ONLINE ART COURSE – TWO MORE INK SKETCHES, SOME INTERESTING OBJECTS AND TEXTURES, AND MY NEW LAPTOP

It’s been an interesting and busy few days.

Online art course – small ink drawings

Hammer

My hubby joined me again in this lesson. Of all the small sketches to be drawn with the ink pens, I really thought the hammer would be the easiest, but it proved to be the most difficult to date! I made the mistake of trying to prepare in advance of the video lesson, and wasted a huge amount of time when I could have done it much better, and more quickly, had I followed along with teacher Phil’s instructions for getting the proportions right.

This picture was deceptive because of the low angle of the reference photo, making the proportions and angles very different. Phil showed us how to focus on the shapes and blocks, and also gave us a small lesson on perspective.

I didn’t get the axis of the metal part of the hammer quite correct – the right hand end is slightly higher than the left, so I thought I’d try it again.

I think my first effort was better! I made the metal part in the second drawing too long. Oh well, it’s all good practice, training one’s eye to look for those little reference points, basic shapes, angles and negative space.

We did these dawings a couple of days ago, and today was the first day when we could sit down and work on another one, this time the cupcake. I have reordered the sketches on my page to allow for some coming out too big and not leaving me enough room.

Cupcake

This was a really fun drawing, and not too difficult at all.

I drew this one as near to the bottom of the page as possible, to try and avoid the bee’s foot getting covered in cream!

I didn’t get the cream quite right – partly because it was getting dangerously close to the bee, and apart from that, evidence that my eye needs further training in observation.

Interesting textures, mostly vegetable in character

I have got into the habit of examining various bits of vegetable as I cut them up. Cross-sections can be fascinating, and quite unlike the usual view of the object, and also looking at them from odd angles. There are lots of interesting textures.

The other day I was cutting up a red onion (always gorgeous with all those layers of carmine) and was trimming around the root as the final stage – I have learnt that if you avoid cutting into the root, you are less likely to end up in tears over the onion! What emerged reminded me of an Eastern pagoda.

This got me thinking about drawing a cityscape with all the buildings and structures drawn from interesting vegetables! I took this picture of a leek several weeks ago:

I just love how the leaves are woven together to form this perfect pattern. It reminds me of a palm tree.

Yesterday I was chopping Romaine lettuce for the salad, and cut the bottoms off to make it easier to remove the leaves. Aren’t these shapes just gorgeous?

In the absence of any Kavolo Nero kale in the shops this week, my hubby bought me greens instead. Again, pulling away the leaves, I noticed how attractive the stalks were.

The one on the right has a distinct “pagoda-esque” look to it!

And what about this fabulous flaky mushroom?

Red onion again – some lovely arch-shapes in these pieces.

The straight cut through the equator of the onion has its own simple beauty.

Packaging materials

I use quite a bit of packaging materials in my art, and always have my texture-junkie eye open, ready to spot anything interesting!

Last week I ordered two packets of tissues from the supermarket for my online delivery, and stacked them up on my bathroom counter. It was only when I was thinking about something else that it struck me what a lovely bokeh pattern there was on the boxes, especially when stacked like this. This could be the starting point of an interesting art composition.

I broke my small cafetiere jug the other day and had to order a replacement on Ebay. I decided to buy two so I’ve always got at least one in reserve, as it’s all too easy to knock the pot over and break it in an instant! The jugs came wrapped around with some really chunky paper mesh packaging material, which not only looks awesome but feels fabulous too! Just look at that texture. (I might create a digital texture overlay out of this…)

This would be fun to attempt to draw, to bring out all the texture, light and shade etc.

Spread out, the piece looks like this:

In my grocery order this week were a couple of packs of “Finest” clementines. I don’t usually buy these more expensive ones, but my usual ones were out of stock and these were on special offer. For ages I have thought how awful the normal fruit nets are – they don’t feel very nice, and nearly all of them get thrown away, and end up in the oceans. I have kept some because they melt very interestingly with a heat gun if you want a smaller-scale mesh element. These particular clementines arrived in a flat pack made of heavy duty paper for protection, and in the top, a mesh window with the most delicious texture! I immediately cut out both sections of these mesh pieces to go in my stash for an interesting art project.

I do hope they are going to start using this new packaging on all their citrus fruits as I can see great potential in this! (I like the fruit, too.)

