Freehand Andalusian

"Andalusian"
Sharpie pen
5.5x8.5

I was standing outside yesterday, admiring the balmy October afternoon, when a little niggling thought popped up.  "You haven't drawn anything in over a week now.  You really ought to update your blog."  An image of a proud Spanish horse, mane flowing and neck arched, came to my mind.  I like to draw the Iberian horses the best- the Lipizzaners, Friesians, and Andalusians.  There is such grace, strength, and beauty in their conformation.  They are the Adonis of horses.

This was a freehand, no reference drawing.  There are some liberties taken with the horse's conformation, and as usual when I draw without reference, his eyes are too high up on his head.  It's not as noticeable as usual, so there has been some improvement.  The foreshortening of the right foreleg is a little awkward but gets the job done without detracting from the overall image.  I could spend more time on the shadowing and crosshatching.  There is a heavy reliance on line in the drawing, especially on contour lines.  While there is nothing "wrong" about that, some classic instructors and critics might turn their nose up.  I'm no da Vinci, but even he used a lot of contour lines.  I think I may try replicating some of his sketches to improve my own art.

The Last Rose of October

"The Last Rose of October"
f/2.0/ISO125/1/2564s
HTC6500LVW

The days are growing shorter and cooler, and the sky is becoming clearer and bluer. It's October, the growing season is ending, and the time of harvest is here. A few hardy blooms remain in my garden. I had the good fortune of seeing a goldfinch perched on the coneflower stalks, pecking at the seeds of the dried flower heads.  With wonder, I observed that the only rose bush is putting forth one more bud.

We inherited this rose bush with the house, before there was a flower bed. It was a sad little thing, growing out of the yard itself at the corner of the house. Last year, only one bloom made it. The leaves were chewed full of holes, and it didn't quite clear a foot in height. When we finally got around to putting in the flower bed on the street side of the house, I decided that the rose would need to be transplanted. It needed to be dug up anyway, otherwise the rototiller would have destroyed it. Up it came and into a temporary home while we weeded, turned over and amended the soil, and bought a few perennials. I didn't have high hopes for the rose, but we put it back in the ground anyway.

This year, we made sure to fertilize the rose bush in particular, and keep the pests off as best we could. This last October rose is the seventh bloom. It's a blinding hot pink, so bright that the human eye and the camera have a difficult time focusing on it. The chilly weather has preserved the rose for days now, a late summer firework. I took this photo early on a Saturday morning.  The sun had only just come over the horizon, and a few raindrops from the storms the night before lingered on the silky petals.  Liquid gems sparkled and caught my eye, and my lens.  

The photo was originally in color, but I want the focus to be on the lighting, and to capture the melancholy feel that autumn sometime brings.  Bittersweet, the end of warm sunny days, but the beginning of wonderful crisp days that lift my soul on brisk winds.

Clear Autumn Days

"Beneath the Surface"
HTC1 camera phone
f/2.0/ISO125/1/600s

It felt genuinely strange to not have any work obligations this past weekend.  For just over a month, I have been in the pattern of morning routine-commute-work-commute-feed pets-sleep, with Sundays being spent with family, preparing meals for the week, and catching up on chores.  This past Friday night, I came home and felt lost.  Now what?  There was no need to be up early for work on Saturday; this was unfamiliar ground.  What is this... free time... and what do you do with it?

Free time is absolutely vital to humans, and to artists in particular.  Constantly running against the clock and a schedule filled with obligations does not allow time for spontaneity or exploration.  It depletes mental energy to the point where a ten minute sketch is exhausting.  I have realized that some "necessities" will have to be put on the back burner if I want to make my art more of a priority.  Free time brings inspiration and the space to do something about it.

While on a drive through the rural countryside near my home last year, I noticed a trailhead that looked promising.  I had no plans on Sunday, and I decided that it would be a good day to go exploring.  The day had begun cloudy but by the time we made it to the trail, it was a breezy crisp day, and the sky was that special October blue.  It wasn't a very well-maintained trail, but after some bushwhacking, we were rewarded by making it to the Pennsylvania bank of the Delaware River.

We stopped for a while, just sitting on some river rocks, listening to the rapids and the wind gusting through the autumn leaves.  The view was extraordinarily picturesque.  I climbed onto a fallen tree and walked out over the shallows, where I saw a fuzzy white caterpillar, and focused on the cold breeze blowing in my face.  From there I spied a vividly colored leaf, submerged yet close to the surface.  It bobbed in time with the waves cresting through an eddy, lit up with the perfect light in crystalline waters.  I just had to get a picture.  I did some strange yoga pose with my toes touching the water, my body and arms stretched out over the pebbly shallows as I tried to get a good shot without dropping my phone in the water.  It was wonderful to pursue passion in place of necessity, even just for a precious few hours.