-N- – Page 40 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Crocus – A Flower I Have Never Seen

I am not inclined to enjoy painting classes online unless they are done in chunks of short amounts of time. Shari Blaukopf’s most recent class, Sketching Spring Flowers, is one such class. In fact, all her classes are very much like this. Her style of teaching and painting are very fresh and direct, and up front, I think she is one of the most talented and unique watercolorists of our time.

So, taking the first section of the class, we are doing a small batch of purple crocuses blooming in her garden, bright colors after a long, cold Montreal winter. Well, I have lived in cold places, have seen tulips and hyacinths emerge from the snow, but never have I seen a crocus. One day! Anyway, this is the first of her flower studies. I can only hope someone else can tell what it is supposed to be.

My own painting is a bit muddy-looking as far as I am concerned. My paints were not as fresh as hers, but that is not the point. It is more about learning technique. It is hard to paint something from a photograph, and hard, too, to paint something completely alien. However, technique and color mixing are the point. For instance, thick wet paint. Let water do the work in the lighter areas. The experience is the point – but my problem is I am hasty. This painting took me about an hour, watching the videos and thinking about things. I wonder if ever anything sinks in! Despite that, exercises like this are always valuable …

Shari Blaukopf class; crocus; watercolor on Arches CP 140#. About 8×8.

Magic Fujicolor Panoramic Tree!

I haven’t done any film photography for about 2 years, but I finally took a roll of FujiColor 100 I had finished awhile ago in to the lab to be processed. No idea what camera I used. I asked for only processing, no scans or prints.

Once home, I ran the film through both my Pakon 135 scanner and then my PrimeFilm XA Super Edition scanner using SilverFast 8e (free version for this scanner). I ran it as negatives but used the infrared clean up on all of my images. Once all processed, I merged the 5 images which make up this one without doing any clean up post Negative Lab conversion. This image is the one I used with SilverFast, and I am pretty pleased with the end results. I didn’t do any color shifts or anything in post, just used my standard frame and trimmed the raw edges down a bit.

I really like my Pakon scanner – I got it in the days of yore when cheap – and have a dedicated XP laptop for use with it. However, when I went looking for a scanner which was not consigned to the world of XP only, I came across the Prime Film on recommendation by a video on YouTube by “Shoot with Coops”. I have scanned negatives with VueScan, but there is not clean up. This roll of film was horribly scratched and really would have not been worth any time in removing the dots and scratches by hand. SilverFast works really beautifully, I think, and even though I had to putz around to get things working, straight out of scan and Neg Lab, I like the results.

I plan to get out and do more film photography as summer progresses. Film just has an extra something which digital lacks. I like scanning my own film – it saves a lot of money for one thing – but there are a lot of frustrations which go along with it. Dirt, scratches, and software. Yes, film can be scanned, but the quality of the scanner and the software can make or break it for you. Silverfast is often offered as a free scanning software. What I like about it is that each scanner has its own specific version, and the free one is really, really good. I use the Epson V600 for 120 film, and that works well enough with the native software, but not for 35mm.

So . . . no drawing today, but a foray into another picture making process.

Verbena & Lavender

Years ago I bought a tiny pot of Lemon Verbena, and since then it has been a wonderful presence in the patio garden. It’s hardy and easy to take care of, needing a bit of pruning, water, and occasionally fertilizer. I cut it back every year and sometimes when it’s dried up because of neglect. It always comes back. Lemon Verbena has a wonderful, light citrus scent, and the leaves are actually really good in cake!

Lemon Verbena flowers are nothing spectacular. They are teensy and have a rather frond like appearance and sit atop the branch of the verbena. They develop side branches and leaves, and if you there a lot of them, it’s really quite delicate and pretty.

On the other hand, the lavender plant nearby has rather showy purple blossoms on a stalk. I think this variety is Spanish Lavender – but I dunno! I have about 3 or 4 lavenders running around, each different, but each with a lovely lavender scent.

More in my fanfold sketchbook with ink and watercolor.

Waiting to be Planted

For the past several days I have had a lot of little gardening projects going on. I transplanted a number of seedlings into pots. I also started seeds. I have some seedlings I have sent on to a new home. This season I have vegetables already setting fruit, even it won’t mature for weeks, and seeds which are sprouting, and seeds I am waiting to sprout. Vegetables this year include winter (hard, yellow) squash, bush beans, radishes, lettuce, pepper of the hot variety, tomatoes, parsley and cilantro.

I also have a lot of flowers. These include hummingbird and butterfly mixes all thrown together in the front flower bed as well as foxglove, larkspur, polka dots (which I think are scabiosa or pincushion plants), carnations, nigella, Mexican sunflowers, Titan sunflowers (they can grow 12 feet tall with seed heads 24″ across!), and moonflowers. Herbs include the usual rosemary, sage, parsley, thyme, basil, but I have also added summer savory and a few Asian ones for variety. Mint and lemon balm and lemon verbena.

With all this work, there has been little time for sketching or painting. Thus I decided, much like my “Not Taken Vacation” that a sketchbook dedicated to this year’s gardening efforts would be fun to do. I have a fanfold Chinese calligraphy book I am using. It is a fanfold, so I can spread it out if I want to create a panorama, or use individual pages.

Above, just an individual page to get a sense of the paper. It is very soft and very absorbent, as well as a creamy color that is far from white, but not yellow. I figured my first foray into this documentation would be best served with a simple ink and watercolor drawing to see how the paper handled. Overall, I like it. The soft paper requires a bit more caution with the water, yet it does seem to handle it very well.

So, a few pony packs with seedling waiting for a home on my gardening table. My hand trowel is not well represented, but such is life! Meanwhile, I can enjoy the sweet smell of a freshly turned bit of earth and dream of flowers and garden produce.

Hill Canyon at High Noon

Another picture from the hike last year in Hill Canyon. It was a bright, hot day, but pleasant nonetheless.

So many people talk about post processing with digital – and film – images. Some say no, don’t do it; others don’t care; others think AI is going to ruin it all. I have to admit that I like pushing photos to make them more interesting or to create a mood, and even the use of AI is fine – but, using AI should be acknowledged.

Pushed here, but no AI, but I did use generative fill in PS to fill in some gaps. This was a panorama of about 10 images I pasted together. Maybe generative fill is AI, so I might be guilty here . . .