That’s My Boy, 18″ x 24″, watercolor on claybord, ©ElishaDasenbrock2016
Reference Photo by Aimee/John Memories Photography
Just put the finishing touches on this one. It has either been in my head or sitting in my RV waiting for me to wrap it up for months now. I’m happy to see it completed and I’ll be even happier to drop it off at my gallery for a few weeks before I leave Florida.
If I had an assistant, I would have them edit all of the photos. It is my least favorite part of the whole blog. I would probably blog 10 x’s as often if I didn’t have to edit photos. Unfortunately, no one wants an art blog without the art. I have more than 2 weeks worth of sketches. I will try to do them in order, but I may misplace a few.
I just realized I have a very awful color pencil sketch of a tulip which I forgot to photograph. Maybe next week.
I woke up to Beasley whining. I turned over to see Lola and Gunnar curled up (a very rare occurance), blocking the only place Beasley can jump onto the bed. Enemy of my enemy is my friend, indeed. My very first thought was, “I have to sketch that.” Luckily, my sketchbook was laying right next to me. Boom.
I didn’t have as much time as I thought I did. It does make me laugh though.
Yesterday, while waiting for Sunday dinner, I tried my hand at last week’s lesson. The sketchbook pages everyone was uploading looked fantastic, but I just couldn’t get into the idea behind a grid. I think it is because I want sketching to be fast and drawing a grid and laying out a whole page with multiple sketches seems very time consuming. Although, if I have longer to sketch, I do think I will like it. My first attempt was a little disappointing. When I drew the grid in ink, I realized I only had 2 rectangles. I’m not very happy with the close up of Gunnar’s face either, but I do love the one of him running to me. I took Beasley and Gunnar to the dog park and got a lot of photos.
Today I tried the grid again. I had more time to figure it all out. I grabbed a small palette, but the paints were not good colors. Luckily, it was more about practicing the grid than color matching. When I put the watercolor washes in, I noticed the calligraphy pen was running into the water so I decided to do one more sketch.
Just a very quick sketch of a tulip so I could see how well I could paint with the calligraphy pen ink and water. Not too shabby.
I did not sketch yesterday, but I did two today.
The sketchbook skool week was all about color pencils and getting out of your comfort zone. The instructor wanted us to go outside and sketch in front of people. It was cold this week and since I sketched outside last week and I’m always drawing in front of someone, I thought color pencils were a good enough stretch.
I have wanted to learn how to use color pencils for years, but it is always on my some day list. I think I am starting to understand the method. I do have one other sketch, but the photo was bad. I will add it later.
This is by far the worst one so far: (Edit – I just realized the Lola sketch was outside. Yea me!)
I wish I was better at flowers:
Anatomy lesson (after my trip to the Chiro):
Sleepy Gunnar:
Two from today, close ups from the same reference photo as above:
Mountain Vista 5×7″ watercolor on clayboard ©Elisha Dasenbrock 2014
Here is my attempt at a landscape for this March challenge. I linked to the 3rd page, where the first painting is so amazing! I love the style.
I also finished the elephant painting and I hung 3 paintings at the local Barnes and Noble. I wanted to hang a fourth, but it was too big. They wouldn’t let me add any holes. They said I could use some stick on hooks for things weighing 70 lbs. I didn’t feel safe doing that.
I took Gunnar to the vet for a check up today. In the 4 weeks since I took him last time, he has gained 9 lbs. He is now 23+ lbs. I was told he would weigh between 30 and 40 lbs. He is only 17 weeks old. Not that I mind. I prefer larger dogs. I just didn’t expect him to blow the prediction out of the water.
I would still be in Florida, but my older brother is getting married. I am heading back to the tundra formerly known as Illinois.
I wanted to have photos for this post, but the internet is very slow at this camp site when the employees are here. At night, it’s awesome, but I am the only one here. This is a great park though and the people are ridiculously nice.
