November 11 work in progress: dog scrim

I just realized I dated all today's photographs as November 10th. Oops. Sigh, I'll just leave it.

the bear cubs

"The Lookouts" (black bear cubs)
scrimshaw on paper micarta
1.5 x 4.75 inches

*whew done finally!*

I love it. :-)

I have been doing scrimshaw for one year now. Happy anniversary to me! May there be many more to come.

Thank you BK for the title (and the original idea). :-)

August 22 work in progress

Gah! I totally love this piece! :-D I should finish in the next couple days.

August 21 work in progress

August 20 work in progress

I actually have a whole lot to say, I just keep running out of time to do it and am too tired to ramble on about stuff tonight.

Tonight was Avian Bowl at State Fair. Boy does it bring back memories. I've been helping with the competition ever since I stopped being part of it. My team won in 1993. Wow, that was a while ago!

Work in progress:

August 19 work in progress

Next up, background!:

Haven't worked on this for a couple days:

Draft Horse Classic is less than a month away, eeeek! There is so much I would like to get done between now and then.

eight hundred!

Holy worn out keyboard Batman, this is my eight hundredth blog posting! Hmm, I should celebrate when I reach a thousand.

I was going to call this "August 15 work in progress"

La dee da...

August 12 work in progress

*yawn* When I was a kid, I used to sleep outside relatively often. My brother J usually got dibs on the hammock and I'd get stuck with the lounge chair, which is right at wet-cold-dog-nose-in-sleeping-bag height. But I always slept so well outside as a kid, I'd wake up early, feeling all refreshed. Yeah that must have worn off quite some years ago. I did see some really impressive meteors last night but dang, refreshed? I've been groggy all day. Napping in the hammock is one thing, attempting a whole night without falling off is another. (no I did not fall off). And there's nothing like being almost asleep, all peaceful listening to crickets with suddenly OOMPF the combined weight of 23 pounds of cats lands on my midsection and leaps off the other side. Yay, so nice to be an obstacle course for the boys. Go around? Nooo. They did both grace with me with their presence for some sleep time too, awww. And Shylah stood at the fence and looked at me in the moonlight.

The serama male sketch is pending approval. When it's a drawing in progress I'll start posting it here. And I have to do the female sketch too but I'm waiting to get word on the male.

I did some framing today, and I'll be picking up the frame for the percheron scrim ("Sunday Morning") later this week.

I know this doesn't look like much but you would not believe how incredibly long this takes:

August 11 work in progress

Today I redid the sketch for the Serama illustration project (those are some very strangely assembled chickens if you ask me.) In order to figure out how to draw the exterior, I have to understand the anatomy. Hopefully I am on the right track. Can't show these yet.

I also sketched out what will be scrimshaw nude #4, a blonde on the beach, very "pinup" style. Not going to show you this either til it's a scrim in progress.

I am starting sketches for two 12x18ish graphite horse drawings, and just barely starting to figure out the composition of my next fine art scrim (draft horses).

I think this is probably too many things to work on at once. I found myself setting the timer for an hour at a time today, and when it rang I'd change art pieces. Hectic.

A little progress on the bear cub scrim today (I need to come up with a title):

And a little progress on the landscape (I assume you've all figured out that's what this is). ;-) I know, a real leap for me.

Ooh, I do need to start on a painting too, whee that'll add another thing to work on!

I hope you all watch the meteor shower tonight. I'm going to sleep in the hammock in the yard, at least until the mosquitoes drive me insane.

Probably won't be riding much this week, it's hotter than heck again. 102 today.

August 5 work in progress

Remember, this is one dot at a time... *egads*



I'm not super thrilled with the drawing I'm working on, which is why I haven't been working on it much. I still think at some point it'll just click but it's sort of a rebellion until that happens. There are still, um, oh heck I don't know, at least 4 more color layers to go in that top portion... I can see why some artists do their Work In Progress blogs after the fact, but wouldn't you rather suffer through the angst along with me rather than be presented with some tidy pre-packaged thing when I'm done. ;-)

(photographed in daylight):

(photographed at night, with more stuff done obviously):

9x20 inches
colored pencil

August 3 work in progress

Work in progress pics from the last few days. Do y'all want me to really go into detail explaining what I'm doing? I've been presenting this as a tutorial on the Engraving Forum and it's kinda fun to go into depth with the explanation. Let me know if you'd want to read more about what I do here on the blog. I don't write just to listen to the sound of my fingers on the keyboard. ;-)

July 28 work in progress

9x20 inches
colored pencil
(have not spent much time on this drawing in the last few days)


not yet titled
scrimshaw on micarta
1.5 x 4.75 inches

And a closeup:

I've been listening to an audiobook lately while working. This is GREAT! I'm so easily distracted most of the time and usually have about 47 billion thoughts in my head so it's really quite pleasant to be able to listen to someone other than myself, without having the somewhat annoying constant changing of songs every few minutes (normally I listen to music). I'd downloaded two audiobooks before going on The Adventure. I only made it through one of them on the plane, so I've been listening to Bill Bryson's "A Walk In The Woods" and it's really quite funny to be scrimming bears and listening to someone talk about bears and forests and hiking. It's a great book! It gets me thinking more about hiking and camping and wishing it was something I was better at doing, but the truth is I'm really a weenie about it. I dunno, I mean I get to the end of the day and I want a shower and a bed and somewhere to plug in my camera battery charger! Anyway, I get totally engrossed in books and this keeps me on track with art, so I'm going to have to find a way to have this in constant supply, whether audiobooks or books on CD or something.

July 25 work in progress

Two nights ago my web host was being moody and last night I was gone, so this is two days worth of WIPs. Wait, where did I leave off (I have to read my blog and find out!) Ah, okay.

I connected the lightly dotted outline (with more dots) so I could better see what I'm doing:

I'm going to start with the foreground and work my way backwards. So for the tree I started with the limbs:

And then put in a "base coat" for the trunk. I'll be working back into this to create the texture of bark, this is just to give it some roundness and a base gray tone:

If you want read my ramblings, I mean words of wisdom, in great detail about how I do scrimshaw and this piece specifically, I am using this piece as a submission in a tutorial contest on The Engraving Forum. You can read all about it here. Can you tell I like to write? If only I had this much to say in person. ;-)

I have not had time to ride for the last few days. Today Shylah got bathed and braided and primped for tomorrow. I'll be spending the day in a ridiculous costume. I'll post pics when I get a chance. Nobody on the team seems too gung ho this year, me included, I think we all just have a lot of other stuff going on in our lives. But hey, I guess we all need to saddle up and wear a skimpy costume at least once a year, it builds character. ;-)

Cross your fingers!