Month: November 2017

Setting Up a Palette

I have a Quiller palette from years ago that was a complete mess.  Cleaning it up took a bit of time and effort, especially as it had not been used for years, and the paints were ancient.  Most likely, the colors could have been retrieved, but as I wanted to start fresh, I cleaned it up – not an easy task!  I soaked the palette to loosen old colors, and for about 2 weeks kept adding water to a particularly stubborn well, until finally the colors all came loose.

I filled it up this afternoon after considering the colors I have on hand, and the ones which I am currently using in a travel palette.  I decided to use the 18 colors I have in one travel palette, and then add others.  Some colors are totally new to me, such as the quinacridone colors (gold, rose), some cobalts (violet, teal, green), and newer variants of old standbys.  When putting in the colors, I found one that I had not labeled!  A mystery color – but it might be a yellow ochre, though it does not quite seem right.  Kind of funny since I was so meticulous (ha!).

Other new colors include indanthrene blue, which is a rather interesting and intense dark blue, rather an indigo, along with a couple of Daniel Smith real stone pigments – lapis lazuli genuine and sodalite genuine.  Old favorites are also present, such as the cadmiums, Hooker’s green, and Payne’s grey, along with the umbers and siennas.

It was time to put together a larger palette for the studio.  Travel palettes are small, and not really conducive to studio work, which for me means a lack of freedom and a more stingy approach to color and water.  Travel palettes have limited space, but room to play is always welcome!  The Quiller palette is generously sized and has plenty of wells, which makes it a particularly attractive one for me.  Additionally, the wells are set up to indicate primary and secondary colors, with room for other colors in between, as you can see below.

Frozen Creek, Dawn

This is an interpretive / impressionist sketch.  I may have adjusted the colors a bit much in Lightroom.  I did this at 6:30 a.m., barely awake, and without any light except what broke through yonder window.  Same with the scan.  I’ll check it out later today, when I am at work or something.  Interesting to see the white spots in the scan I cannot see in my gloomy room . . . .

Nikon V3 at Midnight

Last night I was getting ready for bed and decided to just do a quick drawing of something – anything! – before hitting the hay.  My camera caught my eye.  Instead of being blue, it is really black, and the strap is black, and it was on a copy of something in black and white.  Strong shadows, too, from a lamp on the desk.  What the hell . . . just do it and then paint it.  As I like the effects of lines – Sailor’s Carbon Ink in a fountain pen – I decided to just use primaries, and blue was the choice for the strap, red and blue (i.e. violet) for the strap, a green for the rest of it.  I wanted to catch the shadows – the light and the dark – more than anything.  And here we are, half asleep while doing it.

Coffee Cup and Iron Gall Ink

I have been playing with iron gall ink, in this case McCaffery’s.  Iron gall ink is easy to make and is the traditional ink over the centuries.  It is waterproof, but with age turns the sepia so often affiliated with old manuscripts and drawings.  I was playing with my goose quill pen, and a steel nib pen as well, working on calligraphy, when I decided to try it in a sketchbook.  Given how busy I was this weekend, this is all I could accomplish, but I will say that the ink held up beautifully as the watercolors were added after the drawing.