I had to run to Wal-Mart the other day and I left a bag of trash at my site. It had a leak so I didn’t want to leave it in the RV and the puppy gets into everything. I came back and it was gone. They just picked it up for me. (They knew I was coming back.)
This is another spot where deer come very close to the RV at night. The park manager mentioned this when I came in, but I was able to experience it first hand. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the deer until Beasley made a break for it and chased the entire herd through a field. He had fun. I wanted to kill him. Luckily, as I said, I’m the only one here.
It has been a trying couple of months, but also very amazing. I can’t wait to get back on the road and I’m not even home yet. I have been more productive than I have since I was in school. At least with art work. I have finished 3 paintings, started 2, almost finished 2 more. I still have one more day so those numbers may change.
I also made lovely art contacts in Florida, not to mention friends. I spent time with my childhood best friend and I acquired a new member of my furry family. I have stayed in some peaceful, beautiful places. I think that’s a very good couple of months.
My trials include a very leaky A.C. unit, which is now gone, a buckling floor, which I can hopefully fix, a mystery leak in the bathroom, which does not cause the pump to run, but soaks everything, a couple of uncomfortable situations, a bad engine battery which led to two new batteries, a lost license which was not that big of a deal. I may be missing something, but if so, it must not have been too bad.
Not a bad trade, I would say.
I will be happy to not drive for about 2 months. Not that I don’t like it, I just can’t do as much if I have to drive. Plus, some of these roads have been hell. I had no idea. I live in Illinois. We have back roads and I grew up driving on them. I have never seen a real “road” look like a back road. Most of our back roads are better than some of these actual roads. I will never complain about paying taxes. Ever. I have never minded that much anyway, because I know it goes to public services, but let’s face it, Illinois doesn’t really have a great track record for corruption free governing. However, I now see, they do take care of their people (except on the south side of Chicago, but it’s still better than Louisiana.)
Of course, the first thing the puppy chewed up was my laptop cord (He’s another monster!).
I didn’t have a laptop with The Beast and little Lola hasn’t been a puppy for 7 years. I forgot that was a thing for puppies.
He’s doing pretty good. He developed rickets and 3 ring worms all at the same time. The rickets went away in a few days with a calcium supplement and lots of Nutro puppy food. I’m still working on the ring worms. Pills and rubbing iodine on the skin.
He and Beasley are playing so much. It is really cute.
I’ve spent the last 2 weeks with one of my childhood besties. It was going to be a week, but that went by too fast, then I was going to leave today, but my temporary license finally arrived in Florida and I’m waiting for it to ship to Louisiana.
If I walk about a quarter mile or less, the view above is what I have. I really love this area. There’s a planetarium I plan to see tomorrow, there’s a great, old bridge that is very scary to drive an RV over, and best of all, there’s absolutely no neighbors. I see a truck drive by now and then and there is a main road right by me, but over all very quiet.
Shhhhh, be vewy vewy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits.
Above is my front yard.
After driving for over 3 hours Monday, this is where I decided to call home for a few days. I have a couple of repairs to do and the weather is still so cold. Florida is actually supposed to have snow today.
My flight out of Illinois was not a perfect take off. My engine wouldn’t start. Note to anyone trying to escape the cold, if the temp is 7 degrees early in the morning, just sleep in. I was a good 4 hours late leaving, but it allowed my Grams to make me some oatmeal before I hit the road. MMMM my Grandma’s oatmeal. And yes, I said allowed her to, not because it is such a great privilege for her to do so, but because she can’t stand it when I leave without eating and that was exactly my plan.
Then, when I was about an hour out, my GPS decided to blow the fuse in my cigarette lighter. How does that even happen? It worked fine before. I will have to do some investigative research googling to fix it. In the meantime, I have an atlas and some good ol’ fashion map reading skilz.
…..
