Palette – Ink, Yarn & Beer

More Podocarpus Trees

I am trying out different ways to paint plein air in my back yard, which is nothing of any beauty being just dirt and podocarpus trees (also called plum pines). It is going to cost an arm and a leg and a first born child to get it done the way I want, but such is life. In the meantime, use it to my advantage – like lots of container plants!

Anyway, I set up a plein air easel on a tripod I just bought for $20.00 and it did a good job. I clipped my large sketch book to the easel and put a lightweight travel watercolor palette on it. I sat on my travel stool. These details are for a future post.

I painted one podocarpus tree with outlines and more traditional ways of applying color in layers; that is the one on the left. The one on the right is direct watercolor. In the middle is a stump in direct watercolor and a few sketchy little camphor tree shoots from the root system still in the dirt.

I painted both trees to practice both ways of painting as well as to check out the plein air set up. With the tripod low to the ground, I could put water and such on the ground next to me. The plein air palette and sketchbook were propped up on the easel attached to the camera tripod. I sat on my stool. Everything was fairly comfortable, within reach and easy to get. The height was good. I think I might not want to sit down for a long time while painting, but it is something I want to experience.

So, though the painting subject is podocarpus trees, the real focus for painting was the plein air set up. It worked pretty good. I have another easel to use, and I think I am beginning to get a nice set up for my future career as an old lady painter in the countryside or patio, depending . . . .

New Year Stuff

I am going to hold off on political commentary. Instead, it seems that this New Year has brought about a couple of changes. Two are chosen, one is a necessity.

First of all, I added a new set of colors on my watercolor palette. It’s kind of fun as it mixes things up – you can get too comfortable with colors you use every day. I like to shake things up a bit when I get too cosy, so I added things like verrditer blue and returned a least favorite color, viridian, to my palette. Other colors, too, which I cannot recall right at the moment, but it seems this new palette will get me some brighter colors. Here is a painting I did with these new ones:

Next, I moved my sewing around. I had bought a sewing cabinet several months ago, thinking it would work in the studio. Nope! Too crowded and claustrophobic. I closed it up and moved back out to the dining room. However patient my husband is, the clutter got to me far more than it got to him. As a result, earlier this month I moved a book case from the bedroom into the studio and placed the cabinet where the book case was. And, it works! Yes, I do have to close things down and adjust to having things in different places, but it does the job, and the dining area is not a disaster.

Finally, my computer crapped out on me 2 times this morning. The first time it froze watching a YouTube video. Rebooted. Then, after walking away from my computer for 10 minutes, the monitors were black and nothing would reactivate them except another reboot. Off to Costco to get a prefabricated Windows computer. It works great. Now I have some software installed on the new computer and using it to write this blurb. Meanwhile, I am copying files, which will take hours, from the old computer to an external hard drive so I can put them on the new critter. It will take a bit of time to get all cosy again, but c’est la vie.

So there you are. New Year, new activities.

The Muddy Palette

Before I knew that gouache works best fresh out of the tube, I filled a palette up just as I do with watercolors. Let’s face it, paint ain’t cheap, so I wet these paints over and over. Finally, most of the colors are used up and it is into the sink to soak for now! In the future, fresh paint. That will be a really new event for me because I don’t tend to paint like that. I made swatch cards of all my gouache colors (more than 20, less than 1000), so I plan to use those as I consider paints in future paintings.

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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Logitech Mouse in Red

This is perhaps one of the first paintings – sketches? – that I have done since re-visiting watercolors a few weeks ago that does not depend on ink lines to make sense of what it is. It’s still floating in space, as the shadows are not especially strong. There are a few things I like here. One is how there is a highlight in the read of the mouse. Another is the central brownish panel on the side of the mouse, which is a mixture of carbazole violet and Naples yellow. The black outline of the mouse is in Daniel Smith’s Genuine Sodalite, which I picked up some time ago. It’s a rather nice blackish color. The blues in the background / foreground are from Daniel Smith’s Lapis Lazuli Genuine, which, like the sodalite, I picked up on a whim. It will be interesting to see how these two paints work.

I also set up my studio palette the other day, choosing a variety of colors to fill my Quiller palette. I did a color study and labeled all my colors, except one, which I think might be yellow ochre – or not!