The Artistic Biker

Sketches and Musings

  • The Beauty of a Stocked Fridge

    There is a beauty for me in a stocked fridge.  When I see that, I see a family doing well.  It is suggestive of a roof overhead, food on the table, clothes on the back and all the other things that are considered necessary for a well taken care of family.

    In just my town, there have been several hundred jobs lost.  I know that this is epidemic throughout the country, even the world.  I believe it to be a self fulfilling prophecy when the papers say the economy is doing poorly, then whether it was or not, suddenly it is.  That doesn’t help the families that will not be able to completely stock their refrigerators.  I am overwhelmingly thankful that today mine is stocked.

    EDM
    EDM 50: Draw your fridge

  • Passing Time

    Thing-a-day and the EDM challenges have occupied much of my time for the last month.  Today, the first post-thing-a-day day, I find that I feel like I still need to be working on it.  I told my wife I was thinking about making- and she cut me off right there.  She said that she was very proud of me for completing the challenge.  She even encouraged me to incorporate more creativity into my daily life.  But she also told me it was time to quit obsessing.  She’s often considered the “Sensible” one.  But there IS the Create Every Day challenge…

    Tonight’s EDM challenge was to draw my New Year’s resolution.  These challenges were originally inteded to be weekly.  If I had started at the right time in the year, and had I been doing these weekly, this would have made more sense.  The challenges at the EDM yahoo group are up to 210.  Eventually they will get to 365 and can re-organize them into more of a calendar.  Then, when you start you would just pick that day from the calendar and drive on.  Until then, many of these will not make much sense for the time of year.

    My New Year’s resolution was self improvement.  I quit smoking in the middle of 2008 with the intent of being 6 months nicotine free by New Years.  That way when I started 2009, it would almost be like a fresh start.  I gained an extra 40 pounds.  2009 is going to be about becoming the person I think I am.  I want to study a broader area of knowledge.  I want to practice my guitar more.  I want to sing more, dance more, play more.  And yes, I want to “Art” more.

    EDM
    EDM 49: Draw your New Year’s resolution

  • Farewell Thing-a-day

    Well, as February officially comes to a close, so does Thing-a-day 2009.  I have had a lot of fun experimenting with different mediums and exercising my creativity every day.  However, it’s time to clean up and move on.  I’ve learned a lot with this challenge.  I will continue to exercise my imagination, but I don’t believe that I’ll be committing to any daily challenges for a while.  At least not until I get all the marker scrubbed off the dining room table.  My beautiful young bride was not pleased.

    Twinkle Cab

    For the final thing of Thing-a-day 2009, a quick watercolor sketch of Girl2’s strider.  Every few minutes while I was painting, she would run over and very carefully push the buttons.  That makes it play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Do You Know The Muffin Man…

    As for my other daily challenge, tonight’s EDM was to draw any previous challenge.  On challenge 33, draw an eye, I did Cinderella’s eye.  Tonight, I thought I’d take a stab at a human eye.  I guess Cinderella was human too.  How about a “Live” eye?  A live eye from an internet photo reference?  Who cares, here’s an eye.

    EDM
    EDM 44: Draw any previous challenge

  • Apple and a Holiday

    Tonight for Thing-A-Day, I decided to experiment with layers of watercolor pencil.  I like the overall effect.  I need to figure out how to smooth out the brush strokes, but I really like the way the colors overlap.

    Tonight’s EDM challenge was to draw something “Holiday”.  The next holiday up is St. Patrick’s Day.  My bride has this really cute green teddy bear with a shamrock on the chest.  She also has some of those “antenna” shamrocks.  They looked pretty nice on the bear.

    EDM
    EDM 47: Draw something “Holiday”

  • Virtual Sketch Date February 2009

    It is time once again for the Virtual Sketch Date.  For those unfamiliar, they post a reference photo once a month and everybody does their take on it.  Then we all post our sketches for the world to see both on our sites and on the flickr site.  I tried something different this month in that I tried to draw just by using the shading.  I’m sure there’s a name for it.  I just kind of layered scribbles to produce an image.  I have until Saturday night to finalize, I may try to turn out a couple more versions of this.

    Tonight’s EDM challenge was to draw the inside of my medicine cabinet.  We don’t really have a medicine cabinet as much as we have a shoebox under the sink, and of course the top of the refrigerator.

    EDM
    EDM 46: Draw the inside of your medicine cabinet.