Category: Chatter

Midwest Farmhouse in Early Spring

I haven’t had time to do any artwork for the past four or five days, and I can feel it.  Colors, ink, brushes all feel like aliens.  To counter this, I watched a Peter Sheeler video – his pen work is phenomenal – delicate, spare, assured.  The same may be said with his usage of color.  With this in mind, I went ahead and did this.  The inking is okay; I didn’t do any drawing in pencil, but went straight ahead with a Micron pen.  From there, I applied color and tried to keep it simple, but my usual messy style took over.

White & Blue Flowers

After a lot of watercoloring, picking up a pen and using ink to draw feels really relaxing.  Adding watercolor to a pen drawing doesn’t need a lot of color, but it does require a bit of thought about light and shadow.

I thought about a daisy study of Peter Sheeler’s on YouTube – I remembered how very little color he added to his ink drawing of the daisy.  With this in  mind, I put in some greys and grey-blues.  I tried to apply the same concept to the blue flowers (which I want to call cornflowers, but don’t think they are), and to the grasses and leaves.  Below is my ink drawing, done freehand without a pencil sketch beforehand.  I am rather pleased with both – my inking skills are improving, as, perhaps, are my watercoloring skills.  Less is more has become more of motto than before!

A Loch

Up front, I use Pixabay frequently for their fine, royalty-free photos, whether as inspiration, or as an image to be painted.  Here, I used an image of a loch (found under the search term “loch” – how clever!).  I loved the vantage point and tried to catch it.

Here, the sense of being up above the rest of the world, in a field of flowers, on a beautiful day, is so well done in this photo, I just had to be there myself.  Scotland is one of those countries that is mystical and magical, and views like this only touch the tip of its beauty.

The daisies were especially challenging – so bright and white!  Negative painting and thin washes hopefully express them fairly well.  The DOF was another challenge, and it is a natural tendency to not leave well enough alone . . .

The Artist’s Palette

Today I am entertaining myself by watching watercolor videos on YouTube, along with ones on ink drawing, sewing, and whatever.  As I watch – looking up here and there from my practice – I decided after a couple of pages it was time to draw.  Why not an artist’s palette with watercolors waiting to be used?

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