I haven’t been doing much urban sketching or dream drawing lately, while I try to complete a couple of commissioned dog portraits (that are taking forever) and attend figure/portrait drawing sessions and do other life stuff. But here’s a quickie from sketch night at the laundromat, a favorite place to sketch. I’m glad I have my own washer and dryer so I don’t have to go there to do laundry, but I do enjoy the perspective challenges and patterns of rows of rectangles, circles and black and white shapes, as well as the little still life of soap and baskets.
These were gouache sketches from a couple of months ago that I’m just now getting around to posting. I’m still loving gouache but have been missing using it.
I’m working on two commissioned dog portraits in oils so have put aside most of my other art projects temporarily. I’m enjoying the difficult challenge of painting two very similar dogs with dark brindle fur for two different owners but I’m missing taking the time to draw my daily dream images, play with gouache and work on painting people portraits.
I really tried to focus on two things with this portrait, getting the drawing right and keeping the gouache colors light (gouache dries darker). For once I managed to keep a tilted head tilted in my drawing–for some reason my brain always wants to make everything upright and symmetrical. It doesn’t surprise me since I learned that the image that comes in from our eyes is upside down and it’s our brains that convert it to right-side up. My brain definitely has a mind of its own…oh wait a minute–it is my mind!
Below is the original pencil drawing over which I painted the gouache. I wish I could show you the photo I worked from, but I think those are only meant to be visible to members of Julia Kay’s Portrait Party, which you can apply to join on Flickr and play too, if you want to.
Whiskey, Portrait of Mini Aussie, oil on Gessobord panel, 8×10 inches
I had so much fun painting Whiskey, a Miniature Australian Shepherd, for her owner Diane. I started with a rough sketch (below) on vellum tracing paper (erases easily and is strong) and that’s when I discovered the heart-shaped spot above her nose. I’m not sure if it’s just a reflection or an actual marking in her fur but it was one of those joyful discoveries that happen when you look closely at things.
Preliminary sketch of Whiskey, graphite on vellum tracing paper, 8×10 inches
After sketching her, I printed out an 8×10″ copy of the photo and traced it onto the Gessobord using a sheet of graphite Saral Transfer Paper between the photo and the panel. Ideally I would work on a drawing until it perfectly matched the photo and then transfer the drawing to the panel, but on commissions I need to work a little more quickly than my imperfect drawing skills allow.
Below are 1) my painting and my reference photos, 2) cropped and 3) original. Isn’t she incredibly adorable!
Whiskey, Portrait of Mini Aussie, oil on Gessobord panel, 8×10 inches
Practicing gouache with found items. The lipstick with purple case I found on the street, the journal at the recycling center’s little “shop” where you leave things you don’t want and take things for free. The pear and jar lid I found in my kitchen so I guess they aren’t officially found items. The cigar box the journal is sitting on was a freebie from the local smoke shop. I love cigar boxes so much! This gouache sketch made me happy…feels like I’m starting to get it.
Susan’s Dinner at Gaumenkitzel, graphite and gouache, 7×9 inches
When we met a Gaumentkitzel for sketch night I’d already had dinner so just ordered a decaf and sketched Susan’s dinner instead. I added gouache when I got home.
Zorn Palette color chart in gouache, 10×8 inches in A4 Moleskine
In trying to learn more about gouache I made a few color charts. I’m using mostly M. Graham gouache which I like much better than the Winsor & Newton and Schmincke I used before. The Graham gouache is creamy and brilliant, rewets well and doesn’t smell (like the W&N). I found that using fresh-squeezed gouache is more fun to work with than rewetting dried paint, but frugality keeps me trying to reuse dried. The best solution is to set up a palette for each session, squeezing out tiny blobs, adding more as needed.
Above is an exploration of the Zorn palette in gouache, a limited palette using only Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, White, and Black. The black paint, when mixed with white, is meant to serve as blue since it is a cool color that can look blue next to warm colors. Next I want to try using it in an actual painting.
