Category: Blitherings

Deliverance

Before I even had time to get breakfast, look what showed up at the door!    I didn’t even hear it drive up, but suddenly Josh was (not literally) jumping up and down. Factory Five Racing was here.

What kind of car or truck did Josh choose? Mike is perusing the Factory Five Racing catalog.

The gentlemen are looking on. From left to right, Ed, Josh, and Mike. Ed has built two flying airplanes from kits, and flies his own. Now, he will also build the Factory Five 818S kit. Josh, in the middle, is the cause of all this hullabaloo. He has been wanting to build a car for years, and we have spent several looking at cars and kits, and this one fits our (his) needs. Mike, on the right, works with Ed teaching Aircraft Frame and other such stuff at the Los Angeles Adult School. Mike is also a builder of a kit plane that he flies around in.

This is the special trolley, dolly, moving device specially built to move parts into our garage, or yours if you buy your own kit.

Mark is the good man, the driver, who made the day!

This is the empty nest, awaiting its new occupant.

Mark opens up the back of the 70-foot-long 18-wheeler truck, and the fun begins.

Delivery starts . . .

and continues, with sweat running down . . . (not really, it was cool and the car panels are fiber glass) . . .

And now, the frame and paneled part – the car body – is soon to be born.

The side of the car body, hooked onto the overhead cranes, with a fender packed inside. All the guys had to hold the car steady as the fender was released from its home. It got snagged a bit on something, but Mark, Mike, Josh, Ed, and our neighbor John all got together and held it steady. I supervised, of course.

Mark pulling the magic cart. Or, maybe he was wheeling it back to the truck to get more fun stuff??

Yeppers! The body was delivered to its new home.

Jack stands are placed to hold the framework and body in place. Work will begin soon enough!

16 boxes of parts are offloaded. They need to be accounted for and inventoried individually. The tires are on back order and will arrive later. Seats will be bought, too.

The happy Mr. Josh surveys his kingdom for a moment, doubtless in anticipation of the future.

And now, on to deliver Ed’s 818S.

Wrecking the WRX

Hard to believe it has been nearly a month since my last post. Lots has been going on, and not going on. For one thing, the quarantine has been going on and on and on. Life continues despite it, and with a few rule bending days and outings. Fortunately, all is well in our neck of the woods, and because we are such boring people, not much in our lives has changed. We have been very fortunate. However, in the next day or two, a Major Change is a-comin’!

This is no longer a car. It is in bits and pieces, sawzalled into oblivion, dissected, sold, and scavenged. The WRX is now parts and pieces. Something is coming soon to replace it.

The Palo Verde Tree

The local botanical garden is open at last!  It has been closed since Ventura County closed trails, stores, and such, as well as issued a shelter-in-place order to keep the spread of the coronavirus at a minimum.  Some places are beginning to open up, though the shelter-in-place order is on until the end of May.

It was such a treat – a real slice of heaven – to be able to walk around the garden again.  Many of the spring flowers have gone, like the poppies, but many of the flowering trees are in bloom.  The palo verde tree at the top of the hill has leafed out in all its delicate bright yellow-green glory.  It is so graceful and lovely in spring that it could not be overlooked – here it is for today’s painting.

Time to Be a Student

I have been painting every day for the past two or three weeks. I enrolled in a couple of online courses, both of which I have totally enjoyed. However, my poor drawing skills keep flying in my face. Yes, I can render things realistically quite often, but all too frequently I tumble when it comes to proportion of multiple objects together, and  a lack of ability to convey perspective.

So, after doing a bit of research, I decided to get myself some help.  Not online course here, but a jan-yoo-wine book.  Ebook, admittedly, but nonetheless, a book. The book is called Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson. I have other books on the basics of drawing, perspective, pen-and-ink, the right side of the brain. I just wanted something that starts out with basics and straight-forward writing.  I think this will be a good choice to rediscover drawing.

I am not going to get into this book in depth here online, but I am planning to follow it and see how my skills evolve. I need to renew my knowledge, and baby steps and exercises are the key. I plan to continue to paint every day, too, so I will be a little nutso I expect – but who isn’t without people to socialize with in person or being able to go for a hike?  This seems like a perfect time.

Thus, with no further ado, here are my beginning exercises from Keys to Drawing: Contour drawings of my feet and left hand.

Yeah, I really do have a big gap between my great and second toes!

The first exercise was feet – I did three but did not include the first. Dodson says, “Look, hold, draw.”  Look at whatever you are drawing, observe the curves and angles, and put them down.  Spend more time looking at the subject matter to see if you are getting the lines correct, not if you have a good drawing.  (Ah, monkey mind!) As I progressed, things got better and I began to look at relationships of this to that, and things began to improve. 

And that, she said, is what I want to do.