenage boy might give me an honest appraisal I asked Paul if it looked OK. He said "what is wrong with yourself?! If I handed that in at school I would get an A plus!" That was a bit more than I wanted and I'm not sure if that was a compliment or an insult! Don't you love boys? The last time I asked Alex about some quilty thing he said " why are you asking me? I'm a boy, I'm not interested in that crap!" Bless 'em!

Palm pod?

Or fried fronds? Inspired by a post on Karen's blog http://www.karensblog.com I took this photo of our local mobile phone transmitter. It sure is tatty! The fake palms in California where Karen lives are obviously far superior in quality!

Places of worship

Sharq souk shopping mall and marina

This is Sharq souk with it's marina where we sat and sketched last year (see Sharq souk post). I think it's very attractive for a modern shopping mall. It's wonderful to sit outside and watch the world go by in one of the cafes or restaurants overlooking the marina. Inside, like malls the world over, there is an upstairs food court where you can savour the delights of KFC, McDonalds, Hardees and the like.


This is the bridge leading to the car park at the rear. To the right there are views of the city and one of the main roads that runs alongside the coast. At the rear of the mall is a cinema which made headlines a couple of years ago when it was hit by an Iraqi missile. Fortunately, I was watching the news in Dublin when this happened!

When we first moved here, I thought we lived in the city of Kuwait but after some difficulties trying to give directions to taxi drivers, I realized there is a small business district in the north called the city and everywhere else is known by it's district name.

EDM # 1 Shoes

I'll try and impose some order on these challenges and start at #1 Shoes. The white sandal at the top is one of a pair that I wear every day. I'd love to have a collection to make Imelda Marcos jealous but I can never find anything I like. That lady must have been easy to please!

Alex told me that, as it's a sandal, it doesn't count as a shoe so I've done two just to be sure! The white one was drawn so quickly I can barely remember doing it, it seems to just pop onto the page. Apart from a bit of shading on the heel and sole, it's not much more than a line drawing as I thought the ouline was such a nice shape.

The brown sandal is more typical of my style but again I've emphasised the outline - this is a technique I like because it also emphasises the image as a drawing and not a photographic reproduction.

Isn't it interesting that more than any other thing we wear, shoes take on the shape of their owners. I love how old shoes look as if the owners foot is still in them!

Sharq souk

Time has flown since my last post and I haven't had much time for drawing so I'm posting a sketch from last year. This is a feature from one of the main shopping malls called Sharq Souk. It looks like an old wind tower from the days before air conditioning (the hot air would rise up here and keep the houses cool). The shopping centre backs on to the sea and arches around a marina at the front. There are plenty of areas of interest to draw but I decided to keep it simple and focus on the tower. I should have done a lot more in the time but someone came over to talk and I lost my momentum! It's a simple sketch but it reminds me of that lovely sunny day sitting near all the yachts in the marina and chatting with friends.

Does anyone else do this? Sometimes I think my drawings look more interesting if I bend them or look at them side on! I wonder if this is what inspired Holbein to put that skull in The Ambassadors painting? He's one of my favourite painters - did he do this too?

EDM # 32 'Metal'

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Space debris? No, it's a cookie cutter for this week's Everyday Matters challenge entitled 'metal'. Yesterday, I was struggling with trying not to do things perfectly and today I'm a slob because this isn't really finished but I was so fed up with those reflections that I decided I either had to finish it now or scrap it. I didn't enjoy this as the reflections changed every time I moved and I was starting to get fussy. Also, Mark gets home in one hour and I may not get quite so much time to myself on the computer (although the boys may be glad to have some hot dinners again)!

EDM # 11 Draw your glasses

I've drawn Alex's using an HB pencil. I'm beginning to like the feel of the softer pencil and how quick it is to shade compared with the 2H I normally use. I'm also realising that I'm not so worried about it looking 'perfect' which may have been a reason why I got bored with drawing a couple of years ago.

The only problem with these challenges is that, as I'm starting to enjoy this, I can see a million things around the house that I want to draw! How silly it seems now that I used to look for inspiration in books and magazines when it is all around me!

Dust

This is what cars look like after a week without washing! The sand here is so fine that the only way to get it off is to use water and a cloth. Using only water turns it to mud. In the winter when it rains, it makes everything look mud-splattered rather than clean.

