Tag: Art

Categories
Bay Area Parks Berkeley Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

Funky Tilden Carousel Sketches

Tilden Park Carousel, ink & watercolor 5x7"
Tilden Park Carousel, ink & watercolor 5x7"

I almost didn’t post these sketches from the Tilden Park Merry-go-round because I was so frustrated drawing them. But I think it’s interesting to see when others post things that challenged them so here you go.

I try to find something positive in work that doesn’t succeed overall. The one above was the last one I did as I was leaving. I really like the trees in the background and most everything else EXCEPT the messed up shape of the building that houses this wonderful 100-year-old carousel.

Carousel structure, ink & watercolor, 7x5"
Carousel structure, ink & watercolor, 7x5"

I did the one above sitting on a bench inside the building trying to sort out the perspective and the way the whole thing fits together. Meanwhile the smells of burning popcorn and greasy hot dogs were making feel rather ill. I really struggled but in the end I think I got the understanding of what is a merry-go-round and how it works, though you can’t tell from this mess.

Carousel quickie, 7x5"
Carousel quickie, 7x5"

Another one that I struggled with. The little girl calmly rides while the horse seems to be expressing my struggle. And boy are the perspective and ellipses way, way off!

Get me out of here!
Get me out of here!

Another quickie with the horse expressing my feelings: “Get me out of here! It’s too hard to draw!” My friend Cathy did some nice sketches of the carousel, posted here on our Urban Sketchers blog.

Categories
Art supplies Drawing Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Studio

Painting Pt. Bonita Part 2: Oils and Oil Pastels

Point Bonita #3, Oil on Gessobord Panel, 12x9"
Point Bonita #3, Oil on Gessobord Panel, 12x9"

After I did the watercolors I posted yesterday, I set up the sketch, the watercolor and my iPad displaying the photo on the table beside my easel and painted the scene once again, this time with oil paint. After a month or two of being totally frustrated with oil painting, trashing everything I made and about ready to give it up, suddenly painting was easy and I was loving it!

Point Bonita Painting set up in studio
Point Bonita Painting set up in studio

The entire painting worked like a charm except the foreground mount of dirt and ice plant which was the last thing I painted and which I did over and over. It kept trying to call too much attention to itself. I think I finally successfully muted that foreground while still keeping the light on it.

Then I was looking at some delightfully free and vibrant oil pastel work on Aletha Kuschan’s blog which inspired me to try the scene in oil pastels too. I know nothing about oil pastels so I quickly read a few how-to’s on the web and dug in.

BUT before I show you the drawing, I have to say that I made a fatal misstep: I chose a sheet of the totally wrong paper to work on. Instead of starting small on a sheet of white or blue pastel paper, I chose a large sheet of brown Stonehenge drawing paper. What was I thinking? Brown under a turquoise sea?

Point Bonita #4, Oil pastel on Stonehenge paper, 17x13"
Point Bonita #4, Oil pastel on Stonehenge paper, 17x13"

It was impossible to cover all the brown paper because even though the oil pastels got really thick in some areas—so thick that no more could be applied—in other spots they just wouldn’t cover.

Although my Holbein Oil Pastels are very old, purchased for a small project I did more than 20 years ago, they were still in good shape. But I didn’t have the right colors, and I had trouble blending. I didn’t have blending stumps, didn’t want to use my fingers and was wearing gloves which didn’t work. I tried a paper towel but it just smeared and left paper towel lint.

Compared to paint, oil pastels seems like a lot of extra work, having to fill in so much area by scribbling over and over. And it was messy; my gloves and the pastels got dirty from colors transferring onto them.

But maybe if I knew what I was doing, or had used the right paper it would have been easier or less messy? (Not to say that oil painting isn’t messy! Everything I own has paint on it!) I like the look of oil pastels done well so I’ll try another experiment with them. But on the right paper this time! Any tips?

Categories
Landscape Marin County Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Painting Pt. Bonita Part I: Watercolor

Point Bonita, watercolor, 7x5" in journal
Point Bonita #1, watercolor, 7x5" in journal

When I got frustrated with painting from life last month, I took a break and experimented in working from the same photo in different media. First I did the sketch above in my journal from the photo below which I took at Point Bonita in the Marin Headlands last year.

Point Bonita photo cropped to 9x12"
Point Bonita photo cropped to 9x12"

I took the photo during a very cold and windy plein air paint out where I did a plein air sketch (posted here) and planned to eventually paint the scene in the studio. As you can see, I did what I call “imaginating” (a combination of imagining and exaggerating the colors I see in a photo or a scene) instead of rendering the photo as is.

