Abbeydale xmas card

An Abbeydale Christmas (c)Susan Langdon 2015 watercolour and graphite on Strathmore CP paper 8 x 10 inches

Everybody made it in except for the chickens! From left to right that's Minx, Flora, Fauna, Tabby, Halle and Itty Bitty up on the roof. 

In Gratitiude

InkTober update

Have continued to meet the daily (mostly) challenge of an ink drawing a day. It's day 9 and I have 9 drawings so that works for me LOL. 

This one doesn't look like much now since it's the barest outline at the moment. When it gets painted in January hopefully it will more closely resemble the image that inspired it - a windowbox of pink petunias against white clapboard and black shutters. 

Most of my subjects have been floral but I've also done an old pair of boots, a peacock feather and two sheep together. Will be interesting to see what draws my attention (pun totally intended) over the course of the rest of the month. 

Day 2

Poppy seedheads (C)2015 Susan Langdon - 5x7 Strathmore CP

Today's drawing done with Pilot V-pen, which does wonderful things when you wet it. 

I may or not post every day, I'll see how it goes. I may choose to do a mass posting once a week of what I've drawn.

Inktober

Decided to participate in InkTober this year. I've read about this daily drawing challenge in the past but usually well after it's over. This year I put it on my calendar ahead of time so my aging brain wouldn't forget and it worked! 

In 2009 artist James Parker started the InkTober drawing challenge

My participation serves two purposes though - I do a pen drawing every day during this month which then provides me with at least 31 drawings that I can paint in January, a time of year that I often find myself lacking in motivation because it's not Spring yet. Win-win in my book.

Mason jar flowers pen and ink (C)2015 Susan Langdon 8x10 Strathmore CP

This one doesn't count towards the challenge as I drew it quite a few weeks ago but it gives you the idea of what I'm hoping to stockpile for the upcoming Dark Time.  Hey, it's no secret; I'm not winter's biggest fan. 

Started working on today's entry and ran into a little problem. Since I've been busy lately planning an upcoming bathroom reno and mucking out my closet, I haven't had my paints out for a couple of weeks, so of course I had to throw some on. I'm writing this post while I wait for it to dry LOL. Oh well, will just have to do another drawing to put away for January. 

Hoarding Bits and Bobs

I'm always amazed when something that seems to have gone wrong in the first pass can eventually be turned into a much better something with a little time and perspective. 

This was a random doodle basically done as a stream of consciousness painting last Fall. No pre-planning just sketch out a pumpkin and some indian corn using only my brush. 

Wasn't happy with it - the husks from the corn were going every which way, defying gravity; it just wasn't speaking to me. And yet, I couldn't put it in my scrap/testing paper pile. Fast forward to this year where I had forgotten what my original intent was behind the exercise and sat down to see what I could salvage. This is what I came up with.

The husks are still as willy nilly as ever but i feel like this was more what I was hoping for. Knowing me, I'll continue to play with it - the husks continue to cry out for more attention in terms of texture and shadow - but at least I don't feel like I should be using it to test colours on either. 

A Hawk and a Wolf, in Acrylics, Oh My!

It's done! 

Things have been quiet here because I've been working on a commission that I received this summer to paint a metal crosscut saw. Not my usual substrate but a challenge I was up for. The brief was it needed to contain the owner's last name, a hawk and a wolf. And the teeth needed to be up because they look like lots of "H"s  - they do - which echoes back to the name. 

First off, my hat goes off to the sign painters of old who did this kind of work day in, day out by hand. It takes an incredibly steady touch and a ton of patience LOL. I had to constantly tell myself to slooooow down. That patience came in handy as well as I had to adjust to painting with acrylics. 

They work completely differently from my familiar watercolours.  It's been about three years since I've had them out of the cupboard to play and while w/c will always be my first love, I don't want to let another three years go by before I work in them again. To that end, I've signed up for a self scheduling class on Craftsy, that I will get into this fall.

 Here's a closer look at the hawk and wolf. It's hard to see here but I tried to make the moon show some of its craters so that it wasn't just a big ol' blob of light. Quite pleased with my hawk. Fingers crossed the client likes it too!