This fine sand also coats everything in the house including food left uncovered in the kitchen. Unlike just about everyone else I don't have a maid or driver, I prefer to do my own cleaning and have the house to myself. I usually clean my own car (this one is Mark's!) but it is too hot in the summer so if I see anyone cleaning cars I'll have it washed. As everyone gets theirs done at home, there is only one car wash in Kuwait and too far to bother going to. Yesterday I saw a man cleaning cars in the supermarket car park. He's fairly new and I've used him twice before so now I'm a regular and he recognises me. He doesn't speak English but I can tell that he is trying to tell me that he is really grateful. Then he kisses me on both cheeks! I'm not sure this is really 'done' in Kuwait but I thank him and go and do my shopping. He came over to thank me again and shook my hand.

I know I pay more than the going rate (which is a pittance) but I can't help wondering how bad things must be for him in his home country if he is so pleased to get this amount of money. (And he is washing cars in temperatures averaging 45C) If this is better than being back home, what must conditions be like there?

EDM # 31 Draw a collection

The Everyday Matters challenge last week was to 'draw a collection'. I don't think of myself as a collector but looking around I see that I collect quite a lot of things! I have around 20 different presser feet as they make some fancy sewing techniques very easy (as well as being very cheap compared to UK prices!)

I can't believe I managed to draw this and post it on the blog on the same day! I wanted to get it drawn quickly before the shadows and the reflections changed. They look a little lost on the large white page so I will probably add a few more later. I used an HB pencil.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/everydaymatters/

Phew! I'm alive!

That's what I think every time I pull into the drive! The boys went back to school this morning so we have to join the first rush hour of the day. If the lights are green and the road quiet it would take 6 or 7 minutes to get to school. In fact 4 years ago, when we first arrived, it did. When all the schools are back it can take up to an hour to get home again. The government (local) schools are not yet back so traffic is not up to full strength but if today is anything to go by, it's going to be Hell this year. (The population of Kuwait has shot up in the last 2 or 3 years and the infrastructure is not up to it).

I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunity for me to rant about the terrible driving in this country but this morning I'm getting a Joni Mitchell CD out ready for tomorrow morning's run - it's the only thing that keeps me calm. I think she is a genius. In complete contrast to some of those drivers.

Back to school

Well almost. Alex is starting secondary school tomorrow and the parents and children came in today for an introduction to the teachers. After a brief talk the children were then shown around the school. (Junior and seniors are actually at the same school but occupy different parts of the building)

It was a bit of an effort to get there for 9am but from tomorrow it will be the normal 7.30am start! It's going to be difficult after the three month holiday but I'm looking forward to having time to myself again and some structure to my day.

According to todays paper the summer season is 'drawing to a close' but you would never guess. The maximum temperature today was about 46C!

The gardener

The gardener cut down the dates from the tree in the front garden today. You can just see the green mesh bags that the dates are often covered with. This is the view from our bedroom window. Although we don't have many rooms they are quite large and this is where I do my sewing and drawing. I love watching the dates changing colours and the fact that they take so long to ripen. Now the trees will look bare again and we will start watching the lemons and oranges ripen ready for the new year. Our Palestinian landlady lives downstairs and makes the nicest marmalade from the oranges that I have ever tasted! She always brings us two enormous jars of it and it doesn't last long.

This is a photo of her gardener cutting down the dates this afternoon. He doesn't speak a word of English and he's the reason I'm trying to learn Arabic. Almost everyone speaks English here and as I have no aptitude for languages, I've been very lazy about learning it. I feel like I'm missing out on a lot so now I'm making something of an effort. The gardener is Egyptian and has a different dialect to the Kuwaitis so my progress is slow!





















Here he is posing by the dates. I took his photo up the tree and came down to show him. When I asked to take his picture by the dates, he took up this pose so quickly it was like he'd done it a million times before!

Our local branch

Don't they look great? I popped into the supermarket this morning and as it was quiet I took this photo. No sooner had the flash gone off then people appeared from nowhere and someone came over to chat!

Feral cats

We used to be a cat free zone until a couple of years ago when one of the feral cats decided that our garden was his territory. He was the feline equivalent of a Bull Terrier with a large bony head, evil glint and the obligatory ripped ear. We called him Evil Cat. He had a family and one day they all mysteriously left except for Son of Evil Cat who looked and acted exactly like his dad. He had a family and vanished in mysterious circumstances too and since then we have been owned by many fleeting felines. Only a couple of months ago there was a family of four out in the back and now they have been replaced by three very young kittens. One of them liked to sleep against the back door as it was cooled by the air conditioning inside. About two weeks ago I found him dead on the step. He had a limp and looked as if he had broken his front leg - I only noticed this the day before he died but even though he looked very ill he wouldn't let me get near him . He would probably have ripped me to shreds if I had got close enough anyway.

So at the moment these two rule the roost but it's such a hard life, I doubt they will be around for long.

Views from a broad

I had some unexpected taxi driving to do today so I took my camara out with me. The sky was unusually clear and blue - for Kuwait and for midday.















