Oh, That Scurvy Wench 2013-W33

Enough procrastinating! said I, and went to pull the sixteen colors called for in Pastel School lesson 2: a study of a lemon, lime, and orange — which is what put the word "scurvy" in my mind to begin with.  The pastel set I got out comes with a handy color guide & index, and so using those I navigated through the reds and oranges okay.  When I turned to the yellows, something seemed a little quirky.  Yet I made do and then came the greens.  Now, I mayn't be able to tell Oxide of Chromium from Baryte Green, but I definitely can discern a pale green from a dark brown.  Yet per the guide, in the pale green slot was in fact a brown pastel.  How could I have gotten things so muddled up?  Ask anyone who knows me; I am nothing if not methodical.

Garden Sedum Bloom, 2001

One at a time I pulled out a half dozen greens, made test patches, compared them to the color guide and tried to sort things out but instead of clarity I just got more confused.  And vexed.

Disturbed by the disorder and perplexed about how it could have happened...  finally it dawned on me an hour later.  I'd let a friend use the set to dabble with one day.  And when she finished, (not knowing better) she put the pastels back willy-nilly.  "Oh, that scurvy wench!"  I might have lightly cursed just after having the flash of insight.

But quickly enough I calmed, relieved to have sorted out the "why".  Thus leaving only the undoing.  I decided that further efforts to repatriate the misplaced pastels is too tedious for now.  I'll leave that for another day.  Even though, sadly, that means a further delay in undertaking Pastel School lesson 2.

I'm out sketching en plein air today with the Truman College Regulars, and with no pastel study to post (ahem), I thought it might be fun to put up my very first sketch from my first sketchbook.  A life drawing in watercolor pencils, I think, of a common sedum in bloom.  As near as I can figure, I sketched it in August 2001, just before "9/11".

A dozen years later, the world has moved on and I've gained a little more skill at artmaking.  I like to look at this drawing every now and then because doing it made me feel as if I could create something more artful than doodles in the margin of my calculus notebook.

As drawings go it's not awfully good — but what matters is, neither is it awfully bad.