Virtual Sketch Date

I can't remember if I've shared this drawing or not previously. I was looking through old drawings and found this one. I remember the drawing and the model well, even parts of the conversation of that night in the life class. The model was Pip. The setting was the studio of Tom Greenshields on the farm in Hawkchurch in Devon. The year was...I'd say 1981 or 82. Time does indeed fly.

Its that time again when we start another Virtual Sketch Date. This was the original idea of Rose Welty back in April when she contacted me to become involved in a project that would provide each other with some drawing opportunities, using the same reference image.

Well, it got very popular and now it has its own blog where the reference images are stored and the participating bloggers links are listed at the end of the event.

July's VSD reference be posted on Friday July 18th and you have one week to draw the reference image and post it on your blog. All drawings must be posted on Saturday, July 26th and the summary of all drawing links will be completed on Sunday July 27th. There isn't a limit to how many individuals participate, but you must let me know if you do, so that your drawing can be viewed and your blog listed.

About Virtual Sketch Date

The blog was set up to help administer monthly virtual sketch dates. Once a month a group of artists band together and draw from the same reference image for a week. At the end of the week, each artist posts their image on their blog. A post will be put up on the VSD with links to all participants' entries.

Want to join?
1. Once a month, when the reference image is posted, leave a comment to let us know that you are participating.
2. Sketch from the image
3. On the "date day" post your sketch on your blog.
4. The next day there will be a post here with links to all the participants entries.

Guidelines for Virtual Sketch Date Reference Images

• * All photos must be "suitable for work"
  
• * No camera phones
• * No blurry images
• * Natural light is preferred to using a flash

* Resolution must be at least 800px by 600px (higher resolutions uploaded to Flickr are greatly appreciated)

Relaxing

A cat pours his body on the floor like water. It is restful just to see him. - William Lyon Phelps

This photo kind of makes you rethink that quote doesn't it?

Tripod loves his bed more than food almost, but when he gets too hot in it, he can't decide which is better, the floor or the bed so this is the result. He's done this 'play dead' look before on a warm day. Remember this shot last August?

Apply heat and you have a collapsible cat who sleeps so soundly that nothing wakes him except picking him up body and bones.

I've been playing around with clouds and charcoal lately. I ran out of coloured paper except for this brownish grey one. I finally went out and bought some new paper in various shades of blue on Saturday but I was too far into this one at that point to want to do it all over again. I'll try another cloud on the blue later.

Needs

Tripod snoozing
graphite sketch 11 x 14
copyright Jeanette Jobson

The cat likes nothing more than a lap to sit on and a hand to stroke him. At that point he goes into zen meditation I think, accompanied by purring loud enough to rattle the teacups.

Drawing and painting lately is a bit of an effort for me. Maybe its the heat that causes the malaise. I have the tools and the time to do this, but inclination or inspiration flags a bit. I also consider this blog and wonder what to write to fill the space. I don't want to write simply for the sake of writing, but abandoning it into its two and a half year life seems rather pointless too.

I have so many ideas whirling in my head, I need to closet myself away and make myself put things on paper. I have stepped down from an art association that I was with and am considering a couple of other options. I want to be part of a group that inspires and challenges me at the same time. I want to work towards an exhibition of my work and know that will take at least a year to produce a body of work. And I know that I need those people around me who will push me towards that goal, not impede my progress. I need, I need... The only way to meet my needs is to face them head on and just make them reality.

Shaded ducks

Shaded ducks

Rapidograph pen, Pentalic sketchbook 8 x 5
copyright Jeanette Jobson

On warm days like today, the ducks find a shady spot under a tree to have their siestas. I was sitting on the front step late this morning, having my coffee and thought I'd do a quick sketch of them resting.

I haven't used my Rapidograph for awhile and the first one I picked up didn't work. Sometimes they can be a little tempermental but it may have just dried a little and needs cleaning. The finer nibs are more prone to clogging, but I do prefer them.

I found my favourite ducks, B.D. and Buddy in a newly found shady spot. They usually lurk under the rhododendron bush or behind the steps to the house, but today they found a temporary spot.

Estate planning for artists

Jimi Hendrix
graphite , 11 x 14 on Canson
copyright Jeanette Jobson

Many visual artists joke that their work will only be valuable once they are dead. And unfortunately, that often is the case. We all seem to value something more when we know the source no longer exists.

As an artist with less years in front of me than behind, I sometimes do a little introspective thinking and wonder what will happen to my art when I am dead. That may sound morbid, but in reality its quite practical to consider this and to make plans for my art while I'm alive and have the mental faculties to think rationally. We chronical the times in which we live through our art. It would be the logical thing to do the plan what happens to those valued pieces after our death. Recent delves into family history bring home to me the need for accurate records, dates and information to enable individuals in the future to track history.

How will I manage my estate? To be honest, I'm only just seriously thinking about it now and researching exactly what I need to do to ensure it lives into the future and is not collecting dust in a basement or attic in a relative's house somewhere. I need to rewrite a will and ensure that it becomes the document that gives me a little immortality despite my mortality.

Here are a few starting points to get you thinking about your art and where you want it to go when you are no longer here.

• Create an inventory of your art works.

Some of us have that already, some have partial lists or don't keep lists up to date. It is important to have a record of your pieces, including any relevant information about them, such as size, medium, date completed, title and, if it was sold or gifted and to who and the price if sold.

• Define copyright of your art pieces

Copyright can be flexible and you may choose to leave a painting to one person and copyright to a painting to another. You may want to give a gallery copyright to reproduce your work in exhibition catalogues or make postcards from it. You can control reproduction of your work through copyright licensing.

• Make a will

Many people mistakenly believe that having a will is not a priority. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, a will is probably the most important document you will ever write.

If you die without a will, the province in which you live will decide how to distribute your estate.

You can dispose of any of your property in your will, from major assets such as buildings or trust funds to your personal possessions and, of course, your art. Specific bequests can be made to non profits, personal friends or other relations. The benefits of having a will ensure that disputes will not occur over property or personal asset distribution and that your wishes are maintained.

Suggested reading

Where There's a Will - Estate planning for artists. This is a comprehensive document (55 pages!) about planning your estate, your will, copyright etc. It is Australian, but the information is very broad based.

Visual Artist's Guide to Estate Planning - The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation

Checklist for Planning Your Art Estate - ArtBusiness

Let Professionals Manage the Art

Estate Planning for Artists - the Crafts Report

Senior Artists Initiative

Finally, do you want to know how long you'll live? Well, there are many variables including lifestyle, diet, exercise, external environment, etc.

The Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator uses the most current and carefully researched medical and scientific data in order to estimate how old you will live to be. Most people score in their late eighties... how about you?

My calculated life expectancy is 94. I guess I have 40 years of drawing left to do...

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.

Portrait update

Jimi Hendrix - update

graphite 11 x 14 on Canson
copyright Jeanette Jobson


It's funny how most people love the dead, once you're dead your made for life.
Jimi Hendrix

I've had the song 'Fire' in my head ALL day long after posting the video clip last night. But there could be worse things to be stuck in there.

I've done a little more on the Hendrix portrait. I've used crosshatching for most of this drawing. Hatching and crosshatching fill a lot of people wiith fear, but I just love the technique. In the initial stages it always looks odd and its not til you really start getting the values in place that you see it coming together. When its at this strange stage is when people abandon hope and bail out usually.

My Skooba Skin laptop case has arrived and I still haven't decided on a design for it yet. These bags can be decorated in any way I want, using permanent markers, paints, glued on decorations, stencils, pens, airbrush, needlework or anything else that is suitable for use on fabric. Decisions, decisions...Jimi Hendrix?? Nawwwww

Woodstock 1969

Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970)
11 x 14, graphite on Canson
copyright Jeanette Jobson

In 1969, I was fifteen and a huge Jimi Hendrix fan, much to my parents dismay. I had my bedroom walls covered in Hendrix posters and listened, enraptured to songs like All Along the Watchtower and one of my favourites, Fire. 1969 was also the year of Woodstock - "bunch of hippies..." my father would mutter, as scenes of it filtered through to the news.

I still like Jimi Hendrix music and this morning when the geese decided to do the dawn chorus at 5am, I started a portrait of him.

Here's a little trip back in time to Woodstock and one of the world's greatest guitarists. Enjoy!

Inspirational computers

I loved the shapes of this rhododendron bud (yes they're just flowering now!) and thought it would make a good line drawing. I often put images in Photoshop and tinker with them to get an idea of what mediums they would translate into or to experiment with colours and shapes before I start a drawing. I tried a few filters and colours within shadows, midtones and highlights and this was the result which pretty much follows through with my original thoughts around this piece and its potential.

Using a graphics program gives me the ability to intensify colours and values to enable more accurate rendering of the final image or provide more inspiration to veer off the beaten track. I'm sure that the masters would have spent time playing with PS if they'd had computers too.

Single red female

Single, red, female
Acrylic on canvas,8 x 10
copyright Jeanette Jobson

I spent about an hour this morning finishing this painting that was the demonstration for a class. Overall I rather like it now, but as always I can see things in it that I could change. I won't tinker anymore otherwise I'll just turn it into a muddy mess.

I played around with some more small studies today as I've run out of decent size canvases and need to stock up again. I have a handful of small canvas panels that I can use but some are just too small - around 3 x 5 - but they're good for practice. I haven't used acrylics for quite a while. They are convenient in terms of clean up and I really don't think many people could ever tell the difference between acrylic and oil paint in the final picture. However, there are devotees of both acrylics and oils and everything in between.

Personally, I prefer oils. I love the smell of the paints and turps and oils. It must be something to do with my love of history and the feeling that I am continuing a tradition when using oil paints. Yes, there are more challenges working with oils and waiting for them to dry between layers. I enjoy the ability to mix the paint more easily on the canvas with oils. I can do this with acrylics, but they are fast drying and can cause problems, especially in the warmer months.

There must be something about summer that makes me want more colour in my artwork, while in winter I seem to stick with graphite much more. Dry media will always be my comfort zone even if I slide over into painting now and then. I think it is the same for many artists who try their hand at a variety of mediums depending on mood, season and level of comfort.

Do the seasons affect how you crave colour or influence what you draw or paint?

Painting and talking

Single tomato study II
Acrylic 8 x 10 canvas
copyright Jeanette Jobson

Last night I taught a class and was asked if I could do a demonstration of a painting in acrylic. Oh yeah, no pressure....

So I chose the little tomato that I was going to paint anyway and gave it a shot. This is about an hour's work done between painting and talking about what I was doing. I really find it difficult to do the creative aspect and provide a running commentary at the same time. I start out painting, explaining why I'm choosing a colour or how I'm applying it to the canvas, then I find myself trailing off as the painting side of me takes over. I'm left with expectant faces, waiting for the next step and I have to jolt myself back into verbal mode again.

Does this ever become easy to do or is it always a challenge to function with both left and right sides, switching constantly?

I will go back and finish the painting, as there are a number of problems with it. The tomato itself is too perfectly round, the highlight colour isn't right and the shadow is sloping off downhill. I'll tweak the colours and background a bit. I really need to do more painting to be proficient at putting all the information down in an hour or less. I'm always amazed at those who can produce wonderful images so quickly with paints.

Complementary colours

Single tomato study
9 x 12 coloured pencil on bristol smooth
copyright Jeanette Jobson

Although my love of art is in graphite and drawing, sometimes I do crave colour too and this fit the bill nicely. I always enjoy drawing tomatoes. That hot colour against a complementary one, the blues in the background, works well.

I was thinking about complementary colours and just why they are pleasing to the eye and how the eye sees them. Its a complex process, explained nicely in Wikipedia.

I also found a little video called Crazy Colors that provides an interesting visual experiment about complementary colours. Try it and see what your eyes pick up.

Memorial Day/Canada Day

"It was a magnificent display of trained and disciplined valour, and its assault only failed of success because dead men can advance no further." — Major-General Sir Beauvoir de Lisle, Commander of the British 29th Division, on the 1st Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel

July 1st is Canada Day where the country celebrates its birthday. In Newfoundland, while we are part of Canada since 1949, another day is remembered - Memorial Day. On July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme in World War I, 801 soldiers of the 1st Newfoundland Regiment rose from the British trenches and went into battle at Beaumont-Hamel, nine kilometers north of Albert in France. After only 30 minutes the regiment was devastated. Only 68 men stood to answer the regimental roll call the next morning. 255 were dead, 386 were wounded, and 91 were listed as missing in action and presumed dead. Every officer who had gone over the top was either wounded or dead.

While researching relatives in an old cemetery I found a gravesite which brought home more the meaning of Memorial Day. The graves of two young men, relatives through my mother's paternal side of the family, James Atwill, who died on July 1, 1916 as part of the Newfoundland Regiment and his brother Duncan, who died two years later in action in France. James was 25 and Duncan 21. Such a waste of life and such a terrible war, as all wars are.

I started drawing a heliconia - a cousin of the bird of paradise flower. These are ornate showy bracts that hang down and are very tropical. Its a good exercise in negative space for me with all the background foliage and stems. The complexity of the background isn't as daunting as it seems as it gives me a degree of 'artistic license' in terms of leaf shape and depth of field. Just getting the values correct to provide the illusion will be the challenge.