This building is almost across the road from us. I think it holds functions but as I can't read Arabic and no-one that I have asked seems to know, I'm relying on rumour! Every time I look at it I check to see that the palm trees haven't toppled over.




















This is one of our local mosques. There are lots of smaller mosques near us but this is the grandest. It's just off a wide and normally quiet road with lots of space around it. Apart from being in a nice setting it was also easier to photograph - I had to poke my lens through a railing to get the other photo! (So I'm not going back to take a better shot without that pole in the middle!)

Comments

Well, I knew it was tempting fate to say I was enjoying talking to myself. Within a minute (yes, one minute!) I got my first spam e-mail.

Is there anyone dumb enough to buy anything from a spammer? I guess there must be. If you only have one life, would you waste it sending spam? I just don't understand it!

Word verification is on...

Sandy's sketch class

Sandy set up a sketch class last year but like a lot of ex-pats had to leave at short notice so it ended just as we were all starting to relax and enjoy it. Or maybe that was just me - I'm not a team player and I don't feel comfortable when I'm drawing in company, it's very hard to relax and concentrate. It took a huge effort to go every week but I did and learned something about myself in the process.The first week I was there, they were doing line drawings without taking the pencil off the paper. This is one of the exercises in Betty Edward's book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I had heard of this book back in the 70's when it first came out and thought it was just another crappy 'how to' book. I've looked at so many and most times I don't like the artist's style anyway. So I hadn't even looked at this book. Now over twenty years later I see that she has written about everything that I've taught myself and found out slowly the hard way! It's a great book and it had some eye-openers for me too, like the exercises on drawing from an upside-down image and drawing using negative spaces only.


I'm sure this is going to look confusing but I can't put the photos in the order I want them in the same post. I've tried to put the older ones first but it hasn't worked - Blogger inserts them as they appear in the drafts no matter what order you send them. The whole Blogger template looks upside down to me, but then my brain seems to work differently to everyone elses! Why am I even showing this old stuff? Well, I haven't told anyone about my blog and I'm enjoying talking to myself! Besides, who on earth would be interested?

The sunflower was drawn on the first hot day of spring. I burnt my right arm but had fun anyway. My sons often mock me for my poor memory but I can remember much more about an event or a person from a drawing rather than a photo.





















A banana leaf in a friends back garden. Another hot day, so we had to be quick.




















An early exercise in Sandy's class this time drawing three objects and placing them at different distances. I used three reels of thread but as they didn't look like reels just from the outlines I filled in with some shading. The threads look really nice in the way they are wound and catch the light.

My kitchen and an exercise in perspective. I used a pencil, marking the points with my thumbs, as a guide. Very easy and useful - why didn't I do this before?! I like the drawing even if it does look a bit sterile (unlike my kitchen!). Speaking of kitchens, this is my least favourite room in the house (actually we live on what is called a 'floor') because of the stainless steel fittings. Stainless steel is supposed to be trendy but unfortunately this is the 'catering kitchen' look. Ugh!

A chair placed on a table for a negative space study.

Old sketches

There are two subjects I don't enjoy drawing - animals and self portraits. Judging by the hair, I must have done this around about 1981. It makes me cringe just thinking about it. This is my one and only!














This is a ring-tailed lemur drawn around the time I visited Madagascar in 1988. It turned out better than I thought although I obviously didn't enjoy it enough to finish it! I probably avoid drawing animals because I don't like drawing hair.

Yesterday...

I took my camara with me to take some shots around the local area where I live. I knew it was windy but I didn't realise until I went out that it was going to be hopeless to get any nice scenic shots. The wind had whipped up the sand and dust so it looked foggy and overcast despite there not being a cloud in the sky.

Paul and Alex are still on their summer holidays and go back to school next week (another milestone, they are both at secondary school now). Now their friends are arriving back in Kuwait from their holidays, they all want to see each other and I get to be the taxi driver.

Anyway, I gave up on the scenic shots and drove past the school where I know there is a palm tree with the dates at head height. It was dark enough for the flash to go off (although I do have it set at 'best shot', I'm getting very lazy!) As I drove around looking for things to photograph for my blog, I realised I was seeing everything from a completely different perspective. When the weather improves I hope to show some ordinary everyday views of Kuwait. However, it may not be as easy as it sounds because there are few pavements here and very few people walk on the ones that exist!

