August Green Hills

Early summer was very wet but after June the weather got much drier and so the trees and grass in Virginia have taken up their August colors which are mostly yellow greens. I always enjoy depicting the layers of hills in the landscape which fade into bluer and bluer shades. Atmospheric perspective is the key here; as an area gets more and more distant, there's more air between the viewer and the subject. And as with blue skies, light gets scattered among the air molecules and looks more blue rather than the actual August green of the trees. 

This is another memory drawing from Central Virginia taking atmosphere into account.

ArtStudio app on the iPad, some Photoshop re-working, August 16, 2015.

Keswick Barrels

When you taste wine at Keswick Vineyards, you get to see some of their winemaking equipment through a big window right behind the bar. I put my sketchbook down on the bar and they let me draw while standing up at the counter. Through the window I see barrels, tasting vessels (which are chemists' beakers) and big steel tanks where white wines are fermented. I could have drawn more but I ran out of time. I don't think I'll add color to this one. This means that I will need a color sketch to finish off the winery page that this goes on. I wouldn't mind going back to Keswick again, even in the winter. But it is not close enough to make it a day trip from where I am and I'd have to stay over somewhere. Wine logistics are a constant concern.

Brown tech pen on sketchbook page, 7 1/2" x 7 1/2", August 18, 2015.

The Road in Central Virginia

Route 15, depicted here in north central Virginia, goes more or less north-south all the way into North Carolina. In central Virginia the terrain is not too hilly though you can see the Blue Ridge in the distance. This is a memory sketch of Route 15 on the way to Orange, where my innkeeping friends live on Poplar Hill. This part of Virginia still has open country, with no developments or strip malls except in small bunches near towns. There's so many nice things to draw or paint there, I would fill my studio with pictures of idealized rural places and buildings if I could. And then someone would have to buy them and take them off my hands. Better to do these sketches on an iPad and thus fill only hard drives with spaceless data.

"ArtStudio" app on iPad, August 16, 2015.

Land of Honah Lee

Is it "Puff the magic Flagon?" The land of Honah Lee (in Orange, Virginia) has up to now been only a vineyard, not a winery. But now the people of Honah Lee, Jackie Paper and his fami-lee, including new baby Erika, are a wine clan. The older generations are making their own wine. I visited this country idyll on the first day of my vacation week. I did these drawings outside despite brilliant sun and burning heat. Plein air art must go on in all weather conditions! Although I admit that I finished the drawings in the shelter of the tasting cabin. The medieval-ish event tent in the woods was recently put up in anticipation of parties and weddings. The phallic folded cloth shape on the pole is an umbrella which is used for outdoor wine-sipping and produce sales. Honah Lee also sells delicious locally grown fruit, and baked goods made by the grandma of the family. I got a commission to do a portrait sketch of baby Erika (from a family photograph), paid for with two bottles of Honah Lee wine, one white and one red.

Brown ink on sketchbook page with colored pencil and a bit of Photoshop, about 11" x 7", August 17, 2015.

Back from the Blue Ridge

I've returned from my vacation week in Central Virginia. I enjoyed hospitable friends, pretty vistas, delicious food, and plenty of wine. I did a number of winery drawings which I will present here. Honestly I wish I could have spent another week doing more of the same but there is art work to do. 

The image you see here was not created during my vacation days (although one winery drawing resembles it). I did this from memory, as I viewed the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains from the Shenandoah Valley. I tried to match the gold-green colors of August as best as I could. I've done dozens of these landscapes and never get tired of them.

This is done in Photoshop, and I did my best to work with digital blenders so that the art would look more like a painting done on site. Memory painting is a compromise between the  properly arty on-site "plein air" and the dodgy illustrator-like painting from a photograph. Don't look too closely, though....it's still digital.

Photoshop, 10" x  6", August 23, 2015.

The Cat of August

You've seen many of my sketches of Popcorn the cat, over the years. Popcorn was my cousins' cat, and when their family went on summer vacation (usually a rented house on Cape Cod) they left their beast with me. Popcorn and I were not on the best of terms but he tolerated me and let me touch him now and then. He sat in the window and listened to the baseball game with me. The year I drew this, 1986, was the year that we really thought the Red Sox would win it all. It was also the year that I went to the World Science Fiction Convention in Atlanta, once the cat had been returned to his owners. Anyone who knows anything about the Red Sox knows that 1986 didn't turn out well, really not well at all, and we would have to wait until 2004, in the unthinkable new millennium, for the first baseman to finally catch that ball.

I'll be off on my August vacation for this week, no cats but probably plenty of food and wine. If I am up for serious gadgetizing I may post an entry here from my iPad but maybe I won't, depending on the level of wine and vacation vacancy.

Black tech pen on sketchbook page, about 5 1/2" x 8 1/2", August 25, 1986.

Rabbit Hole Circuit

This is one of my first built electronic circuits. I built it according to the instructions in a very cute and helpful book of projects called "Circuit Sticker Sketchbook" by an MIT engineer named Jie Qi. The book came bundled with the supplies you need to build the projects, in a kit called "Chibitronics." You get copper tape, sticky LED units, round coin-like batteries, and sensor foil, and a couple of ordinary metal clips to hold the batteries and paper together. 

This kit was designed for kids and for other learners including myself. As many of you know, I've always wanted to become an electronic tinkerer and builder, ever since I helped my father work on tape recorders back in my high school days. I never learned enough, never did much, and over the years I lost track of my technological ambitions. Besides in my day girls didn't do that stuff, or I never saw girls doing technology, even when I was busy turning knobs on electronic music synthesizers which are still masterpieces of tech.

My technological friends have often given me kits and books and opportunities to start learning electronics, but I have been too timid to use them. I am always afraid I am going to break or lose something expensive. "Chibitronics" bypasses that fear because nothing in the book is intrinsically valuable or fragile. And the author Jie Qi joined the paper circuit projects together with sketchbook space and drawing prompts, something made for a tech-fearing artist like me. So after I built the circuit I put in the drawing, the electro-rabbits living in their hole illuminated by a white LED that goes on when you put the battery into the circuit and fold down the paper corner, making the connection. I intend to do all the Chibitronics projects and fill the book with sketches of animals and creatures. Engineering, starting one page at a time.

"Chibitronics," pen and copper circuit tape, 5" x 6", August 14, 2015.