Eyes

I've been doodling off and on this weekend and as its a 4 day weekend for me, I feel a little guilty that I haven't made inroads into the drawing projects that I intended to. I played around with a sepia coloured pencil and this white cat that has potential but isn't too special at this stage. I do love drawing eyes. I think I need to try a whole page of them just to get them out of my system for awhile!

I did however start a more complex drawing of a lovely tropical plant that involved a lot of detailed drawing and use of negative space. I love the challenge of drawing complex subjects freehand. I rarely use grids anymore and rely on my eye/hand to put me in the right place. Most of the time it works. I truly enjoy the process of drawing and seeing it develop under my hand.

Rock

Rock I
Carbon pencil on Canson paper
copyright Jeanette Jobson

There is something satisfying to me about drawing rocks. Living on a rock in the ocean may have something to do with that as I'm surrounded by rocks.

I liked the porous texture of this rock. I often see these on the beach. They are part coral, part rock that have married into a new form. I love the intricate shapes that the new form creates and the challenge of developing subtle shading to portray those nooks and crannies within the piece. Lava rock is also very similar to the coral rock that I find, but formed by molten rock and gas bubbles, making it lighter than most rocks.

I haven't done much work with carbon pencils as I can never find them here, so this was an experiment. Its similar in feel to charcoal but has a 'lighter' feel to it and seems to go on more smoothly. I like the rich darks it can achieve along with the more delicate shading of the B grade pencil.

History

Tombstone Richard Atwell 1828 - 1873
copyright Jeanette Jobson

Last week I took a brief look in the General Protestant Cemetery in St. John's, which is one of the original cemeteries for this city, dating back to the early 1800s. There are a number of relatives buried there from my mother's paternal side of the family and I did a quick search to see if I could find any headstones. I did locate one, of a great, great uncle, (I think) who was master mason, involved in building the Gower Street Wesleyan Church. He unfortunately died from a fall while building the church shortly before it was complete in 1873. His tombstone is a testament to the art of stone masonry, being tall, columnar with ornate carving and precise deep lettering that has survived more than 130 years.

In the late 1800s hospitals tended to be for infectious diseases and doctors instead made house calls, so most individuals were confined to their own homes when ill. However, the thought of broken bones, possible head or internal injuries, being moved from the church to his house and the pain involved for this man leading up to his death, just makes me shudder.

Whether I have connections to family members or not, I have always found cemeteries very interesting places, especially the older ones that are full of history and much potential for sketching. Some people think this is a bit odd, but I like to explore and enjoy the amazing sculptural shapes of monuments, reading the headstones and imagining life in the mid 1800s in St. John's.

I hope to go to this cemetery again tomorrow if the weather holds and do a more thorough search for more headstones. I have great, great, great, great grandparents that I would like to have more permanent records of. Many headstones have been ravaged by time and weather and I intend to take some newsprint and charcoal with me to do some rubbings. Once a weak point has been found in a carving or headstone and it topples, the information on it is gone forever.

There are more tips on headstone rubbings and other methods of capturing headstone carvings here.

Herbal art

You wanted something?

The weather finally warmed up and Tripod decided to bake his little brain in the greenhouse. I found him asleep on a shelf, tucked in between shelves of begonias. He slept the afternoon away there in nearly 30C temperatures. He's an odd cat...

Meanwhile I inspected my herb garden to see what's survived the winter. I need to move my medicinal herb bed and either eliminate or at least restrain some plants which are threatening to take over. All the rain this year has made things very lush and now the heat has them rocketing upwards.

I harvest the herbs just as they flower as that is when the oils are at their peak point. They are then dried in a shady place to preserve colour and oils as much as possible. The objective is to have a dried imitation of the original plant, not a browned leaf that shatters at a touch.

One of the herbs that has done well is Blue Vervain. This herb has beautiful blue spires of flowers that look glorious in a group as they are now.

I counted thirty varieties of medicinal and culinary herbs currently in the garden and I want to record them in more than a simple photographic way. I found little blank paged book with 24 double sided pages which I must have bought some time ago but that got stuffed away in my art cupboard. I'm considering filling this book with 24 different medicinal herb drawings and perhaps some writing about the herb to go with each drawing. I'll create a cover and back for the book and it could be an interesting piece both in terms of art and herbal medicine.