My new laptop

Several weeks ago I bought a new laptop. Actually it was described as “Used – very good condition” and when it arrived, it was clearly brand new and had never been opened, as all the original packaging and seals were intact. However, when I was part-way through installing everything and setting it up as I wanted it, I discovered that the “E” key did not work properly and required heavy and repeated pressure to make it work. This was obviously going to be a non-starter. It would be the “E” of course – the most common letter in the English alphabet! I could probably have lived with a faulty “Z”… For various reasons I did not want to return the computer to the seller, and I contacted our local computer repair shop, with whom we have dealt for several years and have come to know them well and trust them, and they agreed to have a look at it for me.

They reported back that there was definitely a problem with the key, and it wasn’t due to any foreign body lodged underneath or anything. They said that I would not need to send it back to the seller in order to get it fixed under guarantee, and they contacted HP for me, and HP collected it from them and said it would take about 3 weeks. The computer shop phoned me on Tuesday to say that it was back with them already, and all was well – they had installed a new keyboard and everything was now working fine. My hubby picked it up for me and since then I have been continuing where I left off, installing my programs etc. HP had wanted to make sure I had backups of everything – this was presumably their general policy, because replacing a keyboard would not affect any of the data on the hard drive, but I assured the computer shop that I was OK in that respect. I did not really want to have to go back to square one with the installation, though, and was pleased to find that everything was exactly as I had left it, and I have been able to continue to work on it over the past few days.

I have had several laptops over the years and I do a lot of typing, and have found that after a couple of years, the printing on the keys wears off – not that it is too much of a problem for a touch-typist but I don’t like the idea of wearing them out! Before I started work on this new laptop, I bought a keyboard cover – a thin silicone skin designed for this model. It also protects the keyboard from dirt and dust, and is easily removable and can be washed. The actual covers of the keys are black with white writing and it looks very smart, and the spaces between the keys are clear. The original keys underneath are silver with grey writing which is pretty difficult to see! It also feels lovely to type on – quite soft. The keys themselves work a whole lot better than the keyboard on my old Acer – a lovely touch, easy, but with a positive and definite feel. The only disadvantage is that the printing on some of the keys doesn’t match with what the key actually does – for instance on the cover, the “@” is figure 2 + shift, and the actual key will produce the double quotation mark. The key for the double quote on the cover, is the “@” in reality. Confused? I was! This is the same layout (I think) as my iPad. The cover is from China and it may be an international layout. I’m getting used to it though, and just have to remember to do what I’ve always done in the past, and not be put off by what is written on the key!

I am very happy to have another HP. My first two laptops were HP and I always liked them. I shall never have another Acer – there were so many features that I didn’t like and I don’t think the build was of the same quality. My hubby got one at the same time as me, and we both complained that the ports became very weak and wobbly after a few years, and the computer shop said they were impossible to replace. Also, the battery is extremely difficult to access, requiring tools to remove the bottom of the case, and even then, you have to remove further parts to access the battery. I am not sure what it is like on this new HP laptop but they were always pretty good in the past.

To prevent damage to the ports on this laptop, I have bought a selection of adaptors which remain plugged in, and my peripherals plug into these. One of the reasons I chose this particular laptop was its abundance of ports – so many these days have far too few, and this was one of the few that has an MDMI port. Our smart TV is just too old to have the wireless connectivity to the computer so I have to run a cable. I bought a male-to-female HDMI adaptor and this remains plugged into the laptop, and I can plug in the TV cable without putting any strain on the computer port. There are more USB-C ports on the laptop than regular USBs but the adaptors take care of this.

I also invested in a couple of sets of magnetic charging/data transfer cables a few months ago. These are brilliant. They have a regular USB plug on one end (which can be attached to the several USB-C ports on the laptop via an adaptor) and on the other end is a circular magnetic connector. The cables come with a set of small magnetic studs with different plugs – various USB sizes and also lightning for Apple devices. You plug the stud into your device and leave it there, and the magnetic tip on the cable simply snaps on. It rotates through 180 degrees and has a right-angle swivel joint as well, which is very convenient. This saves the ports on your devices, and with the adaptors on the laptop, the ports are safe there, too. Not all these cables are data transfer cables, though – most seem to be just for charging, but I found some that do both, and use them to connect my external hard drives to the computer. It is a brilliant system and very convenient. I have two charging cables in the bedroom, and during the night they are snapped onto my iPad and iPhone, and during the day, to my two rechargable lamps. It takes only a second or two to connect them.

I still have a fair bit of work to do on the new laptop to get everything running as I want, and initially it’s always a pain because of re-installing licenses and passwords etc. Once I’d got my Norton Password Manager set up, this was much easier, and I’m gradually getting there – I just have to be prepared that sometimes a job will take considerably longer than expected because of having to do some initial setting up.