During a 2-day cleanup of accumulated stuff we no longer need, some things I've been hoping to find for decades. We found:
1) A box of 24 hard pastels. (these date back so far that they cost just $4.50 but current cost for 24 hard pastels is nearly $40
20 Some long-missing Walter Foster art books. Anyone approximately my age who had a childhood interest in art knows of the Walter Foster books, and to me they are treasures. Cost when I bought them in Jr. High and High school was $1.00 to $2.00; now they run $9.00 to $25.00.
3) A falling-apart sketch book dating back to 1965. There were several sketches from this time frame.
4) A mostly unused pad of different colored paper that can be used for pastels, charcoal, drawing, and a few paint media.
Here are some of the sketches and one mediocre watercolor sketch from way back then.
1) A young horse from the late 1960s or early 1970s)...
2) Cowboy and rider working together, about to rope a calf or full-grown steer(same time span as above)...
3) A sketch of mine from 1965, my sophomore year of high school. I think I got the likeness pretty good...
4) Cowboy firing rifle while astride horse (again from 1965)...
5) Watercolor sketch, unsure of date but maybe in the late 1970s or mid 1980s; The bottom 45% of the image is where I was testing colors and values, and I noticed that my brushstrokes were loose and free, put down quickly and left alone. But with the sketch itself I tightened up and produced a horribly overworked mediocre mess.
6) Finally a sketch that my wife Pauline drew of me on Feb 10 1973, 9 months after we got married. The likeness is spot-on, right down to the lame, wispy mustache I was trying to grow then...
It was a real hoot rediscovering these things from so long ago.