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This is a view of my neighbor's rooftop through the high windows in the living room. When I'm lying down on the living room floor, the windows frame the sky. One of my favorite things to do is lie there and watch the clouds pass by. It's a treat when a plane suddenly but slowly crosses through the frame.
This is the final piece in the "Things I will miss about the house" series. There are other things I will miss, but it's hard to draw "quiet and safe" and I don't feel like drawing the stove or toilets. I've been enjoying this new drawing on top of the painting discovery. And I never thought I'd enjoy perspective drawings. That's something that I used to loathe when I was younger, but have found strangely soothing this time around.
For a while now I've been hearing pigeons on the roof, around the kitchen skylights. There was a lot of clucking and rustling going on and I realized they must be building a nest. The more activity I heard, the bigger the nest became in my mind. Soon enough, with each cluck and rustle, I pictured a village of nests and started to worry that their feathers and bits of straw would plug up a vent and start a fire. Louie worried that their droppings would corrode the roof. This can't be happening, we have a house to sell!
Finally, Louie's son Jeremy came over with a ladder and the two of them climbed on the roof to destroy the pigeon empire. But they found nothing. No nest, not even a feather. The pigeons had simply been stopping by on their way to somewhere else.
This reminds me of what goes on in the mind. How each small cluck and rustle of thoughts can knit together to become a big fear of something that may not even exist. Maybe those thoughts weren't for you anyway, and were just stopping by on their way to somewhere else.
The actual view from the house is much, much wider than what I could fit on the page the last few days. One whole side of the house is made up of windows. I quickly sketched the windows this morning, thinking I could paint them when I got home. I returned later than expected, the light had completely changed, and I no longer had the time to paint. So I told myself "You have 5 seconds to paint what catches your eye". It was the mountain range and the setting sun reflecting off the top of an adobe wall.
The Sandia mountains in the middle of the day. This is a painting where I felt something "click". There were some bright highlights on the edges of the walls that were too thin to catch with a paintbrush. I loved the way the colored pencil grout looked in the tile paintings I did the other day, so I thought I'd try that for the highlights. I started out drawing the rooftops accurately, but I quickly got bored. I like the way it's an impression because that's what it feels like when I look out the window, like I'm looking at the mountains over a jumble of adobe rooftops.
This is what I get to wake up to every morning. It makes getting out of bed a whole lot easier.
Today's drawing captures the shape of the Sandia mountains better than yesterday's, less craggy at the top. I often can't see details like that when I'm doing a drawing, but I see them instantly when the image is on the computer screen. Sandia means "watermelon", and you can see why when they turn bright pink during the sun set. When the sun is rising, the shape of the mountain reminds me of a whale emerging through the surface of the ocean.
The view is what I'll miss most about the house.
I waited all afternoon for the moment when the Sandia mountains turn bright orange. It lasts just minutes. As soon as I put down a wash of blue sky the full moon rose straight up from behind the mountains. It was one of those magical moments as an artist when your subject notices you noticing it, and plays right back with you.
I'll miss having a water filter that's built into the refrigerator. You just step right up with your glass and, ah, cool refreshing water! When my friend Sarah visited, she said that she and her husband agreed that they will have arrived when they have a fridge with a built in water filter.
I have to admit, this was one of the most boring subjects I've attempted to draw. I know I'm trying to challenge myself to try new things, but jeez...
