Tag: ink

Art with a Broken Arm

I signed up for two art classes at the local adult school, one in acrylic painting and one in Chinese calligraphy. The acrylic painting class I have to drop simply because I cannot carry an easel, paints, paper, and all the other supplies with me, but I can do the Chinese calligraphy class because the teacher supplies all the stuff and there’s very little that I need to bring to class! That’s great.

Consequently I thought, well, what can I do? I decided to try an online course in drawing buildings and learning from an architect of many years experience. I think this is going to be a really good lesson or group of lessons as I have never been good at drawing buildings and only through a lot of effort and learning about proportions and relationships have I been able to draw this one which is the preliminary drawing prior to any classes at all.

If I say so myself, I did a pretty good job on it and I am looking forward to seeing my progress in the future. There are a lot of tricks that I’m going to learn in this and I will be posting them perhaps as I go along.

And the class begins in 20 minutes!

The Not Taken Vacation: Lambay Island in the Irish Sea

Sailing across to Liverpool, or into Dublin, is Lambay Island seen? I would imagine so.

In imagining my non-taken vacation, I have been looking at a lot of maps and finding all sorts of fascinating things! I have always loved maps and globes, so perhaps my broken arm and subsequent repatriation is not such a tragedy after all.

This is a dreadful scan, but I do rather like the painting itself. One edge of the island is seen, along with sail boats. I would enjoy being onboard one of them in a good stiff breeze.

Do read the link above – Lambay Island seems to be a very nice place to visit.

The Not Taken Vacation: Port at Dublin

It turns out that because of inclement weather, our ship could not land in Dublin. What did they do? Sail past in the wee hours? No idea.

I looked up images of Dublin Port or Dublin Harbor, and here we have what I think must have the commercial part. Cranes, large ships, breakwaters, piers, and who knows what else . . . .

The Not Taken Vacation: Icelandic Moss

Iceland Moss is really not a moss, but a symbiotic association between algae and fungus. It grows to be about 10 centimeters tall or about four inches , and is found in alpine and cold climates such as Iceland from which its name is derived. It can be used as an herbal remedy for a variety of complaints, such as pulmonary problems or digestive upsets and so on, although there is not a popular need for it apparently. The terrain and latitude of Iceland makes tall trees not very common, but Alpine plants and low-growing seasonal flowers, lichens, moss, and other such things make for a lovely landscape.

By no means am I trying to be a scientific illustrator, but looking at these plants, such as this lichen, just really fill me with delight because they’re so beautiful and so tiny.

Tomorrow I’m going to look at some of the photos I took before my tumble in Reykjavik, and hope to put in some drawings of buildings and historical landmarks before we move on to Ireland and Dublin where our next stop was supposed to be.

The Not Taken Vacation: Mountain Avens

The Mountain Avens, also known as dryas octopetala, is an Arctic alpine plant that’s in the family rosacea. It is a small flower which grows at higher elevations. It is found in the Arctic tundra of northern Eurasia, North America, and, of course, in Iceland where it is the national flower. Areas with high altitudes, such as the Rocky Mountains or the Alps and other high mountain regions, also are home to this lovely little flower.