As I was typing the above I heard a loud pop and subsequent fizz. It seems when I popped a breaker earlier and fixed it, I moved one of my space heaters too close to the water pipe and forgot to move it back. Since I had my pump on, water sprayed everywhere under my bed. Luckily I had the forethought to not only spray the entire sub-floor with Mighty Seal (OK that was my friend’s forethought), but I insisted on laying down a layer of rubber underneath the bed.
After I shut the pump off, I let the water drain out of the pipe and now I will go buy another quick connect fitting and cut the pipe. Easy fix for a bone head move. This is the second or third water leak in a week. I thought one pipe burst from freezing, but a (non-quick connect) fitting came loose under the shower (where we didn’t do anything). Luckily that was an easy fix. I’m still not sure if the third leak is real. I will find that out tomorrow.
On a wild life note, there is an owl currently staking out Lola. He is flying from tree to tree waiting for my baby to leave the RV again. Beasley is having the time of his life and thinks leaves and trails were invented just for him.
I am working on Alyson Stanfield’s class, Organize Your Art Biz. I signed up for it, but didn’t do much at the time. Every day I am doing a lesson. So far I have added a “Leave Me A Message” button on my contact page, where you can actually call my voice mail. This wasn’t in the lesson, but I was looking at my old Google Voice number and trying to decide if I wanted to use that as a business number. I saw they have a widget and that sealed it. I made a new outgoing message on both voice mails.
I also am in the process of getting a PO Box. Did you know you can do that online? Amazing.
I finally loaded Microsoft office onto my computer, after having it for over a year.
And thanks to my friend Sharon, figured out how to put comments back on my blog. *sigh. Why so complicated Word Press?
I am also working through Brian Tracy’s book Goals! while I organize here and there.
Tomorrow I will paint.
Wait, what?
Yeah, I had the flu for two weeks.
I have barely touched the RV, which is kind of scary since I leave in a little over one week. It is not going to be completely finished, but I knew that awhile back.
I will be staying with my family for the first week, showing off what we have done. Then I will be heading to the warmest state.
You can not believe how sad I have been, seeing all the Facebook posts from my friends about how warm Florida is right now, knowing I should have already been there. Broken hearted is not far off.
Luckily, I will be there soon enough.
I am so scared. I am way more scared than when I moved to Chicago without knowing anyone. Maybe because I already had an apartment, maybe because I did it 3 days from decision to arrival so I didn’t have time to think about how I would be all alone. Probably because I didn’t care if I was all alone back then. Not that I care too much now, but it is definitely harder to leave. Maybe because I have had such a good time the last 9 months.
I will be back in Illinois the first of April though. I will have to move things to storage units or sell it, my older brother is getting married, and I am hanging my art at the local Barnes and Noble. I was supposed to this month, but she double booked and it works out better if I do it in April.
I have really needed this break from the RV, not that I enjoyed most of it, but I have seen more movies since Christmas than I did in the entirety of last year. Maybe the last two years.
I have photos, but I’m too worn out to look through what I have already posted, so please enjoy this picture of my dogs hating me. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season.
I have so many posts coming. I have new dinette cushions (which are giving me all kinds of problems, but that’s another post,) I have a new ottoman, and I have so much storage.
First up, the newest item:
I originally went to Target for a small storage ottoman. I figured a $20 one would be great for added seating and maybe I could solve my dog food dilemma. (i.e. I can’t fit a giant air tight dog food container in the RV and even if I could, they are pretty ugly.) Unfortunately, those were really two small and cheap looking for my purposes. I don’t want something that looks junk before the dogs even get to it.
This ottoman is usually $120, but it was on sale for under $100. I still think it is a bit high, but it is the perfect fit and it holds a 40 lb bag of dog food, plus the dog bowls:
The bowls and scoop on top of the contractor trash bag of dog food.
Beasley is obsessed with burying his food. If there is anything on the floor near his dish, it will end up on top of the food. Heaven forbid it doesn’t cover the food, he will whine and fret for 20 minutes, until he gets hungry enough to just eat it already. I think he approves of this new system.
