3 Materials Challenge: Still Keeping Up
You may have heard that the Gulf Coast has experienced some very unusual weather this week. I’m not sure exactly how much snow we received here at our house, but it was in excess of 6 inches—maybe more like 8 or so? Whatever it was, it’s much more snow than I’ve ever seen fall in my whole life. We were excited at the prospect of 1 to 3 inches, to put it into perspective.
Anyway, that’s been exciting, but also a little stressful. We don’t have the tools in place to clear the roads (because we rarely need them), and most of us who live here don’t have much experience driving in snow or ice. In short, it’s difficult if not dangerous to travel much until the snow and ice have gone away. That means staying home for a few days and hoping there are no emergencies.
Then there’s the fact that we’ve been dealing with temperatures that are very cold for our area. Again, our homes aren’t equipped for this, so we have to take extra precautions to try to avoid frozen pipes—and at the same time, the extra strain on the local electrical system threatens to leave people without power, so we’ve been asked to conserve at key times.
To put it briefly, it’s been beautiful, but it’s also challenging in some ways! We still have a lot of snow in our yard, but temperatures are gradually rising, and by this weekend we’ll have highs in the 60s and no more freezing at night.
I’ve taken a lot of photos and videos, and if I get around to it, I’ll share more at a later date. For today, I just have a few photos relevant to my sketches. Speaking of that, I’ve been keeping up with my 3MC sketches, though to be honest, I’m mostly going through the motions at this point. Still, since I did it, I thought I’d try to catch up before too much time passes.
3 Materials Challenge: Day 21
This day’s sketch was based on a snowy scene down at the bottom of our property. There’s an old live oak at the fence line, and beyond that are pastures covered in snow. It was still snowing when I took this photo.
Materials used:
- Uni-ball Vision Needle micro (black)
- Coloray color pencil (purple)
- Coloray pencil (light blue)
3 Materials Challenge: Day 22
This one looks pretty weird without some context. It’s a sketch of a snow lantern Donald made on Wednesday—something he used to build as a child in Sweden. It’s basically a pyramid of snow balls with a tealight placed inside. Below are some photos of him constructing it and views of it in twilight and as darkness fell…
I first sketched and shaded it with three materials, as seen above. But then I decided I wanted to break the rules and introduce a fourth material to try to indicate the glow a bit better. I used a watercolor pencil that was nearby. Not sure it was an improvement, but there it is!
Materials used:
- Uni-ball Vision Needle micro (black)
- Ohuhu marker (light blue, 82)
- Hello Hobby brush marker (medium blue)
- Staedtler Karat watercolor pencil (creamy yellow, 43)
3 Materials Challenge: Day 23
I didn’t base today’s sketch on a single photo, but rather on several photos/videos and memories of Luna and Frodo hopping through the snow and standing with snow up to their bellies.
Materials used:
- Uni-ball Vision Needle micro (black)
- Ohuhu marker (turquoise, 100)
- Crayola crayon (turquoise blue)
