Hubby at Dinner

Quick sketch with crayola marker and water.

fooling around

Tonight I was fooling around doing an experiment. I did a value study of BB's face in our normal diningroom lighting using markers and then colored it with markers. It's not a great portrait, but it was a good experiment. Click to view slightly larger.

Casual

Biker Buddy at Cranbrook, for Photo Friday's Casual theme.

Not a successful Likeness

Someday MAYBE I will learn to make likenesses, but I haven't learned YET!

(See me at Cranbrook here.)

A bit of silliness

Biker Buddy, playing with "Bean Boppers" (honey locust pods) and listening to their sound.

a little bushwhacking

There were a couple trees down across the trail, so we had to do a little bushwhacking.

homemade fried calamari

I made homemade fried calamari for the first time ever--it came out really good. Don't want to make it too often though, all that oil! I made a breading of cornmeal, corn flour, a little white flour, Old Bay spices, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and I dipped the calamari into beat eggs and then into the cornmeal mix and then fried it in oil. Yum. BB liked it too.

See some of the fall color from our yard.

BB's meeting

There's another round of layoffs scheduled for this weekend at GM. BB applied to work through the layoffs. Some people are just being let go permanently. There's a meeting tomorrow morning and we'll find out his fate. He says he's not worried. I am, a little. Eep.

Detail from Women are from Venus

Women are from Venus. A small, limited-palette pastel sketch in Tami's sketchbook for sketchbook exchange. See the whole picture here. Also, if interested, see sketch in progress here.

Stealing my own thunder: Block Print Design for Christmas 08

This is just the design. When I get to actually cutting the block, it
will probably come out differently.

A little early, you say? It takes a long time to plan, draw, design,
cut and print home-made Christmas cards!

Still Scraping

Every day.

The man I love

Once I said to LL, BB is so cute, and she looked at me oddly and said, I guess I don't think he's as cute as you do. I sure do think he's cute. Here he is, hard at work, and looking his usual adorable self!

Biker Buddy

Biker Buddy, my sweet hubby. By me.

Mole 4 & 5

I did a two-page spread in my Moleskine tonight. Hope you aren't sick
of Biker Buddy. He's a willing built-in model, so I drew him again
tonight, same deal, pen and water color pencil. A sketch--this is a
SKETCH-book, right? (I'll try to do something different next.) He
was pleased to have a "centerfold." I told him if he wanted a
centerfold, he'd better undress, LOL! (Don't worry . . . ){I won't
subject any of us to that, prolly.} Like the other, it's a bit of a
caricature.

Redbuds for the Leaf Lady

Gail misses her Michigan Redbuds.

(Of course, the last one is a magnolia!)

hiding

BB

silly

A Little silliness is good for the soul. Biker Buddy, Piano Boy and
Soccer Girl immersed in silliness. For Thursday Challenge.

Biker Buddy ON STRIKE!

The UAW and GM have been negotiating. Biker Buddy called this morning to say they were probably going out on strike at 11 AM. He would have to walk the picket line. At 11 AM, I heard on NPR that in fact the UAW has gone out as of 11 AM on Nationwide strike against GM for the first time since 1976.

I started crying when I heard the news. I guess I'm worried, more worried than I realized. Maybe it is bringing up old stuff from when my father was out on strike so often and so long against American Locomotive when I was a child. Strike times were scary times for me, my father home but not on vacation, pacing, worried, low on money. I was more scared then than I realized until just now.

My father finally changed jobs and went to work for General Electric instead. He worked at Knolls Atomic Power Labs, and changed again when we weren't allowed to go fishing in Canada because of the high security of the work he did. This was not as much a financial issue, but a matter of principle. He did not feel like a free man, and he wanted to be free, so he moved his family at a critical time in my life--I lost an opportunity to go to France as a foreign exchange student, was no longer in honor society, etc.

None of this has anything to do with Biker Buddy's circumstances, and my current ones, I hope. Except that they strongly affect my feelings about it and I am still in useless, pointless tears.

Biker Buddy rules

We were out walking and a huge storm came rolling in with thunder, lighting, wind and sudden hard rain. Biker Buddy ran home and got the car and picked me up--he got soaked--and then took me to the mall to complete our walk--even though he was still soaked! There was six-eight inches of water in the streets and the traffic lights were out. Hard driving waiting turns at every light and puddling through the water. The sky looked GREEN but it doesn't show up in the photos. Tornado warnings.

Wordless Wednesday