A couple of years of years ago, I became addicted to drawing these little toys called Toobs. They are educational toys produced by Safari Ltd. I currently keep them in a large sack and pull one out at random to draw for ten minutes each morning. After I draw it, I put it in a different bag so that I don’t get it again until I’ve drawn all of them and switch bags.

Since I’m spending ten minutes every day doing this, I notice my skills improving faster and my motivation to do it growing. After a few weeks it began to feel awkward if I didn’t do it. I have to tell you, it takes several weeks to get it to the habit stage where your day is not right if you don’t do it, but it only takes a weekend to break the habit.
I thought that some of you might want to draw along. I can’t promise that I’ll get a post online every day. I will, however, try to post as often as I can. 

To that end, I cut up this beer carton and taped a large sheet of drawing paper to it for a make shift light stage.

This allows me to eliminate unwated shadows and colors so you get a nice crisp image to draw. I will upload the images in color and in grey scale, as well as my completed sketch.

However, I find that the two sack system is cumbersome, annoying, and not nearly as eccentric as I like. That’s when I began thinking about building an alternative system. Inspired by the vending machines in grocery stores I have been building my own.

I’m still working out some of the details, but I intend to fill the RANDOM OBJECT RANDOMOGRIFIER with 500 capsule full of toobs. It should make it where I just pull one out at the bottom, draw it, and drop it back into the top. I may enhance it with a motorized delivery system. All of that will have to wait until I know what size capsules and tube will work for the toobs. 

I fully expect this to get wildly out of hand.

With my hurt rib, I haven’t felt like doing much. But I have been watching a ton of Bob Ross reruns. I wanted to try one of his black canvas techniques. There’s a video here: https://youtu.be/sWon-sQzUIA

Sometimes you just need to change your venue. You need to clear your head of all of life’s struggles. You find yourself eliminating anything not directly involved in breathing. Slowly, you begin to realize that life is more than just breathing. More importantly, you start to focus on just why you’re breathing in the first place. This move to Houston, while ultimately fabulous for my family, is taking its toll on us. I have the better end of the deal in that I am not having to be a single parent and all the struggles that go with that. On the other hand, they get to hold each other at night.

A few of you may have noticed that the show has been on extended hiatus. I hope to get it back up and running with its original focus in the next few weeks, but I’m not rushing anything. Right now, I’m just breathing.

Thank you for your continued support.

Boy2’s birthday is the day before mine. That was an awesome gift to me six years ago. This year, our birthdays happened 500 or so miles apart. It made for a pretty gloomy birthday. We made up for it on the weekend though at Chuck E. Cheese.

You can watch this page unfold at 20 time the speed of by watch the video quiche (pronounced “quickie”) over at the You Tube here: https://youtu.be/iNmXDtYA_f4

You can watch this page roll out in real time with everything but the hair drying in the video Longy over at the You Tube here: https://youtu.be/CvQuzPRXoV8

You can also skip over and see what others were sharing by watching the Easel Video also over at the You Tube here: https://youtu.be/vQMOZUOQZOY