Inktober #6 was really hard to make a choice about! Monsters? Drooling bassett hound? Nah – pie! It’s apple season and birthday season and thus, drooling for apple pie. Homemade, of course, with plenty of fresh apples and spices.
Eat your heart out!
Category: Chatter
Inktober #5: Chick(en)
I do not draw animals well . . . but was surprised and rather pleased to do this one. I found a picture of baby chicks – chickens seem too complicated to draw! – and did a rough pencil sketch, then a pen overlay, erased the pencil, and here ya go. Total time about 3 minutes.
Inktober #4: Spell
With my sincerest apologies to Charles M. Schulz and the gang over at Peanuts! I couldn’t resist.
I’m really not much of a cartoonist, so doing these silly little sketches is getting me to think about how things look on a page. Pencil first, pen next, then water-soluble graphite.
Apple
Scanning a painting is a bit of trick – here, you can see that the scan had some dark shades in the corners, not reflective of the smooth, bright white of the paper. Fixing that issue changes the actual colors, which in this scan are much closer to the actual painting. So, here is the imperfect scan with perfecter colors.
This was probably the most challenging of the 3 botanical paintings I have done so far. The highlight in the apple was a challenge, as were all the spots and stripes. The colors I used were all labeled as transparent on various websites, and they included yellow ochre, lemon yellow, Payne’s grey, permanent alizarin crimson, quinacridone burnt orange, lemon yellow, and nickel azo yellow. Manufacturers varied to include W&N, Daniel Smith, and M. Graham.
What I have found that seems to pull the final painting together is to place a large, light glaze over various areas of the painting. For instance, on the left I used a pale yellow-orange glaze to pull the warm tones of the painting together; on the right, I used a combination of alizarin and orange and grey to create a cooler contrast. In the high light, I used a very light yellowish-alizarin mix.
Inktober #3: Roasted
Well, there are political roasts, and roast chicken, and roasted peppers. And coffee! I do love my coffee – thus, my tribute to “roasted” for Inktober #3!
I must say, I have not expected to see where this Inktober challenge led me. I thought something really simple, like some roasted bell peppers, but instead, I started thinking of integrating one sketch (coffee beans) with another (coffee plant) and then a coffee cup, and finally, a tribute to Columbian coffee, which is really misspelled and should be “Colombian.” Oh, well.
This is done with pen-and-ink along with water-soluble graphite.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 