I'll aim to see what I can come up with during July. Watch this space. I have visitors this week so its slowing both my drawing and blogging, but this is a long weekend for me, so I'll play at catch up then.

Laptop sleeve design

I bought a new laptop a couple of weeks ago and have been searching for an interesting travel case for it. There are endless utilitarian black cases on the market and some outrageously expensive coloured ones. I have been toying with the idea of making my own case using fabrics padding and the deconstruction of an old leather coat, but never seem to have enough time to work out the logistics of it

Then I came across Skooba Design. They have produced a cream coloured Skooba Skin laptop sleeve that I can draw my own design on! There are some designs shown on the site and I love this Muppet drawing. The possibilities are endless, and it could be a perfect marketing tool for my art as well as a design piece in itself. I could create a main drawing looping around the sleeve or do a series of small ones. I could incorporate the shape of the bag into a drawing.

Markers are used to create the designs from what I can understand at this point but it may be open to experimentation. However, I would imagine that markers would be the most permanent solution to a bag that would be handled. I wouldn't want my efforts disappearing after being used a few times or being caught in a shower of rain.

I've ordered one of the bags to fit my new laptop and now will have a week or 10 days to wait while it ships from New York. Meanwhile I can play with designs and figure out what I will draw on the sleeve once it arrives.

I did a little more research and found a number of websites that offer unique designer laptop sleeves.

• Skooba Design
• Designer Sleeves
• Acton Treadway
• Electric Baby
• Barry's Farm

Then there are the 'do-it-yourself' laptop sleeves to create.

Knitted Aran laptop sleeve
Laptop bag
Felted laptop sleeve

And not forgetting the Macs

AirMail
Wrappers

I have finished my 1460 portrait. I'm not 100% pleased with it, as I haven't been able to get a good smooth dark background. And it looks even worse once scanned. But I'm calling it done and don't want to fiddle with it anymore or it will just get worse. As well the tooth of the paper has taken all the graphite that it can hold so there's no point in frustrating myself.

Glass completed

Broken glass

graphite on mat board 7 x 12
copyright Jeanette Jobson

This is the completed drawing for a glass tutorial that I've finished. Well, almost finished. I have to clean up the image a little and finish some explanations of techniques then its done. Oh and the formatting. See? There's so much to do!

People often have problems finding me when they come to visit, even if the directions are fairly straight forward. Today I was playing around on Google Earth and found they give an option now of saving or printing an image. This image gives you an idea of where I live and my surround of trees, trees and more trees, interspersed with rocks and ponds or lakes. The images of some areas aren't as developed as others on Google Earth, but you get the general idea. The house is the light grey area on the right, the barn the dark grey on the left and the greenhouse further up centrally in the fields.

Classic art toys

Garden visitors
graphite 11 x 14
copyright Jeanette Jobson

I don't know of any saved record of my drawings or paintings as a child. I think that was before the trend arrived for parents to save every gum wrapper and scribble that a child produces from cradle to high school and beyond.

I was asked when I started to draw and the question made me think about some of my earliest memories of drawing. Not structured academic drawing, but simply drawing or creating for pleasure. I remember from the age of 5 or so always colouring or creating something and that stayed with me as time passed. When other kids were outside playing, I would be the one inside creating and decorating theatres out of shoe boxes with elaborate sets, characters and backdrops.

There were also a variety of toys that I had which fed my need to create. These may bring back memories for some or be completely new to others.

When children's Give A Show projectors were the rage in the 1960s, I had one. Not content with the slides that came with it, I scrounged pieces of hard cellophane from packaging, created cardboard slides and drew my own stories on the clear surface. I wish now that I could see some of those early efforts at around age 10.

Etch A Sketch. Remember those? Yes I had one and used it til it wore out. Here's an online version for those who want to try their hand at producing something. Was this the early version of the graphics tablet?

Visit Etched in Time to see George Vlosich III's amazing Etch a Sketch art.

You can still buy Etch A Sketch toys.

Spirographs came into existence in the late 1960s and they fed right into the psychedelic patterning of the 60s. I recall making endless patterns in colour or black and white with piles of patterns stacked up in my bedroom or posted to the walls.

If you want to create patterns, or treat a child in your life the Spirograph is still being produced. Check out Ebay for lots of spirographs for sale.

Obviously, toys that bring out creative skills tend to become classics and are used by generations of families and have appeal to both old and young. With the tendency for the thinking to be taken out of life these days and the McDonald's 'instant' gratification needs, we often overlook basic, simple toys that help minds develop ideas and explore possibilities.