faces

I’ve been going to figure drawing group for a while now, but somehow I’ve mostly avoided drawing faces with any actual detail.

Ok, not somehow. It was intentional. lol They’re so hard! It’s way more fun to just focus on what I can draw best (anything but faces). A few weeks ago I decided to try zooming in and drawing only the face, though. Now they’re my official challenge and I’m actually excited to keep trying them!

Someone in the group mentioned the show Portrait Artist of the Year last week. Binged that. Pretty neat.

Below are my best attempts so far. Note the one with all the doodles. I’ve never doodled during these sessions. That’s how much my brain was trying to avoid drawing her face. Literal carrots instead. lol

I think part of my struggle is my love of lines. Shadow would be better to focus on, so next time I’m taking a lot of charcoal and soft pencils!

gingerbread house mug gif

Absolutely love this gingerbread house mug from Target — super fun to have around during the holidays. Felt inspired to draw it and then to try out gif-making in Procreate.

skirt

Couldn’t find the right skirt for my Halloween costume, so decided to make one. Two hours, one bird’s nest, and one broken needle later… boom! Skirt.

wk1 & wk2 of live figure drawing

I finally attended a local figure drawing group after having not touched those exact supplies in at least 10 years, I think. I was 1) happy I keep art supplies forever and 2) certain my drawings would look super wack! But they don’t really look so wack, which is so encouraging!

The energy of the studio when everyone is working is amazing. I’ve missed it so much and I’m so happy to have a place to experience it.

The time of each pose varies from 5 minutes to 20 minutes.

bookshelf

Looking back at my last posts, it occurred to me that this bookshelf was actually my first big carpentry project. I designed it and helped with the building. :)

bed

Had to get a new mattress and decided to go with a natural latex version from Sleep E-Z. Latex requires a slat platform base, so I could either buy a new bed frame or make my own. Decided to make my own!

My grandpa let me use his workshop back in my hometown which was so great. I loved working in his shop. My design was based on a super simple platform bed plan, but I updated it with more advanced extra options and the ability to easily remove the slats and take the frame apart. This was my first big carpentry project done almost entirely on my own and I learned so much! It was totally worth DIY’ing.

Had to get the thing back home for the mattress before finishing the headboard, though, so that’s TBD. I know I want it to slant backward a bit, though.

rainbow trellises mock-up

Went to Procreate to mock up a garden trellis idea. A few hours later, I came out with this illustration. Maybe the real deal would look as fun. 😀

If I make them, planning to use found wood for the cross-bars, 1x1 for the uprights, and milk paint samples from The Real Milk Paint + tung oil for coating. They’d be in a single row, so the bars of each would criss-cross when seen head-on which might look neat.

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How It Grows video series

Jaw-dropping chickpea harvest on the Palouse! Discover how chickpeas (aka garbanzos, hummus, bengal gram, chana!) became America's newest oldest crop. Bonus hummus recipe at the end (it's vegan + gluten-free)! Thanks to Sabra for sponsoring this episode: https://sabra.com/ And THANK YOU for hitting that JOIN button to help us make these videos!

lampwork glass beads

Artist Emelie Hebert introduced me to glass bead making recently. I’ve made a couple of batches now and have come to really love it! There’s something fascinating about messing around with red-hot molten glass right in front of your face then eventually ending up with a fun little useable gumdrop-like bead 12 hours later. :)