watercolor

Holiday Boutique ’06

Joan organized a Holiday Boutique at the kids’ elementary school and the big event was this afternoon. Lily helped out at the button booth, making those buttons that you can pin on your shirt. Here she is working the machine. The kids in the foreground are a couple red-head boys drawing their designs to be pressed into a button. No, I didn’t make a mistake, she has actually dyed her hair green!

This is the button she made for me. I think it’s me and Joan in front of a Christmas tree. The faces are stickers she had.

The event. Joan is the woman in the middle of the picture, and yes, that’s Lily in the foreground.

December 2, 2006 0

Bad sketch of Joan

It looks almost nothing like her, but I figure I don’t have enough color on this blog and I should post stuff even if it humbles me into sketching more and improving.

November 24, 2006 0

Lily in the park

This is when she wanted to go home to get a pair of pants so she could do “upside-down things”.

November 20, 2006 0

Father and son haircut

Today Jack and I went to our local barbershop. The only problem is that this is an old fashioned place, and my barber is well into his 80s, and Jack was not prepared for the amount of hair the kind gentleman would remove (despite my asking for a “trim”, etc). I like getting all that stuff out of my eyes, but to a 12-year-old it’s an entirely different deal. Oh well. Live and learn.

I have been inspired by Laura of Laurelines to do more color sketching, so I bought one of those little 3″ x 4″ moleskine cold-press watercolor sketchbooks. For years I’ve avoided cold-press paper, not liking the “bumpy” texture; but I think my drawing style is evolving to a place less controlled and more into accidents. I like cold-press now.

November 5, 2006 0

Drawing with Lily

Joan and the kids were watching a movie the other night that was too scary for Lily (8), so she asked me to draw pictures with her in the dining room instead. She chose, as our subject, to draw some of the many “bobble-head” toys she’s got. She handed me mine to draw while she drew hers. This was way more entertaining than watching a movie!

September 7, 2006 0

August 17, 2006 0

Camping ’06 #2 – new tent!

We had the old two-bedroom tent for about ten years and finally wore it out. Joan got a new one for this trip.

I found a French watercolor journal I’ve had for 16+ years and never used. Great paper. I tried to get the dapple-light filtered through the trees, with only moderate success.

The kids were constantly rafting down the river just behind the tent. Their swimming clothes were likewise constantly drying on a clotheline alongside the tent.

August 15, 2006 0

Comicon ’06

As usual we took the train.

There were five of us: Jack (of course), his friend Monty, my neighbor across the street Carlo, my good friend from college John, and me. Played a lot of “hangman” on the way. I did some sketching, but not as much as I should have, probably.

On the way back the train broke down and left us on the platform at Laguna Nigel for about three hours. We got home at 3:00 am! Other than that it was a lot of fun.

July 24, 2006 0

Summer swimmin’

Last weekend we spent two days in two different pools. The kids loved it. This is where it paid off, dragging those poor kids to the local YMCA in the winter to their weekly swim lessons.