Hurricane Sandy inspired comic per exercise from "Mastering Comics"

Avocado hoarder

love the one in the baby food jar, never saw multiple shoots before.

I planted the oyskeklaplte arovos, and one of them is sending out new growth!

Bobby's Art Class

Teaching kids that a blue line along the top of the page will no longer do to indicate sky.  There is a horizon, and a lot of sky to be filled in.  Learning how to use brushes, watercolor, and acrylic. Blending colors. Notice the "esrog tree" looks like an esrog itself....

spontaneous scribbles

 Here's a cross hatch drawing and now I see what's missing: shadows, big shadows from overhead clouds; I see that from the second shot that I took, with shadow falling on the paper. But of course I still like it.
And here's a scribbled drawing from a photo I took of myself in the bathroom mirror.  With a nice big flower sticker.  I like the lines trying to find themselves with resulting multiple outlines of the face.

here 's a drawing that I did on the SVA brochure for the MA teacher's program (for which I am eminently not qualified since I don't have an undergraduate degree in studio arts. Damn. I drew it on the subway on the way home from the animation screening at SVA and then colored it with pencils and markers.

My iCarly webcame doesn't take sharp pictures. Oh well.

FOOD CAMP: The Jewish Year Diet

FOOD CAMP: The Jewish Year Diet: THE JEWISH YEAR IS A CYCLE OF GROWTH AND CHANGE. Rosh Hashanah , which can literally be translated as   The Beginning of The Change , star...

    The roots coming through the bottom of the funnel

resting in the funnel: see, no toothpicks

in a baby food jar, sitting in the net bag, and to my amazement, another shoot coming out!!! Have you ever seen this?

the top of this plant, dried basil in the background

self portrait

here's the afghan....check out the seventies afghan next to it on the couch...(granny squares, before I was a granny....)

two projects: afghan,  and self portrait an attempt in acrylic, about 1.5 hours work (the painting, not the afghan which was completed over a few weeks

Avocado farm update, and look: no toothpicks!

Gitel Abraham OBM

Wanted to see if I could paint the fuzzy top of my pen, I used derwent watercolor pencil (outliner) and Crayola brush paint, going over it with water.

My second portrait of Gitel Abraham OBM, the first was a goofy pastel, this is from my oil painting class.

 So here's the program:

 

June 10, 2012

 

Brooklyn Public Library, King’s Highway Branch

 

         Presents a reading of a series of vignettes entitled

“He Said/She Said”

                    Written by 

                            Alan Magill       

and

“The Interview”

       Written by

               Janet Kwassman      

 

              STARRING (in alphabetical order)

        Arthur French                    Eve Sorel      

        Cynthia Gordon                  Phyllis Sperling        

        Fran G. Levy                       Cedrick Terrell

        Alan Magill                         Len Vretholm

        Jack Shalom                        Elizabeth York

        Pearl Shifer     

Thank you to all of the participants in this program for giving of their talent and time. Many of these plays were written as part of Alan Magill’s Instant Theatre group where participants write original plays based on an opening and closing line given out at the previous meeting.

 

Thank you to the King’s Highway Library and Shelly Strauss for giving a venue for this reading, which is part of a series of theatrical presentations here.

 

Alan Magill can be reached at pr2hope@aol.com  

 

 

 

 

 

Here's the flyer from the library about the play reading. so many people in the audience that we ran out of programs, but Alan said he will forward one to me via email.

Instant Theatre at the Kings Highway BPL.  Thanks to Alan for asking me to act in two of the pieces.  I met my scene partner for "Two Faced"   right before we opened the program, so it was nice to have improv chops at hand!

Afghan update

Finally!  A whole row without having to rip out 200 stitches!  I did make mistakes along the way but kept close watch on them, so the row ended with the right amount of stitches. Kind of like finishing a piece of music and no notes left over  : )

Avocado farm update and a new project

The avocados are putting out roots and shoots, so far only one tree. I did buy a bag of potting soil but haven't gotten around to potting any one.  that's what happens when you are potty yourself...And here are photos of the afghan that I'm working on.  Any idea why it's called an afghan?  Time for a journey to google...The colors are neither that bright nor that dark, don't know how to get a more accurate view. OK, they are called afghans because they were originally made in Afghanistan.  Yeah, and everywhere else...The geometric motifs were probably originated over there. My guess. Didn't do a whole lot of research...Let me know what you find out.

Something new for me:  oil painting class. Casey Inch, instructor. Me, token old person. I got a free pass because I joined the Center for Balanced Living, and the Educational Alliance opens up spots in the art school for CBL, and Marcy Simon was kind enough to get me in!
Underpainting, oil on canvas, burnt umber

Attempt at acrylics

I'm glad I didn't follow my impulse to buy more acrylic paint, the ones I have aren't the colors that Betty Edwards recommends in her Color book. However, following the exercises was really hard for me and I kind of got disgusted. There's a self portrait (natuarlly),  the four seasons, not representational but more in terms of colors the season evokes in me (just so you don't have to guess: spring, summer, fall, winter),"colors I like and colors I don't like" from the palette,. Some of the examples in her book were cheats, because the instructions specifically said not to be representational (for the seasons) but the artists didn't follow the instructions, I tried to.   I made do with the three primaries that I have plus black and white. I tried to make a color wheel with orange and blue mixtures and I could see that a prefab orange would have been useful because too much of the yellow from the home made orange made the blue turn green. I think that wouldn't have happened with an orange tube of paint, the colors would have have been blended much more thoroughly.  One of these days I'll get more colors, but it didn't seem worth the trip.  I'm at home for "spring break" and I don't feel like going anywhere. I have everything I need here. Except for the potting soil for my spider plant. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.  There was a major brush fire on Staten Island today, probably still raging.  That's scary. The smoke must travel over to Brooklyn.

So I tried some of the exercises anyway from Betty Edwards' book.  They look kind of cute.  I also used one of the Pesach dinner plates as a palette, that was one of her recommendations.  All my plastic containers are put away in the chometz, but I had the bright idea of using the tin can from the peppers that I so foresightedly bought.  And now I have a little applesauce container as well. Not to mention the metal dish I bought that was sitting around with my acrylic paints that I haven't gotten around to using before today. Tomorrow, I'll try the watercolor portrait colors. Maybe. I'm afraid that I won't be any good, but as usual, I end up loving my work.