Madonna, Unfinished

For me, it's all about The Line. My drawings are line compositions. Each line must be beautiful on its own, and all must fit together in a beautiful way.

Maybe instead of beautiful I should say "interesting." To me they're one and the same anyway.

This drawing is not complete, but I have been so busy with other activities that I just haven't worked on it for a few days. I thought you might be interested in how my drawings grow, so I decided  to reveal a little bit of my "process."

I will be adding more shadow and contrast, doing something with the background, and improving the focus. The drawings I feel are most successful are the ones that have a single striking feature. You may remember this lady with the huge floral hat, which carries the whole picture I think:

I never know when I start drawing, how it's going to end. I only know that every single line must be a good line - no "purple shoes," as Dr. Pickering said (bless his soul).

Now, on to some fuzzy photographs - fuzzy because I'm not much of a photographer, and some of them were taken from a moving car.

Last night we took a drive through Fantasy of Lights, a 3 mile long light display set up by the County and a number of local business sponsors. The picture above is from their web site. I took these two:


A Giant Snowman



Tunnel of Lights and Giant Seahorses

So, inspired by what we had seen, Caroline and I finally got going on the outside lights for our house. I have to tell you, if you want to be respected in your South Florida neighborhood, you almost have to put up Christmas lights! It's our way of compensating for the non-Christmasy weather around here.

Of course, today, we got liquid snow, which added some challenge to the outdoor lights project. About an hour before dusk, the rain slowed to a drizzle, and there I was draping lights over the bushes. We decided against trying to put them on the house, due to the challenges of height, age and fitness levels, not to mention the shaky condition of the gutters this year (we must replace - soon!).

Anyway, I hope my fuzzy photos give you the idea:

And:

So, my reindeer has a goiter.

But at least we put up our lights. Now the neighbors won't gossip about us....!

I think I'm progressing nicely through Christmas this year. I've left the "I'll never be ready" stage and am now approaching the "enough already!" stage.

How about you?

P.S. My Christmas Cards from KBArtDesigns.com have arrived, and I will be sending them out on Monday. Kathy has created some beautiful all occasion and Christmas designs - check them out on her website. The link is to the right of this post, under "My Favorite Artists."