Touille - completed

Touille (c) Susan Langdon 2015   watercolour pencil on  8 x 10 inch 140 lb CP Strathmore paper

She is done and soon to be on her way to her new home. 

Touille - updated

There's still a lot to do on this but it's really starting to feel like Tweet looking back at  me! So far this is just dry watercolour pencil. 

What I'm currently working on

Now that I've sorted out my Windows 10 issues with Blogger - seems Google and Microsoft just can't play nicely together - I wanted to post this start to my portrait of Touille for my sister's birthday. So far so good - the face looks like her. Now I just have to get her to sit still long enough so I can get her calico markings right! 

Once the drawing is complete, I'm thinking I'll play it safer and start out with watercolour pencils so that I can feel a bit more in control before I start hitting it with water. 

ETA: Seeing it here I can see I need to make her pupils the same size otherwise it looks like she's had some sort of neuro injury.

Something a Little Different

This card is done using a glue resist I had seen used on Pinterest. The pumpkins were 'drawn' with ordinary white glue which was then allowed to dry overnight. 


This allowed it to flatten out somewhat but in the areas where I got a little heavy handed it's quite dimensional! The glue is then outlined in ink and the rest painted in as desired. 

Doesn't really show it here but it's kinda neat in person, very tactile. I'll definitely be using it again with other subjects. 

Line drawings

 

 

Just needed to 'see' for myself these line drawings before I go any further. The one on the left is both front and back of a 5 x 7 in card. The image on the front of the card will be watercoloured; the remainder of the image, once it's completed, will either be coloured or left as just the ink lines. I've seen cards where the design is carried over to the backside and wanted to give that a go myself. Not sure I'm making my idea clear here but it will make more sense when I've posted the completed page.

 

I'm also fairly pleased with the whippet line drawing - trying to get the proportions right was a bit of a struggle but I think I got there in the end. 

More Card Ideas

Previously I've printed some of my work as A2 size notecards for use as either general notecards or xmas cards but lately I've been more focused on hand painted A7 (5" x 7") cards that will be one offs. Here's a sample of what's been swirling around in my brain of late.

  

I think the one on the left surprised me the most as it started out as dobs of pink and blue paint randomly placed on a cream coloured wash, with no idea as to what the final outcome would be. I stepped away from it for a few hours and Alliums came to mind when I revisited it. A few simple ink stems and I'm calling it done.

The Emergence of Orange

Didn't realize until I went to post this one that orange has suddenly made a more prominent appearance in my work lately. Definitely not one of my usual hues but perhaps I'm gearing up for autumn.

A Couple of Card Ideas

 

Playing around with some 5 x 7 watercolour cardstock that I had on hand. (It's always good to shop at home!) The one on the left incorporates some stamps I had along with some line and wash work. The puffin was painted from a photograph by a UK photographer named Gary Jones, with permission granted via the Paint My Photo website. You can see more of his work at www.portraitsofnature.co.uk

Just a doodle

Playing with my paints!

Shari's class

Signed up for an online class at Craftsy with Montreal artist Shari Blaukopf. This is my rendition of her sketch of the Flatirons near Boulder Colorado. In doing this I realized just how long it's been since I painted a landscape LOL. Overall this was quite successful. I have a few more modules to complete but I'm looking forward to incorporating what I'm learning into my own reference images.  

Painted on 9 x 12 140 lb cold pressed paper but my scanner bed is only standard letter size so the quality of the scan is less than optimal.

Beets- update

As scary as putting in the darks can seem, the impact they have is undeniable. I'm very happy with the beets themselves; now I just have to take a deep breath and go back in and tackle the leaves.

Of course that means making sense out of what now is just a jumble of green.

Palette Cleanup

I took a hard look at my paints this morning and realized there were a number of pigments that were taking up precious real estate in my every day palette that just weren't earning their keep. I'd assembled it last September and it made perfect sense at the time from a colour wheel POV. It just wasn't working well with how I'm painting now. Besides, once again the cat hair to pigment ratio had climbed to unacceptable levels LOL, so time for spring cleaning.