Point Bonita, Watercolor, 12x9"
Point Bonita #2, Watercolor, 12x9"

After I did the little journal painting at the top of this post (which I like very much), I tried it again  4 times bigger on a 12×9″ Arches watercolor block (above). It was fun to get back to painting in watercolor on something other than a small journal page. I didn’t use any masking on either of these, just painted around areas I wanted to stay white.

I enjoyed working larger on a watercolor block–I could work at a slant, mix juicy washes, and not have to worry about trying to keep the pages flat and the journal open. I’m falling in love with watercolor painting all over again.

Stay tuned for the oil and oil pastel versions tomorrow.

Categories
Art supplies Bookbinding

Monkey Business: New Journal Bound

Monkey Business Journal, covered in flannel, 8x6"
Monkey Business Journal, covered in flannel, 8x6"

When I was a kid I had a sock puppet that looked like this so when I saw this fabric at the store I couldn’t resist. I used a piece of it to cover a cushion on a stool about 5 years ago and then put the rest on the shelf. I needed to bind a new journal right away and was too lazy to go shopping for book cloth or to make my own. Hence off the shelf and onto the book!

Monkey Business Journal inside
Monkey Business Journal inside

For the end papers I used some lovely warm grey paper a friend left at my house from a family history book-making project I was helping her with. This was the first time I could use my case-bound journal making instructions all the way through without needing to revise them and it went really quickly.

Monkey business journal
Monkey business journal

I’ve actually been using this journal already for a couple of weeks and writing this post prompted me to name the journal which I hadn’t yet done. Calling it “Monkey Business” will help me to lighten up as I use it, to get more playful and fool around and let go of “right” and “good” which always trip me up when I get in that judgmental place when I’m drawing, instead of just enjoying the act of looking and sketching what I see.

And since it’s red flannel it’s warm and cozy–perfect for fall sketching.

Categories
Art supplies Bookbinding Drawing People Self Portrait Sketchbook Pages

End of Tablecloth Journal Self Portrait

End of Journal Self Portrait, colored pencils, 7x5"
End of Journal Self Portrait, colored pencils, 7x5"

As I complete each journal I draw a self-portrait for the last page. I really liked the ink drawing I made for this one but then totally messed it up when I was painting it and tried to “fix” something. The more I tried, the worse it became. So I scanned the sketch and used Photoshop to remove all the color, leaving me with just the original line drawing below.

Line drawing for self portrait
Line drawing for self-portrait scanned from bad watercolor sketch

From Photoshop I printed the line drawing onto a piece of the same watercolor paper I use in my journals. Since the ink from my inkjet printer is water-soluble (darn) I couldn’t add watercolor. I used Faber-Castell POLYCHROMOS colored pencils instead and tried to keep a light touch after having overworked the original.

I cut out the sketch to fit into the journal (and cover the yucky sketch), and glued it down with a glue stick. The completed journal is pictured below, covered with a piece of an old tablecloth that lost its “oil cloth” coating when I washed it years ago.

Newly bound journal; cover from old tablecloth
Completed tablecloth-covered journal

It’s so interesting to me how these end of journal sketches turn out. I’d had a rare and unusually good night’s sleep and was in a good mood when I drew this one. What they say about beauty sleep seems to be true, even in sketches — I definitely look more youthful and pretty in this sketch than some of the others I did under less optimal circumstances.

You can see previous end of journal self portraits at this link.

Categories
Art supplies Bookbinding Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Sketchbook Pages

How to Turn Potato Chips Into a Sketchbook

Foil bag of potato chips, ink & watercolor, 5x7"
Foil bag of potato chips reflecting on red cloth, ink & watercolor, 5x7"

When my friend Mindy sent me a fun little gift box of potato chips (which were invented in her town, Saratoga Springs, in 1853–read funny history here), I was smitten by the cute box (photo below). Then I opened the box, saw the foil inner pouch and had to try to draw it (sketch above, on a red cloth).

Box of Saratoga Springs Chips
Box of Saratoga Springs Chips

The box was charming, a replica of their original packaging from 1853. I remembered seeing  journals created from packaging on the fabulous Make a Book a Day blog where Donna Meyer binds and posts a new book almost every day. In August she did a whole series of recycled packaging books, from KitKats and Snowballs to root beer books.

