Category: Watercolor

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Drawing Every Day Matters Gardening Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Hydrangeas (EDM: Fresh Flowers)

Hydrangeas

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge is to sketch fresh flowers. These hydrangeas are from my hairdresser’s shop, Circle Salon in Kensington, CA. The shop is always filled with multiple bouquets of her stunning home-grown flowers–all of them more interesting than anything you’d find at the florists. Julie’s an amazing gardner and a great hairstylist too. For the series of Saturday watercolor classes I’m teaching, she’s letting me visit the shop on Fridays and take home some nice specimens for the class.

I wish my garden produced such beautiful flowers, but it takes more than wishing and I don’t seem to have the time, energy, or willingness to use chemicals required here in the fog belt of the San Francisco Bay Area, to do more than wish and water.

I drew directly from the flower with a Micron Pigma and then painted with watercolor in my large watercolor Moleskine.

Categories
Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Happy Birthday Robin

Robin bike

Today’s Robin’s 31st birthday. Lately his life’s been an uphill climb, working very long hours for a good cause. But as long as you’re still climbing, you’re not over the hill… so there’s still lots more to look forward to. I’m so proud of all he’s accomplished. He’s really quite amazing.

I can’t help thinking back to his birth and my life as his mother. I’ve grown along with him, starting with the discovery upon his birth that I had to quickly become a grownup. I could no longer be the free-spirited, hippie artist, selling my batiks and ceramics in the daily street fair on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue (much like San Francisco’s more famous Haight-Ashbury), hitch-hiking here and there, following my whims.

Before he was born my silly idea was that I’d strap him onto my back like a papoose and continue making pottery, up to my elbows in wet clay. Instead I was up to my elbows in mashed carrots, baby spit-up, poopy diapers, and piiles of laundry…and then it was time for another feeding…another diaper… He slept little and neither did I. But we survived and he thrived and 31 years have flown by. Motherhood…wouldn’t trade it for anything!

(Ink & watercolor in Moleskine watercolor notebook)

Categories
Drawing Illustration Friday Watercolor

IF: Opposites – Heads and Tails

Cats Head Tail Opposite

This week’s Illustration Friday cue is “Opposites” so here are the opposite ends of Busby and Fiona. I was teasing them with a kitty treat to get them to pose for photos in the first picture, and they were standing up to look out an open window in the second. I wonder if I need to put in a background so you can tell they’re standing on their hind legs.

I started with pencil on 8 x 11 Arches watercolor paper, then added a little ink with a Micron Pigma and then painted with watercolor.

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Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Desk Junk (Testing Noodlers Ink)

Desk junk

My painting group came over tonight, as they do most Wednesday nights. We were all sitting around the living room while I finished my awful Healthy Choice TV dinner (I’d barely gotten home before they arrived). Everyone was tired from working all day, and we were trying to get motivated to move to the studio. Finally Judith got up, singing loudly (and beautifully), and marched off to the studio so we all followed.

That lumpy brown thing is a sea-sponge that my quirky little calico cat, Fiona, likes to snatch off the table and wrestle with. Her favorite torture victims though, are my wonderful Smartwool Socks—which I have to hide from her or she’ll nab them, jump into the (empty) bathtub and wrestle them until they’re full of holes.

Yesterday I was bragging about how confident I am in my drawing skills now, so of course tonight I felt like I couldn’t draw well if my life depended on it, and nothing came out right. But in the interest of daily drawing and posting, here it is anyway.

I started this sketch to test whether Noodlers Ink would bleed when painted over with watercolor. First I drew the top left box and then I painted the yellow border over it. When I rubbed it with the brush the ink bled and washed off. The arrow points to that spot. I didn’t have the problem anywhere else on the page because I applied the paint with a light touch, letting the paint, not the brush touch the paper.

I used my new Lamy Safari fine-point fountain pen, which I’m liking a lot because it can do thick and light fine lines. What I don’t like about it compared to the Micron Pigma pens I usually draw with, is that it takes a while for the ink to dry so it’s easy to smudge if I’m impatient and it beads up a bit in the Moleskine sketchbook (this was in an Aquabee).

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Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor Wet Canvas

Wet Canvas WDE: Peacock

Peacock

This was my contribution to the Wet Canvas Weekend Drawing Event this week. He was drawn in ink and then watercolored in my sketchbook. There’s always great photos to work from there, but I’ve gotten so interested in drawing from life that I hadn’t been doing the WDE lately. Couldn’t resist trying the peacock though.

I used to think that getting a drawing right would take too long so I used to trace my subjects from enlargements of my photos onto watercolor paper. My time was limited and I just wanted to PAINT–I thought that was the fun part–and I had no faith in my drawing ability. Now, after only a few months of daily drawing, I feel confident enough in my drawing to start drawing directly in ink most of the time.

And I’ve come to value and enjoy pictures that are drawn, not perfectly, but with personality and feeling and verve. Of course it’s nice to be able to get it right, too, but the most important thing is the pleasure I get from the drawing and the understanding that comes from really seeing deeply the things I’m drawing.

Categories
Drawing Gardening Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Wildflowers

Wildflowers

I needed to slow down a bit today so after telecommuting this morning, I took a sandwich out to my backyard, read for a while and had a lovely half hour nap in the perfect high-70s breezy sunshine. In one corner of my yard I have a small patch of pretty wildflowers that my friend Barbara gave me in May as little unidentified seedlings. I think the bell-shaped flowers with the thicker green stems in the back are penstemons, but I have no idea what the red-stemmed more delicate ones are in front.

