Holidays 2017

I've had a quiet spell as far as sketching goes. I finally took the time to sketch a black walnut shell that I've been keeping since Thanksgiving. This will represent the holidays for me. I was the favorite uncle for this holiday visit and took my great niece and nephew to the park a few times to play and walk around. We collected some black walnuts we found and I showed them how to take the husk off and break them open and pick out the nut meat. They had now idea you could eat something you found on the ground. We spend time coloring, too. We don't get to see them more that once a year, so at their young age every meeting is a big new experience. That broken nut shell represents a lot of family time.

This sketch also represents the holiday because of our families traditions of having walnuts around with the nut cracker and picks. Wilma and I both had this in our youth and still have it around in our home during the Winter. I was raised with home-grown black walnuts that mom and dad would spend HOURS processing so that mom could add them to banana bread, cookies and cakes.

From an artistic standpoint that nut shell jumped out at me. There isn't one straight line in the whole structure. The shading expands quite a range of values and textures. It just had to be sketched. I've been keeping it around and finally took some time on New Year's Day to finally memorialize it. This was my first sketch with the upgraded fine nib in my Lamy Joy. Much better feel!