Heat

Summer heat
copyright Jeanette Jobson

Its been a very warm week here, even by Newfoundland standards with the temperature rising to 31C. I have air conditioning at work which makes it almost too cool at times so that I need to bring a sweater with me or go outside to warm up from time to time. When leaving the office, the heat hits you like walking into a sauna. However, I'm not complaining. I love heat and hate being cold, so each warm day is a bonus for me.

The heat makes all the animals cranky, especially Tripod, the cat who spends his days following people around, meowing loudly about how hot he is to anyone who will (or won't) listen. It becomes very trying at times as he has what I call his 'outdoor voice" that he uses both outdoors and indoors. At 4:30am, its not a nice sound to be woken to, so he spends the nights outside now where its cooler and he usually goes to the greenhouse and snoozes the night away in a cardboard box full of landscape fabric. So much for the mighty hunter...

I haven't done a lot of drawing this week, as I'm concentrating on getting some tutorials finished. While this involves drawing, I also have a lot of writing to put together as well. They usually go hand in hand with some overlaps when I get caught up in the drawing mode and forget to scan at critical junctures!

I've put in some more time on the Jimi Hendrix portrait and am worrying the hand right now. When someone said 'that's an interesting walking stick he's got' I knew I was on the wrong path with the hand. So I had to redo that and am now building values to bring some depth to the piece. I am considering a background, but haven't decided what or if it will be. Perhaps it should be just him floating in space. I don't know. If I have a background for a piece I usually try to put it in first and work the figure into it so the values are correct. It always looks a little odd when its added after the fact. I'll use some tracing paper and look at some options for backgrounds, but I'm not spending a lot of time on this - at least not right now.