Saturday, December 29, 2007 A

"Visit From a Friend"
7:21am

Our sorry holiday season has been reclaimed! A friend of ours came Thursday night, and we enjoyed good conversation. Julia has known Carol for fifteen years, having met in a Colorado hospital. The last time Carol visited, it was five years ago. She also visited when we lived north of Tucson. I have some photos from that time I should scan. I went to work on Friday, but Julia took the day off. They had fun, walking along the Gateway Park path. When they came upon the train, Carol was able to tell Julia a lot about it, having studied trains extensively. Earlier, they ate at River City Grill. When I got home, I enjoyed more conversation with Carol, and did remember to get a picture:


Full size underneath, will fit 5x7 format...

I also got a picture of them seated on the sofa. It wasn't a good picture, for the flash made an unflattering glare, and I'd positioned the camera oddly. But it is good enough to sketch from:


I look forward to getting this colored...
(I also used a photo of our sofa when new as a guide...)
The round plate is actually to the left of our metal shelves, but I put it to the right...

Saturday, December 29, 2007 B

"Colorful Friends"
6:52pm


The original, without digital fixes...


With fixes... (the picture seems better balanced with the painting flipped...)

Sunday, December 30, 2007 A

"John Waters"
11:39am

Julia received an unusual Christmas present from a friend she'd grown up with in Baltimore, an autographed DVD of John Waters' This Filthy World. In it, he addresses a mostly young audience of fans about his opinions, his filming adventures (Yes, Divine really ate shh!!), and gives us a good look at him. He explains some of the bizarreness of the early films by giving part of the fault to them all being potheads.

Julia had met Edith, one of his cast members, who had a thrift shop in Baltimore. She remembered Edith as a sweet lady. I've never seen Waters' really weird films, only Hairspray, Serial Mom and Pecker. I did enjoy those, and I enjoyed the movie musical of Hairspray.

One thing, he's an uninimitable and rememberable creature. In the DVD bonus "On the Road", the camera looms in close, and I paused and sketched:

Sunday, December 30, 2007 B

"To the Unknown..."
10:17pm

Monday, December 31, 2007

"Jane Pauley Accepts an Award"
7:33pm


She kept fairly still as she read from her notes...

We have PBS on tonight. By the time I decided to sketch a bulgy eyed poet, his interview was done, I got maybe 30 seconds of some news reporter, and then the program was over. But I had a good long time to sketch Jane Pauley. She was giving a speech on the occasion of having won the ASU Walter Cronkite school of Journalism "Excellence in Journalism" award. She reminisced a bit, and then gave advice to the school's students. I scribbled some of it down, "All of you will be making it up as you go along," "Study history," and "Cultivate an adversion to pretense!" She also gave advice to TV journalists, "Kill the crawl!" (That's that annoying stream of info at the bottom of some news programs. It assumes we are so hyper charged, we want to learn of two or three new stories at the same time. I agree with Jane, I want to absorb only one story at a time.)

Anyway, I remember Jane Pauley back in the seventies when she first began on NBC's WMAQ from 1975 to 1976 in Chicago and then later went to the TODAY show. Gramma and I had the feeling as if a 'local girl' had done good when we saw her on the national station. We both enjoyed the warmth she brought to the morning news.

10:52pm

"Glissando!" "Tunes with passion!"

The "Live From Lincoln Center" that we next hoped to see had been pre-empted by some other show, so Julia channel hopped until she settled on CNN. They were having a countdown to the dropping of the great ball in Times Square, accompanied by a worthwhile 'crawl' filled with people's New Year's messages. So we saw the nifty high tech ball, with all its inner secrets, drop at 10:00pm our time, and switched back to PBS, catching the concert in progress.

During the mid show interviews, I sketched Loren Maazel as best I could. Half of the brief interview was given to showing Renée Fleming's beautiful face, and I remembered when the late Beverly Sills used to do the interviews. She was one of the many good ones we lost this year.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 A

"Best Photo of 2007"
10:04am

I first selected ten favorites, and got that page up on the web and linked. I had an idea on which one was best (for the Photo Friday 'Best of' theme), but I asked Julia for her opinion. She first said, "The self portrait!" I replied, "Well, that's because you know and love me, what if I was a stranger?" To my surprise, she picked the one I had:


Hallway in Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
I like it for the sense of depth it has...

I think I'll go put it in the main photo gallery, as well.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 B

"Quick Sketch of Nimoy"
6:15pm


Yes, I did sketch from his photo, though I changed it a bit.
For some reason, I wanted him to have a plaid shirt instead of a sweater...

Also, he doesn't totally look like Leonard Nimoy. He looks half like George Clooney, his eyes being larger than the original photo.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 C

"I Could Have Danced All Night"
8:49pm


Loosely drawn from a photo of Renée Fleming...

Wedhesday, January 2, 2008

"Eighty Six Year Old Violinist"
9:09pm


The original found at Flicker, by a Claudio Marcio

Oh, so many faults this time! His head is too small, he isn't holding the bow right, the violin is slanted oddly and the forward hand and curved end piece of the violin is too large. But it is all part of the educational process. Better luck next time!

Thursday, January 3, 2008

"Yo Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin"
7:43pm

I was determined to do better than I did last night. While I drew yesterday, we enjoyed one of Yo Yo Ma's albums. Over and over, I might add, for the new stereo will keep replaying until you stop it! So I thought I'd hunt out a photo of Yo Yo Ma in action. Alas, I could find no action photos, only stills of him with a surprisingly big instrument. I hadn't realized he played a cello, rather than a violin. Wanting an action scene, I wasn't having luck with my Google search, either. There was only links to "You Tube" videos of him.

I went to one, and enjoyed it greatly. I found I could make a screen capture whenever I liked:


Link to video underneath this freeze frame...

I got a sense of the lively rapport he and Bobby McFerrin were sharing, and hoped to capture some of that in my drawing. But OOOoh, the capture is SOOO tiny and fuzzy! So I tried capturing closer views in the film, as well as using other still photos of the two to get a better idea of their appearance. The result is a bit cartoonish, but considering the limitations I had, I'm not too displeased with it:


However, they both seem a bit skinny in the trunk...

I appreciated learning how McFerrin taught him to be more spontaneous and not so self conscious. Also, Yo Yo Ma said "The most important thing about performing is to make magic!" He and McFerrin certainly do make magic.

Although not greatly displeased, I'm still not 100% percent satisfied with that effort, so I decided to try another. I found some photos "for press release" at Bobby McFerrin's site. I found one suitable to work with, much easier being 1470x2000 pixels big, and got happy results:


"Happy Bobby McFerrin" by "Joyous Joan"

Friday, January 4, 2008 A

"Mysterious Morning Draw"
6:46am


Yes, inspired a bit by Amazing Fractal Art!
Could I do that? I looked at a program for it, I suspect it's complex?

Friday, January 4, 2008 B

"Flight of Imagination"
11:22pm


The soul takes flight, and we will bloom with increasing consciousness...

Egyptian aspects of the soul:

"Ka"


"Ba"

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