Tag: pen

Practice Present Presented

My sister-in-law requested hand-painted cards for a Christmas present.  She’s getting them!  Out of all of these, 6 were from exercises I did following Peter Sheeler’s YouTube painting tutorials.  What made them particularly useful, to me, was that many of them had a lot of white space in them, such as white snow or flowers.  The other thing was the simplicity of composition – a few trees, a stream, some flowers.  While they look easy, I did need to focus on the videos to follow the sequence of painting, as well as to focus on what I was seeing.  Of all of them, I think the stream was the most challenging.

From using Peter’s videos to practice with, and to create cards, I went on to do two based upon photos I have taken.  One is a prickly pear which really does sit on a heart-shaped paddle, and the California poppy fields at the State Preserve.  The latter made me think of Monet’s painting of a woman in a poppy field – the brilliant colors against a sea of green.  Our poppies in California are orange and yellow, so no reds, but mixed in with these colors are blues and whites and so many other colors it is hard to imagine that much of California once looked like that in the springtime!

Below are the different cards I did.  Click on one of them to start the slide show.

Birch Trees in Snow
Daisies
Autumn Leaf
Laundry
Old Fence and Wildflowers
Winter Stream
Prickly Pear
California Poppy Reserve

Under the Pines

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Yesterday morning I met up with a friend, to chat, drink coffee, and sketch in the local botanical gardens.  The day was warm and sunny, and before you knew it, 2.5 hours had passed.  She did some wonderful pictures of cacti and tree branches, using only colors from a very tiny paint box!  Me, I need pen and ink to feel confident enough – I am still trying to make watercolors look like watercolors, instead of ink with colors.  I do like the ink-and-color thing, but I know I want to master solid colors.  So, after inking on site, I went home and filled in some colors, and more ink, and more colors, until I hope I got what looks like dappled light on rocks and cacti beneath some pines.

Being curious as to whether or not there is decent light / dark, I thought I would convert it to black and white to see.  Results are below.  I may go in and paint the bushes behind the rocks a bit darker in the center an to the right.

Cliffs at Mesa Verde

I had a brainstorm the other day:  Why not use vacation photos for drawing and watercolor subjects?  I certainly do have a bucket load of photos.  And, last summer we went to a lot of historical and beautiful places as we wandered through parts of the western U.S.  Here, a view from a cliff in Mesa Verde National Park.

Colors include indanthrene blue, quinacridone yellow, organic vermilion, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, phthalo green and Carbon Ink in a Pentalic watercolor book.

Between Thanksgivings

Yesterday, here in the U.S., was Thanksgiving.  We celebrated it with a few members of our family out of town.  Tomorrow, members are coming here for the big family gathering, from east and south and west.  So, Wednesday we made pies, and today we set up the tabbouleh, tzatziki, zhuk, and marinating chicken for tomorrow’s feast.  Lots of chopping and such, along with a fun grocery trip to a market that sells all sorts of foods not seen in the ordinary middle class market . . . this one caters to Middle Eastern, Indian, Asian, and Mexican tastes, so there is a lot of fun and strange food to be had.  On top of it all, it’s so reasonably priced!  If you enjoy cooking, nothing like an exciting market and a family which loves good food.

So, did I spend my entire day prepping?  No, I didn’t.  I did some napping, had some coffee, edited some photos, and then had an epiphany:  I can use my photos for subject matter, whether sketching, ink-and-color, or pure watercolor.  I went through a few photos from our summer on the road throughout the Southwest and Western U.S., to places like Mesa Verde, Ft. Laramie, Yellowstone, and Teton National Forest.  Lots of wonderful things to see.  Now, a lot of wonderful things to recall with a drawing . . .

Photo from Fort Laramie in Wyoming:

A quick ink-and-color sketch of the same:

They don’t really look like each other, but what the heck.  I liked the roof and chimneys against the blue of the sky.