Better options are here: the facebook group (search “everyday matters”), the yahoo e-mail group or the flickr group or the group resource wiki.

Thanks to everyone.

I couldn’t get the color quite right my lilies are a pale almost see through peach color… with dark peach spots and rich purple stamens… they bloomed today, more are on the way, but these are the first.

How long will the oil continue to pour into the gulf of mexico? It’s been doing that for almost a month, 11 people lost their lives, now the marshes and fish, and birds in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida are threatened…
We had a tanker spill in the Charleston Harbor, Ron and I worked on the clean up … it was an experience I hope I never have to repeat…. my heart goes out to the people in the gulf.

OilSpill, originally uploaded by CaptElaine.

That’s me on the left, Ron on the right… our 2002 oil spill in Charleston was a DROP in the bucket compared to the horror show going on in the gulf of Mexico now.

winnasworld.blogspot.com

If you want to have a warm and cozy feeling, just look at a goat warming itself in the sun.  Mmmmmm!  Such bliss.  And as you can see the heat reflected off the ground warms the underside.  The chickens like to sort of wallow in a warm spot and spread out their feathers to get maximum body coverage so they look kind of limp and smashed up, but truly they are also stewing in sweet sensory delight.

I don’t think I saw the Colonel get much rest though.  Apparently his job as top rooster is to be on patrol for marauding hawks which could thin out his harem.

At mealtimes (or when curious customers or sketchers want a show) Carole comes out and bangs the metal lid of the can with the feed and her flock comes scooting out to meet her.  I brought some of my Layena pellets, which my chickens adore, thinking I would call an assembly myself.  They came when I banged, but looked around for the food and were disappointed in my choice of cuisine, and ate not one single pellet of my food!  Come to find out that these chicken royalty get fed bird seed with sunflower seeds mixed in.  With that I can’t compete.

Both days of the workshop  some of us ate at the recently opened restaurant across the street from Rose and Thorn. Advertising Cheap and Chic food it is called P30 and I never found out what that stands for.  The food was delicious and the waitresses and decor quite chic, providing a fun interlude in our sketching.  I always make students sketch at the table.  Later I cut up the restaurant’s card and had fun glueing it on my sketch.

A great weekend all told.  We snatched the sunshine right out of this rainy May month, just in time for another downpour today as I write.

If you want to join me on another similar sketch-capade, I’ll be teaching a weekend workshop on Travel Sketchbooking at Gualala Arts Center on the California north coast June 26 and 27.  More information on the Art Center website along with information about accommodations.

-Susan Cornelis

How do you capture a hen doing the peck-peck-Mambo, a Silkie doing a tap dance, and a goat enjoying the bliss of a sunbath after too much rain?  Stand and sketch like crazy, pages and pages of pencil sketches until some of all that looking and scratching on the paper starts to make sense.

Barnyard Sketching workshop on Sunday at Rose and Thorn

That’s what I was up to again yesterday morning with another group of avid sketchbookers, and all of us thrilled to have such beautiful sunny weather.  The animlas seemed to share our enthusiasm.

pencil sketch in 9 X 12″ sketchbook

Usually I sketch with my Sharpee pen, but we all needed to warm up for sketching the constant motion of barnyard creatures.  THis little white and black polk dotted Polish rooster looks a little nauseous, but then maybe it was me feeling a bit shook up by following his movements with such concentration.

This was my attempt to sketch the short legged, pot bellied pygmy goats.  You can see here how I’m attempting to learn their “architecture” without the benefit of a pose.

Pardon the backside image here.  I was starting to get some of the aspects of this goat correct, but as always, lost the relative size of the head and body.  Heads always seem to carry more “weight” and it takes a great deal of concentration to counteract that tendency in a drawing.

Sharpee pen and watercolor in Arches Travel Book

Then we switched to pen and added watercolor in the afternoon.  This is Harpo again, the flambouyent rooster with the punk rocker outfit and temperament to match.  It’s actually hard to sketch any other chicken when Harpo is around.  We were focusing on designing the page to have positive and negatively painted shapes, leaving some white paper. I find there’s usually not time for so much paint application when you’re working in a sketchbook and have been drawing and writing.  And I just love the white of the paper.  Harpo is actually black and white, but he comes across as more colorful, so I painted him that way.

Sketchbooking is as much about storytelling as about drawing and painting.  If I write about some details of the day, it helps me to remember the whole sensory experience and this was a day (Saturday here) I would never want to forget!

To be continued . . .

-Susan Cornelis

Imaginary island… it was what came to mind sitting at the dinner table …

We spent the past weekend at The Plains Virginia for the Team America Rocket Challenge Fly-off. My son is part of a rocket team that made the top 100 teams and earned a chance to launch at this beautiful equestrian arena. I had time to sit and sketch while the rockets soared into the air. That’s one launching in the above painting — look toward the upper middle of the sketch.

Here’s my husband taking a photo of me sketching … I really sketch quickly for this one.

Below is the Italian sausage concession stand .

This last one was painted here at home — our neighborhood pond has a family of swans! I’ll try painting this again… I’d like to get better at painting the grasses along the banks–I’m not happy with the way these turned out.

That’s 22, 23, 24, and 25! I’m one quarter of the way there…

We thought we’d get a lot more done this weekend, than we did. Everything seems to take twice as long as we thought. Partly because it is so hot, and we are not used to all this physical labor… so we’re slow… Time slips away… like Dali’s melting clock.