ALL the dog food.
The ottoman takes up a bit more space than I would like, but since it is multi-functional, I forgive it. I can also put it under the dinette table if I need to or possibly put it in the bedroom and use it to get on my bed instead of the step stool.
Look closely, it is under there.
There’s still plenty of room to walk around. It just happens to be the perfect height. It’s actually comfortable.
Gratuitous shot of Lola.
Ignore the dark rug. It is an outside rug I had to purchase because we got 6 inches of snow on Friday. Hopefully my wood floors stay dry.
I know, you were thinking I quit painting watercolor and I was going into the business of RV remodeling.
Not so.
Although, this is not “new” art work, it is new to you.
My DSLR won’t connect to either computer any more so I couldn’t get anything off compact flash card. I finally bought a card reader and I have 3 paintings to show.
Boats Off Phi Phi Watercolor on Paper, ©Elisha Dasenbrock 2011
The above is the oldest. I finished it in 2011. It is from my trip to Thailand. It is in the private collection of Margaret Walkosz.
The Beas Knees 12″ X 12″ watercolor on claybord, ©Elisha Dasenbrock 2012
The above is a portrait of Beasley when he was a puppy. This went pretty fast, I think maybe 6-12 hours total and it started re-enforced my love of claybord.
Giraffes 5″ x 7″ watercolor on claybord, ©Elisha Dasenbrock 2013
Hummingbird On Yellow 5″ x 7″ watercolor on claybord, ©Elisha Dasenbrock 2013
The two above are experiments.
So, there you have it and there you are. Now I can inventory them. Yeaaaaaah!
I was not feeling well last week and did not get a lot accomplished on the RV.
We still made progress, just not a lot.
I did manage to make a few purchases while I was feeling under the weather.
Since I don’t have a lot of other progress, I will probably break this up over the week.
Hopefully, next week I will have a bunch more to share.
First, I will tell you about my chairs:
A couple of weeks ago, I went to an RV dealer and sat in some zero gravity chairs for the first time. They were $100 a piece! I wasn’t saying no though, they were that comfortable.
I figured I would wait a few weeks and pick up a couple. Maybe one at a time.
Then a coworker told me Sports Authority has some on sale for $49.99. I checked them out, but I wasn’t thrilled. They were not as comfortable and they looked poorly made.
I really need to dump my black water tank, but I needed a part. I went looking for it and stopped by Gander Mountain. They had a couple of chairs in their out door area, but again not as nice. Off we went. However, on the way out, we saw some very pretty zero gravity chairs. Most were either black or tan, but these were lovely silvery blue.
Even the $100 were not exactly attractive.
I sat in the chairs and they were as close to the $100 in comfort that I had felt. I didn’t want to get up.
They were $39.99 and the last two there.
I am not one to get a good deal so I am pretty stoked. I usually don’t have the patience and I don’t want to run around to different stores looking for one thing. These just fell into my lap.
Lola approves.
… he ate its face off.
A couple of weeks ago, Beasley found a new chew toy in the form of my brand new hammer.
If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the evening, I’d hammer until Beasley chewed it up. Then I’d hammer all through the night.
That dog can get into anything. Nothing is out of reach.
I will say, since he can run all weekend long and gets lots of play time he has become a much better behaved dog. We still have issues and a new one showed up a couple of weeks ago. He does not like children. We are working on most of the issues though and he is getting better.
I figured it was time to start training him since it really doesn’t look like Johnny is going to take him after all.
Sunday, Lola got her summer hair cut.
I had to take her to a new place and I forgot to tell them to keep her ears long.
Lola is the dirtiest dog I’ve ever seen. She loves rolling around in anything. This is one reason I keep her hair short. Not 10 minutes after we came back from the groomer, she found a pile of saw dust and dove in head first. By the time I grabbed my camera she had shaken most of it off, but the guilt is all over her face.