Not The Great Pumpkin

Posted on October 14, 2014 by treshabarger

‘Tis the season. Pumpkin sketching season, that is.

My first sketch. Looks like a pumpkin. Or what I think a pumpkin looks like; just not like the pumpkin I was looking at, so I abandoned the sketch.

Recognizable as a pumpkin

The real pumpkin.

Pumpkin model

My second effort. And there is something funny about this one. The real pumpkin is a little lopsided but my drawing doesn’t reflect it accurately. Usually it’s the other way around: my drawing is lopsided and the model objects are not. I’m looking forward to the time when my drawings match the model shapes. Won’t that be something to celebrate.

Second try

This was only my second independent (not in class) sketching effort.

Three-Hour Apple

Posted on October 9, 2014 by treshabarger

After struggling with my first oil painting, I realized that I don’t know enough about tone. I returned to using charcoal and sketched an apple. I spent three hours on this apple. I think it’s recognizable as an apple, but not necessarily the apple I used as my subject. Sigh.

Yes, that’s an apple

The bamboo skewer is there to point out to me where the top of the shadow is relative to the top of the apple. (From where I sat when I sketched the apple, the shadow was lower than how it looks in the photo.) When I first sketched the apple, the shadow was much higher. Why? I don’t know.

An apple, with a bamboo skewer behind it marking the top of its shadow

Seems straightforward enough

My first problem was that I shaded my background way too dark (I laid down a 6 tone and it should have been a 4) and then had trouble distinguishing the dark tones of the apple and its shadow (tones 6-10). The instructor put a 6-tone fabric under the apple to help me see the difference in a 4 tone and a 6 tone. You can barely see the lighter fabric in the top right corner of the photo.

The tone chart goes from light to dark. I know that 1 is white and 10 is black. I might even be able to put down on paper a correct likeness of 2 (one tone darker than white) and 9 (one tone lighter than black). But talk to me of a 4, 5 or 6 and I will not be able to mass it in correctly.

What did I do in that three hours? I sketched in the apple, put in tones . . . and then erased them. I did this several times trying to get the shape and tones of the apple correct, as well as the shape and the tones of the shadow. I’m getting really good at erasing.

I’m choosing to work on tones in charcoal a while before my next oil painting effort. We’ll see how long that takes.

Photography Homework: Lunchtime

Posted on September 27, 2014 by treshabarger

These are the photographs that I turned in for my Class 3 photography homework assignment. Both my subjects happened to be eating, so I categorized them as “Lunchtime.”

This is Madison having lunch. I saw her and her mother at an adjacent table just as I was leaving a sandwich shop. I asked for permission to photograph the baby and the mother was gracious and agreed.

Madison, a baby, being fed lunch by her mother

Yummy

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This is an Argiope aurantia spider, also having lunch. I found the spider while taking photos of a Texas Wood Lizard in my back yard and decided the spider would make a good subject for my homework.

A spider, an Argiope aurantia, eating a cricket

Yummy, in a Mother Nature food-chain way

I must have made at least 11 trips out to the spider web, trying to get a good photo. I was (am) having trouble with my photos being over-exposed. I’d trek out to the web, take seven or eight photos, come back into the house and review them on the computer monitor. Result: Over-exposed. Back out to the spider web. I finally got this one photo that I thought was decent enough to share.

But I’m telling you, if that spider had flinched while I was looking through my camera viewfinder, I would have high-tailed it out of there. It was an overgrown area and I wasn’t thrilled about being there anyway. I was a few inches from an ant mound and I heard rustlings in the tall grasses behind me. If a cricket had landed on me, I would have panicked. If a fire ant had bit me while I was standing there, I’d have had a conniption fit.

Once I thought I saw the spider eyeing me and I started to fret. I didn’t want it to get any ideas about wrapping me up in its web, thinking if it could just catch me, it would be set for life.

I managed to emerge from my photographic safari in the pasture with only a few dozen chigger bites. How lucky can I get.

Vinegar Collection

Posted on September 2, 2014 by treshabarger

I was looking for something in my pantry and happened to be wearing my glasses. Big mistake. How many times do I have to tell myself that?

I discovered that I have a vinegar collection. Oops.

A collection of vinegar bottles from my pantry

All together now

I know what happens, at least some of the time: I have a list of ingredients for a specific dish. I shop and buy those that I don’t already have. I return home and put away all the groceries. At mealtime, I decide I don’t want to cook and the new ingredients in the pantry fade into the background, become part of the landscape, as if they had always been there and should always be there, undisturbed. The new dish that I planned to prepare becomes part a distant past.

And, repeat.

I notice that the Alessi Balsamic Vinegar bottle boasts that it is aged four years in wood. Ha! That’s nothing compared to the time it will sit on my pantry shelf.