M. Graham Gouache paint chart, gouache in A4 Moleskine, 10×4 inches
Above is a chart of my gouache colors straight from the tube and mixed with white and each other. Sadly when I removed the masking tape it pulled off some of the paper from the extra large Moleskine watercolor notebook that is my current journal. I don’t recall previous Moleskine WC notebooks having that problem but I’ve switched to low-tack tape now.
Before ordering any new brushes specifically for gouache I wanted to see how the brushes I already had might work so did the test below. I found a few that I liked and ordered a couple of others. I’ll do another post about my gouache palette and brushes I’ve settled on soon.
I painted Kathleen (from the Julia Kay Portrait Party) side by side with the flower below but decided to post them as separate images. I’m loving gouache but really struggling with the way light colors turn so much darker when it dries. I actually lightened the sketch above in Photoshop so that it wouldn’t look so scary.
Azalea in Gouache, 7×5 x 5.5 inches
I found this flower (I think it’s an azalea) growing along the sidewalk in the neighborhood and picked off a blossom to paint. The flower is too dark because of my lack of experience with gouache, but I had fun painting it. Gouache is so much fun and I’m especially loving M. Graham Gouache. Now to just learn to mix colors about 4 shades lighter than they look! I mastered doing the opposite with watercolor so I’m (almost) sure I can do it with gouache too.
Tacubaya Awning and 4th Street Berkeley, ink and watercolor, 5×8 in
I’m going to post often for the next couple weeks to get caught up on all the things I haven’t posted because of continually choosing painting over posting. I’m also going to try to write less and keep it simple so that I can get the images online quickly and get back in the studio. So here are 4 sketches that got orphaned from last year. Above is the view from a table under the awning outside Tacubaya on 4th Street in Berkeley.
Rocking Horse and Junk at Pallet Space, ink and colored pencil, 5×8 in
The Pallet Space was a junk shop going out of business in Oakland where we sketched one evening. An amazing collection of junk and trash ripe for sketching.
Cow Glass Found, ink and watercolor, 7×5 in
Someone wrote and asked for a print of a previous sketch of my cow glass that I’d sold so I offered to paint it again but still haven’t gotten it just the way I want it.
Leaf Sketch with QOR watercolors, ink and watercolor, 5×7 in
I was experimenting with some sample QOR watercolors. I haven’t fully explored their possibilities since I got seduced by gouache and haven’t looked back at the QORs since then.
Portrait of Millie, oil on Gessobord panel, 10×8 inches
This painting was a labor of love: love for my sweet Formosan Mountain dog Millie who has come a long way (literally and figuratively) and love of painting. Millie was rescued from the streets of Taiwan as a 4 month old feral pup and flown to SF with some other rescued pups. She was very fearful and independent (e.g. standoffish and stubborn) at first, but after one year together she is now a very happy pooch who makes me laugh every day with her quirky ways.
I love painting dogs, and gladly accept commissions to paint animals of any kind (including humans). You can see photos of the work in progress as I painted Millie below.
I started with some sketches (posted here previously) and then took photos of her in the studio to paint from. (The little bow on her collar was from Mud Puppies Tub and Scrub at Pt. Isabel after they washed off the sticky brown mud from her dive into the bay at low tide). I did a drawing on tracing paper from my favorite of the photos, corrected the drawing by taping it to the iMac monitor to compare to the reference photo and then transferred the drawing to a Gessobord using Saral Transfer Paper. I used Panpastels for the first block in and then began painting with oils, starting with her face.
Reference Photo with Dirty Nose (she’d just finished burying a bone in the garden using her nose as a shovel)
Drawing on tracing paper
Drawing on tracing paper taped to iMac to compare and correct from photo
Pan Pastels ready to sketch on panel after drawing transferred
Drawing transferred and PanPastels applied
Starting painting with her face since if that’s not right the rest is irrelevant
Painting blocked in and first layer started.
Panel all covered, time to adjust
Background work, adding and reducing details
More work on background, fading out darks on the right
Portrait of Millie, oil on Gessobord panel, 10×8 inches
Jana Bouc, Artist 