Dates

This is my favourite time of the year in Kuwait! It may be the hottest place on earth - some years it gets to over 50C - and it can get either very humid or very dry, but September is when the dates are ripe and ready for picking. They take months to develop and change from green through yellow, rosey reds and finally brown sometimes all on the same bunch. I call them mini Sticky Toffee Puddings because they are so sweet. I'm not sure why but the birds don't seem to be interested in them. I couldn't stand dates until I came to Kuwait. The ready packaged dried and shrivelled things I tried in the UK have nothing like the texture and taste of those that grow outside our windows.

I have to admit I don't know anything about the various types but I have it on good authority that the ones from Saudi Arabia are the best and are available here with various flavours. Some have aniseed and some have sesame seeds but I like them just as they are. And as if they weren't sweet enough you can get them chocolate coated and stuffed with almonds and sweet pastes. Divine!

Today's the day...

...that I started drawing again! I joined an on-line sketch group with the vague hope that the weekly challenge would inspire me to do something, although I wasn't convinced it would work. I also noticed that everyone posted their drawings to their blog...

I started drawing in this little Daler-Rowney book because my larger portraits were taking so long. I was horrified to see that my last drawing was dated 2001!

Rejects

Sometimes it just doesn't turn out right no matter how long you spend on it! Miriam (below) was a drawing I gave up on because the perspective on her face just wasn't right. Her right eye and the right side of her mouth look wrong and I re-drew it a few times but there is only so much rubbing out that the paper will take. I put so much detail into the headdress that I got bored and there is that large area of black again...The pencil was too hard this time and it all looked blotchy.

I haven't looked at the portrait at the top (I think it's Dennis Brown, reggae singer) for a few years. It was scrapped because of his nose! I think the eyes look really good though, and it has inspired a few ideas. If I still had the original photo, I think I would try and finish it, his dreadlocks would look great.

Postcard

I want to put some old things in this blog to start with, but the truth is I hate looking back. So here is something from this week. Actually it was a few weeks ago but one of my quilting friends is leaving Kuwait and I gave her this postcard (or fibre art thingy!) with a hand written note on the back. I think she really liked it!

More old stuff

Dave Gilmore. Lovely face but I've made him look like a blob...

Old stuff!

I may as well post the old stuff and work out how to manage this blog. Blogger seems to tell you how to do everything but move the photos around. My technical advisor (DH!) is away for the next two weeks so everything may go pear shaped!

Anyway, this are old drawings done with what looks like an HB or softer. I think they look a bit of a mess but I like how I did Joni's face. It's mostly blank white paper with the minimum of pencil work. Hmm, maybe I should do this again, it would be quick. In all my drawings, I don't leave any white except for the tiny highlights in the eyes and on the nose. I really enjoy shading large areas without lines, like necks but I can see from this guy's, I hadn't got it right yet! (He's wearing a white hat, don't tell me his head is all wrong too!)

Produkin-Gorskii, Photographer to the Tsar

I came in half way through a programme about this photographer and was amazed to see his colour photographs. I found this on Google http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/ It's hard to imagine that they were taken so long ago as they could have been taken this week. They really bring the past to life.

In the beginning...

Well, it's my blog and I can post what I want to! This is one of two paintings that I did when I was 5 . My cousin saved them for years and gave them to me recently. I remember how I loved putting colours together and seeing how they looked alongside each other. At some stage I started concentrating on pencils and forgot about my love of colour until I took up quilting, 6 years ago. Now I play with my fabrics! I don't organise them into colours but keep them random and sometimes throw them on the floor and see what happy accidents occur. I'm 6 years old again! It makes me sad when other quilters say they are afraid of colour. There is nothing scary about colour. Maybe it's the fear of others judging their choices?

BTW, the dog is a poodle with a bobbly tail and the cat is a Siamese, hence the blue ears! No blog is complete without a photo of a cat, that's why I choose the photo of me with Willow - she's my cousin's.

Art supplies

This is the sum total of what I use to draw portraits. Pencils, paper, eraser, knife and a piece of tracing paper to protect the drawing from smudging. I don't have a ton of supplies or a fancy studio. They would be nice but they don't get the work done. OK, I'm a bit of an inverted snob about this but buying supplies has nothing to do with drawing.

I don't know of anyone else who draws with such hard pencils. I like 2H and 3H for most of the drawing until it's almost finished and then add the finishing touches with an H or HB. Building up the layers slowly allows the pencil to get quite dark or darker than it would if you just pressed hard straight on the paper.

I like very smooth paper so I don't waste time filling in the rough like a Polyfiller! I could save myself a lot of time by simply using a softer pencil and smudging but that gives a slightly out of focus look that I don't want.

I've tried many types of pencil but my favourite are Berol Venus. They are not steely grey like the Derwents and have a warmer look. They also have much less grit than any of the others. Is that why the Queen uses them?

Just another statistic...

How many blogs are created every day?