I did the drawing with a new brown Micron Pigma in my watercolor Moleskine and then added watercolor. I really like the way the brown pen lines look. When I started drawing I saw flowers, leaves, and stems. But with each minute of drawing I started noticing more–funny little buds, squigglies, sprouties, spirals, tiny fuzzy bean-like thingees, open mouths, pointy things, rough things, shiny things.

My favorite thing about drawing is when the words go away and it’s all about shapes and colors and light. Then whole worlds of detail and specificity open up where at first there was just one named thing, like “a plant.” Here’s a little close up detail view of the same picture (click to enlarge).

Wildrlowers-detail

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Colored pencil art Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

A bike ride for ink and coffee

Peets Coffee 4th Street

I took a Sunday afternoon bike ride to Berkeley’s 4th Street, an upscale little shopping street in a formerly industrial zone by the railroad tracks, about 4 miles from my house. People come there to do some recreational shopping and to dine, and many dress up in show-offy clothes. I felt a bit dorky arriving in my hand-me-down, shiny black bicycling shorts partially covered by a big, old white t-shirt with a B. Kliban picture of a cat painting a messy picture on the front, a bike helmet and bike shoes.

I found the shop, Castle in the Air, that carries Noodler’s Ink (highly touted by artists in the Every Day Matters group as the only waterproof ink that won’t clog fountain pens and great for use in the Lamy Safari pen). The gentleman working there insisted that Noodlers is not waterproof and showed me his smeared sample of the ink that he’d brushed with water (in a cool little handmade book with samples of all their many, many inks). While he was persuasive and fun to talk to (being another art supply lover and an artist) I decided to buy the ink and try it for myself. My Lamy is supposed to arrive tomorrow so I’ll see whether the combination is as great as people say it is (and if it magically makes my drawings as good as theirs!)

Then I crossed the street to Peets Coffee, got an iced latte, and found a table in a hidden corner on their little patio. I drew this with my Micron Pigma (which IS waterproof) in my large watercolor Moleskine. I added some watercolor pencil and water with my water brush but decided to finish it at home with real paint since I didn’t have the right colors.

I also experimented with adding some overheard conversation fragments into the drawing. The guy in the middle with the sun glasses didn’t stop talking the whole time I was there, so many of my scribbles are from his stories about his herniated disk, learning to drive, rude New Yorkers (he’s one), Oprah’s show about women being embarassed to talk to their gynecologists, Italians, and on and on. Instead of being annoyed, as I might have been, it was fun being a spy and writing down bits of his blathering.

As I got up to leave I noticed an attractive man sitting at a table in the sun who was watching me and smiling. I smiled back and felt flattered for a moment until I saw him moving to my table out of the sun as I walked away.

Categories
Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Watercolor

Draw a Recipe (not): EDM Challenge #75

Non-Recipe

This week’s Every Day Matters challenge was to write and illustrate a favorite recipe. I felt guilty that I haven’t been putting any effort into cooking in order to spend more time in the studio and couldn’t think of a favorite recipe it had been so long since I’d looked at one. Then Anita, an amazing botanical and nature artist on the Botanical Arts group on Yahoo wrote that she has a little plaque in her kitchen with these words and then I knew what to do with this challenge! Now I can hang this in MY kitchen and stop feeling guilty for my lackluster meals.

I already had the vegetables out for the watercolor class I’m teaching that started this morning. Often students find drawing and painting vegetables to be an easy way to get started in watercolor. But this group ignored the easy veges and jumped right into complex paintings. They’re such a talented group. I think I’m going to learn as much from them as they will (hopefully) learn from me.

This is watercolor on Arches hot press paper. I dragged out my old caligraphy fountain and dip pens, but they wouldn’t work right on cold press paper so I switched to hot press paper but they didn’t work on it either. And the ink wasn’t really waterproof (though it was waterproof enough to thoroughly stain 4 fingers). So I gave up on the caligraphy pens and just used a marker, which I’m not liking much, but, as my wonderful boss Ruth often says, “Good enough is good enough” or “It’s close enough for jazz!”

Categories
Drawing Illustration Friday Watercolor

Illustration Friday: Sacrifice

Sacrifice Sheep Lambs

Who understands sacrifice better than mothers? Or lambs?

But No, No, No, the mom is NOT about to sacrifice the baby for the stew pot! I hope nobody thinks I meant that. It’s supposed to be a scene of motherly love and sacrifice but I guess it could look like one of those Britney Spears or Michael Jackson child-endangerment moments. But really, Mom’s not endangering her baby–she’s just trying to cook while holding it. Really, moms are always standing at stoves holding their babies on one hip. I think that’s why my hips are a little crooked. Too many years of holding tots on my hip while I cooked, vacuumed, did laundry, etc.

Ink & watercolor on Arches watercolor paper.

Categories
Drawing Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Bedtime snack

Cookies and milk

Trader Joes ginger cat cookies and a glass of milk–a yummy little bedtime snack drawn quickly with ink and watercolor in my large watercolor Moleskine–now I get to eat them and go to bed!

When Cody was here the other day he saw the big round plastic bin of cookies on the kitchen counter so he popped a handful in his mouth and ate them. Then he saw the label which said, “Cat Cookies.” Knowing I’m a sucker for every kind of kittie treat, he was sure he’d just eaten cat food. He was relieved when I told him they were just animal cookies in the shape of cats, and weren’t cat food. I’m convinced that the expensive stuff my cats eat is probably better than half the stuff I cook, anyway!