Legendeering: Greenwood Cemetery Day 1

Whoops, long time no blog... I've been off playing hooky on Tumblr. But I'm starting to accumulate a bunch of stuff that's going to require more robust blog posts than I can throw together on Tumblr - so I'll be dumping that stuff here!

To start with, Legendeering! It's a thing that Sterling Hundley's organized, and is kind of hard to describe... But so far it's about getting out and exploring and experiencing and recording what you experience. The official FaceBook group is here if you want to find out more (or join in!)

First assignment is to visit someplace unfamiliar three times, preferably to a location that involves some amount of exertion to visit. I had trouble thinking of anyplace unfamiliar that would involve exercise and that wouldn't require an all-day out-of-town trip... I've been living here for years, so I've already explored a lot of the best spots nearby. But then I remembered I've never been to Greenwood Cemetery, and you know, I don't know why?? I mean, it's technically walking distance. Somehow I always forget it's there.

So I went. And I'm glad I did, that place is amazing. It's HUGE. I had no idea how big. It's a freaking necropolis. And it's all hills and crazy winding paths and of course I managed to get totally lost, but that was part of the plan - its not a proper adventure if you don't get lost at least once! Also it's the highest point in Brooklyn, so you get some amazing views of the city.

Between taking forever to find the entrance, getting lost, and trying to get unlost before they locked me in, I didn't have much time for sketching. Mostly I ran around like a mad thing with a camera until I got a "memory card error" (AGAIN. Aaarrgh. Need to get some spare cards.) But I squeezed in one quickie sketch before dashing to the gates:

Not sure how many photos survived the memory card SNAFU... So far I've salvaged about a third. The rest might be gonzo. I may have to go back and re-photograph some things. Here's the best of the photos I've recovered so far (click to embiggen):

Not sure if I'll manage two more visits THIS week, the current forecast is rain-sleet-cold-yuck (it's been raining all day today)... But we'll see. Definitely going back when it's REALLY actually Spring and things are blooming. (If we ever get Spring.)

Between schlepping down there and running around on all the hills, it was more of a workout than I thought it would be. Also I found a dollar on the way back, so, profit!

Also there was this cat near my apartment:

Whatever Wednesday: Random Tree Sketch

So, it's getting to be that time of year again where I can go hang out in the park and work on things. Frequently I take my comic supplies outside and work on thumbnails and penciling. (Somehow it's always easier for me to thumbnail when I'm outside.) But sometimes I get distracted and start sketching other things on my thumbnail sheets... Like this tree that took over the back of my thumbnail sheet one especially sunny, lazy day. I don't think it's part of the plot, but maybe I can work it in...

Whatever Wednesday: Double Rainbows

Look out world, I'm attempting landscape studies from life! Because everyone says this is a good way to learn about color and light, and I'm inclined to agree. These are tiny little things, done with gouache (okay, gouache might not be the best media for this, but I wanted a super-small super-portable kit that I can take on my daily walks, and gouache works great for that.) (I would do watercolor, but watercolor is a tricky beast unto itself. I'll probably tackle that later.) Expect more! Expect them to get better! (I hope...)

What's cool is that on the very first day I attempted this, we had a perfect double rainbow. So of course that's what I tried to paint. While getting slightly rained on. (I can't vouch for the results, the actual rainbow was mostly gone before I even got my paints out...) The second picture is a bit of roof outside my window that was catching the light under a storm cloud, it was kind of a neat effect...

Holiday Cats and Eclipse

Okay! New Year's Resolution! Let's see if I can update this blog once a week! Instead of, you know, every other month or so... (First two weeks of January totally don't count.)


Oh no, the Year of the Tiger is almost over! (Or maybe it technically is over in some places... I can never keep Lunar New Year dates straight...) Damn it, there goes my excuse for making random tiger pictures. Oh well, before the rabbits come hopping in... here's one last round-up of Big Cats.

The tiger family was a present for my parents on their joint birthdays... The cubs are supposed to be me and my sister, of course. Waiting to wreak havoc.

The candycane tiger was this year's Christmas card - a last-minute endeavor as always, overly complicated as always, I never learn... But, you know, I HAD to do a tiger. (The bird is a red-bearded bee-eater - I wanted a small bird in red or green that might conceivably live somewhere near tiger territory, and that little guy is red and green and cute and situated in the right general area. Glad I found him. Hey, my piles of random wildlife books are actually useful, whatd'ya know!)

The snow leopard was an extra... he was meant as a second card idea, but of course that turned out to be over-ambitious, so he didn't get done until January. Call it a New Year's card.

These are all available for sale as cards and prints. Hint. (Sales pitch? What sales pitch?)
Tiger Love || Candycane Tiger || Snow Leopard

The holidays this year were rather mellow (it was so cold we mostly stayed inside and ate cookies...) But there WAS this eclipse going on. Full moon eclipse on the solstice, man! That deserves a picture. I caught most of the second half of the eclipse in the wee hours of the morning before the clouds moved in - here's my general impressions of what it looked like (from memory, photos were kind of hopeless.) The full eclipse was very smudgy and orange from where I was. If I didn't know it was an eclipse I would've thought it was a very small and very localized cloud.