Spring Sunsets

Easter weekend was full of Easter stuff of course, which I will divulge eventually. But it also marked the beginning of sunset season, simply because there were two sunsets that were pretty spectacular right in a row that weekend. Next week it's supposed to snow and be gray again, but we won't talk about that.

The first sunset occurred when I was out on an evening walk with the kids. I had Elora run home and get my camera while we were still fairly close to the house. We missed the part that first caught my attention, but I got a few shots of the golden sunset before it was gone.

 

 

 

 I tried to take a few pictures with the kids too, but...meh. They were in fake smile mode...except of course, the shot I got without the sunset in it.

 

 

 

 

 

Luckily we  were  on a walk, because the good shot I got occurred a while later when I saw a view that was perfect. Now this is what I wanted!

 

The very next night there was an awesome super pink and magenta sunset. Unfortunately pink and red toned sunsets always give my camera a hard time. I tried hard to capture it close to how it looked, but be advised that none of these are actually as very pink as the real sky was. I love how just a few minutes time changes a sunset.

 

  

Art Alley

I've always loved to look at drawings of city scapes, especially alley ways and the more grungy parts of town. However, I've never attempted to draw one myself because the idea of having to correctly render buildings and streets with all their right angles and perfect squares was fairly intimidating, not to mention it sounded kind of boring, even if the end result might be nice.

But I've noticed that many of the drawings I've admired on pinterest are those that are more sketchy and not as precise, some even with the perspective deliberately drawn incorrectly.

While I have many pictures saved that are perfectly rendered, here are a few from other artists that I love because they're not:

loish.deviantart.com
























































Pete Scully, Mallet Street, Soho

I love the following painting so much. I think because of the bright orange underpainting.




Reno 7 AM by Mark e. Mehaffey

This last on is the one most like what I wanted to draw:



Jon Shaw

 

I've been thinking for a while that the art alley we like to visit in Rapid City would be a cool drawing- plus it's one of the few photographs of a city that I have taken myself. (I really wish I'd taken more photos in Seattle).

I figured if I could stop myself from worrying about all the right angles, straight lines and perfect perspective I could probably have some fun with it.

I didn't want to recreate the best pictures I had of the artwork we saw there; then I'd just be copying some other artist's graffiti. So I sifted through my photos and found the perfect shot.

For some reason I like city drawings that show all the wires and poles that make the city work, and this photo had plenty of those. It also had regular graffiti so it looked like an alley anywhere.

So as usual, the photo of this drawing doesn't show it exactly right; the colors on the right hand wall for instance seem a litte too yellow, and the road has more blue to it in the real drawing. But for the most part it works.


























I spent the most time coloring the structure holding up the batteries at the top, and the wall to the right; I really like how they turned out. I deliberately did a lot of red in this wooden platform because I was thinking of those pictures with the orangish red underpaintings that I love. I drew the sky last; I didn't want to wash out the blue batteries or power towers with with a blue sky, so pink seemed good. I just wish I'd have spent more time drawing the towers further away like I did on the one in the foreground, since they're in the center of the drawing and you notice them first. Guess I didn't think that through enough.

 

Here is the wall that I think is the best part of the drawing. I spent a lot of time trying to make the windows right, but I only roughly sketched in the bricks so it wouldn't be so uniform and tedious. I like how the brick lines aren't perfect, and I think it turned out great.

 

 

 

I'm still trying to learn about all these art markers I have, and this was the perfect project for it. I would definitely try another cityscape sometime in the future.

 

11x14" Prismacolor and Copic Markers









Bowling

 So we went bowling in March. Our kids have never been, and I'm pretty sure Joseph and I haven't been for at least seven years or so. We went with another family from church and it was dubbed a Primary Activity, as ours are the only two families with kids!

 

Our kids are kind of familiar with bowling because they've played it on the Wii ( another teacher left us the game system last summer when they moved away, along with the resort games that come with it). Because they've played it on the screen, they thought they'd be good at the real game, and it was quite humorous to watch them realize that it wasn't quite the same.

 

For instance, bowling balls are actually kind of heavy.  If you just flick your wrist, the ball flies up and lands with a thump. You need to push or toss the ball in some way to give it momentum, it's not just gonna go...however, when it goes super slow down the lane, you might still get all the pins, as Joshua discovered once!

 

 

The kids were excited about the shoes, the different colors of bowling balls, and the novelty of it all. The two toddlers (ours and the other family's) had their own lane, the older kids had one, and the adults had a third. Eli was having a great time, until he got distracted by the candy machine in the corner.

 

 

 The older kids were kind of frustrated at first with how hard it was to play,

 

but at the end we let the older kids use the tool the two toddlers had been using: this special ramp down which they could aim the ball at the pins. They didn't use it every time, but it did speed up the game a bit!

 

As for the adults, we did...okay. I thought I was at a disadvantage, having only played two or three times as an adult, the last time being seven years ago, as previously mentioned. As with most games, I do well at first, then I do much worse by the end.  However, the others with whom we played had even less experience than we did, so my bad score actually looked awesome! And Joseph won, as expected.



 

All in all, it was a fun outing for all.

 

Winter Sunset

You've probably seen this already, but I did this watercolor a few weeks ago. I have to say it's the first watercolor I've done and actually been happy with in a long time. In fact, there are probably only three or four watercolor paintings of mine ever that I've been happy with...I really need to take a class.

This didn't turn out completely like I was picturing it (especially the sky), but the most important part is the fresh spontaneous look of it. My problem with watercolor is I tend to overwork things, so I tried really hard to avoid that this time! I did most of it one afternoon, then put the small details in the grass the next day.

 

5x8" watercolor of Takini sunset

It really helped that I had a good photo reference to work from, and I was happy that it was my own photo- I hate when I create something but really it's because of someone elses photo/idea. These were taken at the end of January; there were puddles of water and big chunks of ice all over the ground, as the water tower had apparently had some issues while we were gone for Christmas break.

 

For my drawing reference I actually taped these two photos together, so I could look at the ice in the first picture and the sunset in the second. It worked out pretty well!