Weekly happy things, volume 6

Another week, another chance to find the happy moments in a world where it’s easy to get bogged down with all the shit going on.

A spontaneous invite to a local winery

I’ve kind of pulled away from drinking alcohol over this last year, but it was lovely to hang out with some amazing friends and enjoy the breeze and atmosphere. The wine was pretty tasty, too.

Trying new art supplies

Taking that pastel workshop had me all sorts of excited to get some for myself. Turns out, though, I kind of hate the Canson Mi-Teintes paper. I think that workshop spoiled me on the Clairfontaine PastelMat, so now I’m going to try to get myself to Blick soon to purchase a sheet to cut down and play with, instead.

Trying some nude drawings

Tried something new with an special “after dark” Art Hang Party drawing session. When I first did these, I really thought they were so terrible, but looking at them again today I’m realizing that I did far better than Iam giving myself credit for, especially since figure drawing is not something I’ve ever really done/tried (especially timed figure drawing).

This sketchbook play

I’m reading “Paint Your Way Out of a Corner” by Barbara Diane Barry, which advocates a lot to just play and not overthink in your drawings/paintings/medium of choice. It’s pushed me to stop getting hung up on perfection and to just go with the flow and experiment without worrying too much about the results or the final sketch being a “masterpiece” which is something my perfectionist tendencies struggle with. With this bird, I happened to just see a reference on Pinterest and instead of pinning it to save for later and look for something “better” to draw, I immediately grabbed the sketchbook and did the thing. The blue background was also a whim that I’m glad I did and didn’t overthink.

This landscape attempt

On a slow day at work I dug out the watercolors and tried to recreate a view from my Cedar bog visit. Is it a perfect artistic masterpiece? No. Did I have fun making it? Yup.

More sketchbook play

I painted a layer of quinacridone magenta in a rectangle, and then went over it and sketched out the cat with colored pencils. Not that people can’t do amazing art with cheap Crayola colored pencils, but I’ve been spoiled on how velvety my nicer colored pencils are and how they layer, so it was a bit of a frustration trying to use these. Oh well, fun was still had.

These violets

Violets are one of my favorite backyard spring blooms. I usually pick the blooms, steep them, and then make myself a batch of violet jelly for the year, but last year I got the idea to just turn one of my many flower beds into a violet bed. So every so often I’ll dig up some violet plants I find throughout the yard and transplant them into this 2ft x 5ft section. This year there’s a lovely clump of them spreading throughout the bed and it’s the prettiest carpet of blooms to enjoy every time I look out over the yard.