Got up this morning, did a walk, then ambled out to Ankeny where the camera stayed mostly in its basket. It was a lovely day, there just wasn’t a lot of action. Basket Slough reported elk, coyotes, and lots of action. Made the wrong choice of tour today!

When I returned I took up the curriculum for “Land Lines” – Day 2.

The warm up was to make variable lines, cut the pages up into girds, and then reassemble, paying attention to factors such as dark and light, wavy and curved, etc. to develop the piece (Note: Ruth gave credit for this exercise to Expressive Drawing by Steven Aimone so I will as well.) Frankly, I had entirely too much fun with this.

It reminded me of a piece of art that was in my orthodontist’s office when I was a kid. It had pieces of acrylic with patterns on them that you could slide back and forth. It was the best thing (really, the only good thing) about his office.

We were supposed to practice asemic writing, but I did not. In the class video, Ruth demonstrated blind contour drawing, which I am familiar with. She also demonstrated some mark-making ideas that I was eager to try. So, I decided to work on a set of paintings I started at a WSO convention based on a different day of birding Ankeny. What you’ll see is where I left the paintings (approximately four years ago) and where I ended the day with them.

I think all show improvement, or at the very least are different. Which when you have a painting that’s been sitting around for four years… anything is a step in the right direction.