Watercolor 349

Morning Light

(A very small work)

Watercolor 348

Evening Light

Thank You Card

For a Book of Modern Art

Blessed Thanksgiving Day

O Give Thanks Unto the Lord

For Feasts and Family and Fun

Watercolor 347

A Road

Watercolor 346

White Trunks

Watercolor 345

Dusk

Card Today

This Made My Day

I got the most heartwarming card in the mail today: handmade, with love and gratitude and sparkles.

And a watercolor of a place I would love to explore.

Thank you, Katrina! This means a lot to me.

Happy Thanksgiving

Ours is Early

Several family members won’t be around on Thursday, so we celebrated today. Every day is a good day to give thanks. 

Happenings

Not Art, But....

Yesterday ‘Twas a Birthday here

...after the cake was gone.

And today a city outfitting itself for Christmas 

And lots of orchids for Yours Truly

A Little Early

But, Time for Thanks

First, I noticed that on October 31st of 2015, I first posted here. Yikes. Thanks to all who have hung on that long. 

Second, I told many of you that my mother is in the hospital. More procedures going on, and good progress, so I gave thanks for that. 

Third, family is home, so, while I have no art time, I give thanks for them. 

And, I thank each of you who have left comments and compliments, which I still can’t answer on the site.

This is a handmade chocolate, that Stef got after a reading he did. He is doing a week and a half of them currently. 

Trying a Different Drawing App

MediBang Paint, on my phone.

I'd seen this drawing app mentioned a few times before on the interwebs, but never really got into it. Now I am giving it a second shot, because one of my sisters suggested it to me; she uses it.

And I'm finding that it might work pretty well for my current project, better than Sketchbook, which I have been using for the vast majority of my digital art adventures. Not saying I'm getting rid of Sketchbook and eloping with MediBang Paint, but in this particular situation, the latter seems the better equipped for this type of work.

It still has lots of layer options and most of the main brushes and features I've liked from the other app, just in different places and menus to get used to; but also the fill selection is more intuitive and therefore quicker, plus it has the paneling grids and tones choices designed especially for making comic pages.

screentshot of a random sketch that has nothing to do with my project

Yeah, my current project is...*gulp*...a webcomic.

I finally decided, to heck with it, we've just got to plow in and learn from mistakes and get some practice in.

The idea for this story was one that I had only about a month ago, so if you ever heard me mention any webcomic ideas in the past three years, this is not one of them. (Although, if this is a success, you might expect to see more.)

I am both wildly terrified, and also excitedly hopeful about this endeavor.

Battles are being waged inside. The stubborn and optimistic all-hours-dreaming silly hopes, against the pessimistic slime monsters which fear that I'm not ready, that my art isn't good enough, that my story isn't good enough, that I won't be able to follow through, that no one will even read my story, that some will but they will send me hate, that all of my technological devices and/or the internet will crash, that those friends and family are right about it being next to impossible to turn my strange artistic hobbies into an income, that creating dumb fantastical worlds with stupid pictures is useless, that I will get off to a rolling great start and then one of the places I applied to for a second day job will contact me in the affirmative instead of rejecting me again and I will have to face the grim duty initiating that the comic will fall out of necessity because the energy and time it takes to create it cannot exist in the same dimension as my work schedule...etc., usw.

ANYWAY, the comic has no title, the characters have no names, and I have not fully worked out the designs and styles yet; but I have a complete outline, and I am working on fleshing it out and writing the script as my NaNoWriMo project this month. XD

Yes, I am torturing myself and overfilling my plate as per the usual.

How is YOUR November going?

Watercolor 344

More Colors

Watercolor 343

Quick Sketch

Watercolor 342

Reflections

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River View

A palm-size painting.

What our Baker made today. ‘Tis the season. Sugar picture on Biberli cookie. 

Watercolor 340

Old Tree

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Goats in Mountains

Foot

Haha, tried to draw my foot as a life drawing practice:

(I got this angle by sitting on the floor with my legs tucked up almost next to me, and my sketchbook in my lap.)

Watercolor 338

In Evening Light

(I skipped a number, because I don’t want to post one.)

Castle-Church

Rebuilt

Yesterday Maria and I went to a home education seminar, at which Maria gave a speech. Afterward we went to see these historic constructions.

The one that looks like a castle used to be just that. It was built in 1230 by the free lord Gerhard von Göskon as his primary residence. But his family heirs were robber barons, which annoyed the local populace to no end, until the family line got its comeuppance and died out. The castle went then to House of Falkenstein . The castle was burnt down by the Bernese and Solothurners in the Zürich war of  1444, because the then lord of the castle had wreaked havoc on  the little town of Brugg. Then the place was bought for 8200 Gulden and sometime later re-built as an administrative seat. As the French Revolution in 1798 swept into Switzerland, the castle was burnt again. This time it remained as a picturesque ruin for over a century. At the end of the 19th century, in the late Romantic period the Catholic church had a split, and a group decided to rebuild the ruin as a church. At the turn of the century, they did so, with a church architect from St. Gallen in charge, and plaster work by some Tiroleans, and the organ by a Swiss builder. It has seen a couple of major renovations, and an un-renovations, in which the "updating" of the 1950's, in which everything was painted over in a uniform cream color, was returned to its soft Rococo pastel tones. The church is considered the finest example of Neo-Baroque in Switzerland.

The courtyard below

The inner courtyard

likewise

The clergy graveyard

The open interior of the nave and chancel

Old Baptismal font

One of two side altars

A window in the chancel

Marble and plasterwork pulpit

Pulpit details

A holy water basin

My not-favourite Swiss saint, Niklaus von Flüe. He left his wife and ten children and trotted off down the hill to be a hermit. The Swiss are glad that he saved the day with some good advice, but I say that is no excuse for leaving one's family to fend for themselves. 

An angel on the altar

The front medallion of the altar, the mother swan sacrificing herself for her young.

Altar

A very old woodwork Door frame in the chancel

Chancel flowers

A narrow walkway runs around the church overlooking the courtyard below and the town.

A nearby village farmstead

The Schloss restaurant where can have a very fine dinner

Watercolor 336

An Evening

Next up, D.v., a castle/church