10,000 hours to achieve mastery....

"Every artist was first an amateur" Ralph Waldo Emerson

Had I kept up with painting and drawing after getting a degree in art, I might be closer to the 10,000 hour rule. My drawing skills got rusty since college, so I figure I'm not yet halfway there. One good thing about working with colored pencils is that it's sharpening my drawing skills.

Portraits are especially challenging and really good for developing your visual memory. Here are some drawings I've been working on in the last couple of weeks(click on photos to enlarge):

A sketch of my niece Becky and her daughter Katherine from a photo I took:

A sketch of Katherine from a photo:

Colored pencil drawing from the same photo:

Joshua in colored pencil:

Tea time in colored pencil:

My cat Cleo:

And nothing like a self portrait to honestly examine where your face is going:

Self portrait in colored pencil:

Searching for Amelia

"Adventure is worthwhile in itself." Amelia Earhart 1897-1937

My painting buddy Marcia and I made the pilgrimage to Atchison, KS to see the birthplace museum of aviator Amelia Earhart. She was born at her grandparent's home, which is stunningly situated on the bluffs overlooking the Missouri River:

The street in front of the house overlooking the river:

The Amelia Earhart Memorial Bridge from Kansas to Missouri:

The Atchison riverfront docks:

I did a sketch of the house. Amelia's bedroom(she stayed with her grandparents until she was 11) is on the top right with a great view of the river:

A study I did from a photo of her in front of her plane:

I found out many facts about her that I hadn't known--she wrote articles for Cosmopolitan, she wrote poetry, and she designed her own line of clothing and luggage. Here's one of her poems:

Courage is the price that 

Life exacts for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not

Knows no release from little things:

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear, 

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings.

Nor can life grant us boon of living, compensate 

For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate 

Unless we dare 

The soul's dominion. 

Each time we make a choice, we pay 

With courage to behold the resistless day,
And count it fair.

She was a celebrity and had speaking engagements all over the country, but kept her mid-western manners. After she'd won some major award, a French newspaper asked, "but can she bake a cake?" She replied, "...I accept these awards on behalf of the cake bakers and all of those other women who can do some things quite as important, if not more important, than flying, as well as in the name of women flying today."

From acepilots.com:
In 1937 Amelia Earhart attempted an around-the-world flight. Flying a custom-built Lockheed Model 10E Electra, equipped with extra-large gas tanks, she would follow a 'close to the Equator' route, thus going one better than Wiley Post's northern, mid-latitude route. In her first effort, in March of 1937, she flew west, but a crash in Hawaii abrubtly ended that trip.

Starting on May 21, 1937 from Oakland, California, in the recently repaired Lockheed Electra, she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, stayed over land as much as possible. After relatively short flights to Burbank, California, and Tucson, Arizona, they next touched down in New Orleans, and then Miami where the airplane was tuned-up for the long trip. From Miami, they flew through the Caribbean, to an enthusiastic welcome in San Juan, and then to Natal, Brazil, for the shortest possible hop over the Atlantic, although, at 1727 miles, it was the longest leg of the journey that they completed safely.

They touched down in Senegal, West Africa; then eastward across Africa (via the dusty Sahal outposts of Gao, N'Djamena, and El Fasher) to Khartoum and then Ethiopia. From Assab, Ethiopia, they were the first to make an Africa-to-India flight, touching down in Karachi (then part of India), a 1627 mile leg.
From Calcutta, India they flew to Rangoon, Bangkok, and then Bandung, in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Monsoon weather prevented departure from Bandung for several days. Repairs were made on some of the long distance instruments which had given trouble previously. During this time Amelia had become ill with dysentery that lasted for several days. After a stop in Darwin, Australia, they continued eastward to Lae, New Guinea, arriving there on June 29.

From Lae, they took off for Howland Island, 2200 miles away in the Pacific. They never arrived.
Her next destination was Howland Island, 2200 miles away, the longest over-water leg of the trip. To aid in radio communications, the U.S. Coat Guard cutter Itasca was stationed off Howland Island. The Lockheed Electra took off from Lae at 0:00 Greenwich Mean Time. 8 hours later she called in to Lae for the last time. At 19:30, Itasca received the following:
"KHAQQ calling Itasca. We must be on you but cannot see you...gas is running low..."
An hour later, the last message came in:
"We are in a line position of 157'- 337. Will report on 6210 kilocycles. Wait,listen on 6210 kilocycles. We are running North and South."

There is still much speculation about what happened to her.

First Impressions: sketchbook paintings

“What I am after is the first impression - I want to show all one sees on first entering the room - what my eye takes in at first glance.” Pierre Bonnard (French Painter and printmaker. 1867-1947)

I love the unstudied freshness of sketchbook entries. The original idea, visual impression or emotional response to a subject is captured in a way that can sometimes get lost or over-worked in a final painting. When I capture something in my sketchbook, it's like using shorthand-- I'm not worried about it looking perfect or finished. The sketch is looser and more charged with the feeling I had at the time I put it down on paper than a painting that I've labored over.

Here's some sketchbook entries over the last few months:

The Missouri River was the reason St. Joseph was founded. I always imagine what it must have been like to come upon that river for the first time, when you were trying to get further west:

St. Joseph, Missouri has some incredible historic homes :

The Hall Street mansions are from St. Joseph's Golden Age. The Bill Osgood House, 802 Hall Street, was designed by Harvey Ellis and built by Eckel and Mann in 1890 for Alfred T. Smith, a prominent wholesale merchant:

The Pony Express started here:

My Aunt Ruth's house in De Funiak Springs, FL where my mom grew up:

My Grandma Castle's chair was old and green and rusted through in places, so I gave it a makeover: