Bright, sunny days and warmer weather over the first weekend of April meant I could spend some time gazing at gulls with the big binoculars. I’m fairly certain I identified two different (but very similar) species of gulls…
Ring-Billed Gull and California Gull.
I decided to put both on the same page. Largely just because where it ended up positioned in the sketchbook.
The next open page was opposite the group shot of gulls I did last week. Had there been a two page spread I could have drawn the two across I probably would have done that - and the text would have gone across both pages. As it was, if I'd done them on separate pages I would have likely ended up repeating text... I don't know... I did what I did and it's in the book and that's that.
I guess this is the downside of painting things into a bound sketchbook. Can't pull it all out and reorganize and ditch certain pages... Ah, well..
While I was fooling around with preliminary sketches (I know it's hard to believe I do preliminary sketches when the "good version" looks so... not great...). This one made me laugh. Of course now I'm going to have the Beach Boys stuck in my head all day singing California [Gulls]....
And I thought Hitchcock's The Birds was a horror. ha ha (referring to the last pic; the first one is fine)
ReplyDeleteBound books can have their downsides as you mention - I guess the thing to do is not get too "precious" about them. That's hard for me to do. I feel like it all has to be perfect and of course it never will be. Reminds me of something I heard a long time ago about someone in new work clothes afraid to get them dirty, so a more experienced co-worker made sure they got dirty right off the bat.
Ha-ha! I had the Beach Boys stuck in my head the last two days... that was pretty horrifying. I can take the Beach Boys in small dosees, but my brain had California Girls on heavy rotation and it got to be a bit much... Brain didn't even switch it up and play the David Lee Roth version...
DeleteI know the book is just for me to look back at some day - and to share with friends and followers across a few social media platforms... I shouldn't get that fussed about it... But I can't help it sometimes.
Speaking of making things "precious"... In high school I took a Chinese Watercolour Painting class and at the end of it my mom bought me a pad of high quality water colour paper to do some "good copies" of paintings. Years later I was going through a box of stuff and i found the pad. I hadn't used a single page out of it. The price tag was still on the front and it was like $2 or $3...!? She had built it up that it was only to be used for GOOD paintings I never did ONE. It was pretty good paper, but by the time I found it, I was spending more than for a shingle sheet of paper of much HIGHER quality!?
I always tried to buy fairly good quality art materials for my kids to use, but never made it out to be "precious"... sure, I encouraged them to fill a page (rather than make a scribble in the corner and toss it away), but I tried really hard to not put that kind of pressure on them!
You have done the gulls proud of late. Reminds me of eating an ice cream a few years ago In Cornwall on holiday and having a gull fly down and take it out my hand.
ReplyDeleteNO! Well that was MIGHTY BOLD of them!
DeleteThanks!