Dailies

I haven’t posted these in a while. Sometimes, I put something on my page that I am not really sure that I want to share yet until I am able to follow through on that little box that could lead to something else.

A nice thing about Florida is the plants can grow year round…..However, the squirrels are also here year round. They stole a baby eggplant and buried it. John found it when he was watering the garden.

Yesterday morning, when John and I were looking at our few meager veggie plants. I looked up at the screen house and I said to hubby, “What is that in the corner of the screen house?” Earlier, two squirrels were chasing each other on top of the screen house….now we know why….one of them must have stolen a green bell pepper and left it in the corner of the screen house, or dropped it and it rolled to the corner, but there is was, in all it’s green glory, just short of being usable. Now we need to get some garden netting, brats.

This morning, I was outside doing my writing and drawing routine, and the sky started to darken. I said to hubby that I think the 20% chance of thunderstorms is going to be 100% chance. he made a comment about 20% chance usually is bad news and 80% means we’re getting nothing. Well, we got the thunderstorms at the 20% chance and they started around 9-ish and round 4 is rumbling in the distance and it is after 2. So much for the 20% chance of T-storms today.

A rare treat, the new spread for this week. I tried going back to just boxes, but they were boring.

Feedback time

Folks, I am working on putting a portfolio together and I am taking an illustrator’s workshop. My assignment this week is to take the character in the story and draw up a sheet with expressions for one of the characters. My character is a balloon named Bob.

Here is what I have so far….please, if you know my work well, suggestions are helpful. If you don’t, please scroll through my blog or Instagram to compare this to my other work. Comments would be extremely helpful. The original was done in pastel and then I tweaked it with Procreate. I have until Sunday to submit the piece but I held back to review it a little more.

Two of my grandsons saw it already and were able to guess the emotions. I guess I should have asked the 6 year old what he would add to this. LMAO

A little storm sketch

We had Tropical Storm Isaias visit. It was supposed to be a hurricane but it sort of fizzled off shore for a while. We put the shutters up but we really didn’t need them. We only got a little rain.

The only interesting/frustrating thing was why couldn’t they pronounce the name correctly and why would they pick a name that was so confusing.

Chasing the elusive Neowise comet

Living in Florida has a lot of pluses. It’s almost always sunny. It’s warm year round. You can eat outside on Christmas Day. Lots of great flora and fauna. The people are nice and friendly. The lizards are insect control so they are always welcome in our screen house.

The down side are the damn fire ants and in my part of Florida, trying to see something in the northern evening sky when there are storms every day. John and I have been trying to spot Neowise and we get wispy glimpses but we haven’t seen it like many others have. We can see Jupiter just fine every night but Neowise is in the North and it seems the north always has cloud cover.

We’ve been driving out to places where there is no light pollution. Then we get bit by mosquitoes…ok, bugs are another minus.

This is pretty much the best that we have seen it. I “winged” the whole scene…..

Oh yeah, there’s a story blurb included, too….

99 Red balloons…..

This song, both the English and German versions, have been a source of inspiration for me. I am taking a class that I actually purchased last year during a “big sale” back in November. Glad it was on sale then because I am not sure I could spare the finances now.

Our assignment is to pick one of 4 texts and create characters, accessories, etc but along the way, and we have also been given daily drawing prompts. I read the text and I had to pull out some things that could be accessories and begin to draw the character. My subjects are a balloon and a little girl. Hence the 99 red balloons….now that song is stuck in my head.

Drawing a ballon may sound easy…hey just draw a circle with a string, right? Uhm, no. The balloon needs personality. The shape, the string and how the face is placed all leads to personality of the character…..I drew many balloons may different ways and narrowed it down to these:

So the red balloon won, as soon as I drew it I knew it was the right one….but then, I had to draw the face…..I drew bunch of eyes, faces, etc….after drawing a bunch of faces, I narrowed it down to these eight:

This is a nice friendly guy

And this guy is the end result….more to come about this guy and his friend….