A Person, Artist, Software Engineer, Geologist.

Just finished my second watercolor class that Bobbie bought for me.  It was a class handled through the art supply company www.cheapjoes.com  which is a great place to buy art supplies for really good prices.  They have 3 stores in Western North Carolina and are based out of Boone, NC.  Joe Miller (owner / artist) has a great store of how he started it all. Back to the class.  It was hosted on Zoom, was moderate in cost ( couple of hundred bucks), lasted 3 days with 3-1/2 hours / day.  Went very well, no technical hitches and was chock full of information and examples.  I got a lot out of it. I put a lot of stress on myself on classes.  It may come from decades of being a software engineer and getting things done fast and working.  I'm all about no stress now but the self pressure to do a new watercolor painting using colors, subject, etc. that I've not done before was tough.  My first go was on the wrong track so I canned it, but then h...

Well it's been a long time from my first (and only thus far) watercolor class before COVID shut everything down.  I took a basic drawing and watercolor class this time last year and the pandemic hit just as the class was wrapping up.  I had schedule the intermediate watercolor class but it was cancelled because of the shutdown (good thing). Bobbie gave me an intermediate watercolor class from CheapJoes (they are based close to here for all art supplies) and it's all on-line now.  It will be 3 days for 3 hours / day starting Wednesday.  Looking forward to it. Until then, here is a quick watercolor of Bobbie's uncle David's house in Auburn AL (think football).  It's a very nice and relaxing place.

Or, it's NOT a Barn! This latest drawing of mine is that of a chain of local stores that used to (building still exist) dot the Appalachian mountains to provide basic items for the locals.  Way before freeways, highways and big box retails, the locals needed local / quick access to basic everyday items.  This local chain (I know of 3 of these) went by the name of RICE.  Don't know if this was a family name or not. Up here next to Asheville, old buildings are not torn down.  They are reused, if possible, or just left alone for use maybe later.  As in many things, later turns into never and they slowly decay where they stand.  This is true of the barns, store, cars and houses.  Great photo ops exists for these items.   I'm sure they all have great stories to tell. All of the old building have (had?) tin roofs so the weather takes a long time to wear them down. Enjoy.

Winter is in full swing and it's cold, overcast and a bit rainy outside.  Not Utah cold but Asheville cold where you don't want to do anything outdoors. To this end I've done a wee bit of a painting of Bobbie's uncles beach House on the panhandle of Florida.  It's at Indian Pass, between "not here" and "over there".  Really, there is not much going on in this part of the "forgotten Coast".  That the real name for this area.  No big condo's, no college crowds, not nothing much going on except just hanging out in town, on the beach or on the porch. You can go to the state park on St. George island (we used to own a lot here) and walk the beach and not see anybody for miles.  It's this forgotten. Here is a photo of the actual house from the rental company (he rents it most of the year). You can see from the photo that it's not very built up in this area.  It's like time slowed down about 50 years ago and never tried to keep...

This is my latest Barn drawing in my series.  Very interesting barn with the mix of styles and structures.  This is typical of barns here as they started as animal (cows and horses) barns but where altered later for tobacco later.  Like much of life, you start out thinking one thing and change direction later in life. Enjoy.

I’m getting into the hang of doing my Barn series drawing.  Feeling normal even, but that does not mean it’s quick and easy.  Here is what I go through in doing one. I’ve taken a number of photo’s of barns and stored them in my iPhone / iPad / Mac.   I look them over during the course of a few days to think about which one I’ll draw next. I then go about my life over the next few days doing everything but do the drawing.  I fiddle with fly fishing gear, clean some in the house, re-clean up my desk and do a little computer work. I then get a piece of paper ready and lay out my pens.  I’ve got my setup with my iPad for the photo I want and everything squared away.  This adds about 1-2 more days.  Fright plays a big roll in all this.  Of failing, messing up, doing a bad drawing, loosing my style, etc. Then I start the drawing.  It takes about 1-2 hours from start to finish with almost no breaks.  Maybe a break between the basic drawing and ...

 Moving along both in my art path and also with recovery from my broken ankle. On my medical recovery, it's going really well.  The bone has been forming lots of callus (you can see it at the base of the Fibula) and the soft tissue has also been going well.  It's the soft tissue where the tweaks of pain occur and the skin over the callus formation is just irritating.  The key is to keep moving as you need to move past the tweaks of pain to get everything moving again.  The pain will lessen and that is where I think I am now.  I did my first (dirt road) double wide flat trail hike yesterday down at Bent Creek.  Did 4 miles (with soaking my foot afterwards) felt good and afterwards (meaning the next day) my foot felt almost normal again.  I'll keep this PT going for the next few weeks.  But it's looking very good.   For the skin irritation I've started using some Aspercream on it a couple times a day.  Boy did that help!  I still...

Well it appears that I have entered my “Barn” period.  I’ve done a number of them and I think I have many more of them before I’m through.  Working out the different tweaks for the style on them. This is an 8x10 ink + value marker drawing. It’s hard each time I start one because once I put the pen and markers down on the paper, the mark is there for good.   NO ERASING ALLOWED! I do not trace these.  I draw each one by hand from a photo I’ve taken.  Not everything in the picture is just like the photo.  I need to clean things up to get the picture right and somethings I avoid because they are too hard for me right now.  Simple goes a long way. No pressured at all.  So when do you know when to quite?  For me, I stop and think it’s done but always end up adding a little bit more to finish it off.  Even now I fight the urge to tweak them a little bit more, but I resist because, what’s done is done and I can only mess it up.  But the who...