I woke up at 4 o'clock this morning and finally got up and turned on the coffee pot about a quarter to five. My brain is fidgety today. I over-worked it, and frustrated myself, yesterday and the day before, and the day before that. And maybe even the day before that.
Monday, I decided to start a new drawing/painting that I've been pondering. Back in the summer, when all the kids and grandkids were here, we had an impromptu concert on the back porch. One of the daughters-in-law snapped a picture of me, The Husband, and our two sons playing our instruments, and from the moment I saw the picture, I wanted to paint it. So I decided to give it a go.
I did a #2 pencil drawing on an 11" x 14" sheet of mixed media paper. The plan was to ink over the pencil lines and then paint with watercolors. By the end of the day, the sketch was mostly finished, but I wasn't quite satisfied with it. The reference picture did not show our legs and feet, so I'd had to imagine them, and something about them in the drawing was "off." Also, Son #1's face (mostly in shadow and harder to see in the reference picture) would not cooperate.
This was supposed to be a preliminary study that I would re-do on watercolor paper. After spending so much time on the sketch, though, I dreaded re-drawing the whole thing. Watercolor paper has a lot more texture, which is harder to draw on than the smoother mixed media paper. I thought I might just paint the sketch, but I was worried that the mixed media paper would buckle when wet. It seemed like a good idea to scan the sketch, print it on mixed media paper, and test-paint the copy to see how the paper held up.
Well, guess what? My scanner/printer isn't large enough to scan an 11 x 14 picture.
The Husband said he believed the copy machine at his office would scan and print something that large, so Tuesday morning, I sent him to work with my original drawing and two sheets of mixed media paper. I spent the rest of the day trying to fix the faces on the sketch I drew some time ago of my brother and father.
The Husband had issues with copying the other sketch. He used all 4 sides of those two sheets of paper and did not end up with one complete copy. I took the sketch and two sheets of mixed media paper to work on Wednesday and managed to come home with one decent copy.
Thursday, I discovered that the mixed media paper isn't ideal for the large, wet background washes I'd planned to do. The painting either needs to be done on watercolor paper, or I need to use another medium. I got out the light box and traced the sketch on watercolor paper. Son #1's face still wasn't quite right. I tried to amend it as I traced it, but it didn't work. By Thursday night, I'd re-traced it again, but still wasn't quite happy with the faces. And I'd decided there needed to be a dancing baby in an empty spot in the foreground. (There was one running around here when the reference picture was taken.) And perhaps something on the wall behind us instead of the tacky cabinet that actually sits there. I did these experiments on the tracings to keep from ruining the original.
I ended up with a sketch and four unusable copies. On one of the watercolor tracings, I tried to fix faces and ended up rubbing the surface off the paper. And with each revision, I aged myself 10 years. By the time I looked 90, I thought I'd better quit before I turned myself into a corpse.
The faces are still not right. I got frustrated with the back porch pickers and set them aside and went back to work on Daddy and my brother. Still haven't gotten them right.
MEANWHILE, next weekend is the charity event that inspired me to do animal drawings for greeting cards. As of today, I do not have ONE usable card ready to go (though I do have some ready to print). If I am to follow through with my plan, I will have to spend next week in high gear.
If I had not already ordered a card rack, I might just ditch the card project.
I might ditch it, anyway.
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