Saratoga Chips Journal front cover
Saratoga Chips Journal front cover

So I grabbed a sheet of Stonehenge Kraft-brown paper and the excellent Gwen Diehn book Real Life Journals: Designing & Using Handmade Books to find out how to make a pamphlet book and got started.

Continue reading “How to Turn Potato Chips Into a Sketchbook”
Categories
Albany Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash People Places Shop windows Sketchbook Pages

Evening Outside the Burger Depot

Burger Depot, Ink & watercolor, 5x7"
Burger Depot, Ink & watercolor, 5x7"

Trying to get in one last outdoor evening sketch session of the season, we sketched at the bottom of Solano Avenue in Albany. I stood under a street lamp and by the time I finished drawing it was dark out.

The proprietor of the Burger Depot who has owned the shop for over 30 years saw me trying to paint standing, with my palette and water on the ground, and brought over a plastic chair and a little table for me. The street light and light from inside the shop gave me just enough light to see what I was doing.

I was initially drawn to the scene by two seedy looking guys sitting in a window seat but they left before I could draw them. Fortunately the other two guys eating there were wonderful models who kept returning to the same positions, making it easy-ish to draw them.

Categories
Art supplies Drawing Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Painting Rose Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Will You Accept This Rose? (War of the Roses Part II)

Will You Accept This Rose? Yes, Finally. Watercolor, 7x5"
Will You Accept This Rose? Yes, Finally. Watercolor, 7x5"

After all the struggles of the previous day, I was determined to succeed in painting a rose and decided to give myself a break. First I rearranged the colors in the palette, putting them in my prefered, mostly color-wheel order instead of helter skelter as they were, and replaced several colors (see below for color chart).

Revised Schmincke Palette chart
Revised Schmincke Palette chart

(WN=Winsor Newton, S=Schmincke, DS= Daniel Smith, H=Holbein):

Top Row: WN Transparent Yellow, S Cadmium Yellow Light, DS New Gamboge, S Cadmium Red Light, WN Permanent Alizarin, WN Permanent Rose.

Middle Row: WN Violet, S Ultramarine, WN Cobalt Blue, H Cerulean Blue, WN Winsor Blue, DS Indanthrone Blue.

Bottom Row: S Thalo Green, WN Sap Green, S Yellow Ochre, WN Burnt Sienna, DS Indigo, S Titanium White (the latter will probably be removed since I’ve never successfully been able to incorporate white into watercolors).

Second to Last Rose Test, ink & watercolor
Second to Last Rose Test, ink & watercolor

The other thing I did to give myself a break was that after I made the second to last rose sketch above from life, I decided to work from a photo of the rose.

Continue reading “Will You Accept This Rose? (War of the Roses Part II)”
Categories
Art supplies Drawing Flower Art Glass Ink and watercolor wash Painting Plein Air Rose Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

War of the Roses, Part I: Schmincke Watercolor Review

Schmincke Rose Saga #1, ink & watercolor
Schmincke Rose Saga #1, ink & watercolor

On the next test run of my new Schmincke palette that Roz introduced here, I painted some roses on a tablecloth in the sun on the deck. While the Schmincke pan paint is lovely to use, and the palette a good size and design, the colors frustrated me. Their version of rose called Permanent Carmine (PV19) is much redder than the Winsor Newton (PV19) Permanent Rose I rely on for pinks and several other colors didn’t appeal to me.

In the color chart below, the top and bottom rows are the original Schmincke colors that came with the set. I added the colors in the center row by filling empty half-pans from tube paint in the space designed for adding extra pans.

Schmincke palette original colors plus added middle row
Schmincke palette original colors plus added middle row

The colors (abbreviated above) are:

Continue reading “War of the Roses, Part I: Schmincke Watercolor Review”
Categories
Art supplies Drawing Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Painting Plants Plein Air Sketchbook Pages

Lavatera Clippings In Amaretti Cookie Can

Lavatera Clippings in Amaretti Cookie Can, ink & watercolor,7x5"
Lavatera Clippings in Amaretti Cookie Can, ink & watercolor,7x5"

I love this old can that once held Amaretti cookies. After trimming some branches off the giant Lavatera bush by my deck, I decided to paint the cuttings. The cookie can was the first thing I spotted that would hold water and flowers.

I used the new Schmincke watercolors palette I recently bought on sale at Wet Paint. I love the palette but after a few trials, added and replaced some colors which I’ll write about next time. The Schmincke pan paints worked beautifully in the hot sun, releasing juicy flowing paint with just a touch of a wet brush.

I think the sketch captured the feeling of heat and strong light and the funky little table with a dirty glass top looks just like itself.