So, out with the old, in with some new, fresh paint. Winsor green, certainly a fabulous and very useful colour in the right application but a bit of a bully in my hands, got the boot. Along with Quinacridone gold, lemon yellow deep, indian red and permanent rose. 

New colours on probation are perm sap green, cobalt blue, winsor orange, nickel azo yellow, perm alizarin crimson and perylene maroon. I've also switched from my usual W&N burnt sienna to the pigment equivalent but differently named Mars brown by MaimeriBlu. I picked this up at a workshop I took a few summers ago but have never really used it outside of that weekend.

I also put out less of each colour than I have in the past so that I'm more likely to be working with fresh paint each time. I think that will help keep the saturation of colour that my work sometimes lacks - too much water and stirring of the paint just to activate it from its dried state that it comes out dull on the paper. We'll see if this makes a difference.

Beets

Definitely not a favourite vegetable to eat but they're lovely to paint. Trying to get the right earthiness of colour I mixed quinacridone magenta with sepia and the odd touch of indigo.

Looking at them here I can see I need to do some work on depth of field so they read as 6 individual beets, 7 if I turn a stray blob into the tip of another one. I'm happy with the far left one, now I just need to fix his friends!

EDM2015 Collage

I finally finished all of my challenge pieces AND figured out how to get them into collage format so they would all be in one place. Well almost all - the photo editing program I used had a maximum of 9 photos per collage so that meant some just weren't going to make the cut.

 Awww, too bad so sad that the little painter didn't make it. That really pains me LOL.

In looking at the whole though I'm really pleased with my output - I don't even think I could pick a favourite. My top five would be the cheesecake, the peppercorns still life, the beach, the mask and the toadstools.

Will definitely be doing this next year!

New Coffee Mug

Anyone who knows me knows that I practically have my coffee mug surgically attached to my hand. So when Touille decided to push my old one over just to see what happened - well let's just say it was a sad day in Nukiville.

I soon was on the hunt to find my new favourite mug. It had to be of good size and weight, fit well in my hand and then there's that aspect of je ne sais quoi - it needed to speak to me.

As soon as I saw this one I knew it was the one . Well, actually it's the two - it came in a matched set. So, should boredom strike the calico princess again, I'm ready.

Updates on unfinished EDM pieces

Continuing to work daily, here are a couple of updates of pieces started at the end of last month. The eggs I am forcing myself to leave alone, it's just too overworked already and I think I've salvaged as much as I can from it. They still look more like rocks than eggs to me and no, the random splattering didn't help LOL.

The purple martin house is only at the intermediate stage so there will be another posting about it when it's further along. I need to strengthen the shadow under the left side of the roof as well as the bottom of the house itself. And of course put the birds in!

 

9/6 - okay this is where I'm stopping. 

Moving Forward

While I'm extremely satisfied with my efforts and commitment to last month's challenge, I'm looking forward to the flexability of choosing my own subjects for my daily art. And breaking out of the sketchbook format, today's piece notwithstanding LOL.

I'm going to continue to do something creative every day but I'm relaxing on the daily posting for now and just see how it goes. If I find over the next week that one spurs on the other then I'll put that back in to my routine.

I have checked out the Every Day in June prompts and can fall back on them for ideas if need be. There's also another blog group that I want to check out that posts a different prompt every two weeks. They've been around for awhile so will have an archive of past prompts to pick from as well. Plus the Virtual Paintout visits Estonia this month. A plethora of riches awaits!

EDM2015 - eggs

These got terribly overworked and I'm still not happy with them. They look more like robin's egg blue stones than eggs. Have restated some lines here in pencil to see if that will help but definitely not a given.

They also would make more sense if done in a nest but that ship has likely sailed for this sketch. We'll see what I can come up with. (I'm writing this June 1st, having painted this much yesterday, the final day of Every Day in May challenge.)

I had an absolute blast participating in the challenge and I know my art is the better for it. I've tried a number of new approaches to my work, most of which I've been really happy with the results. I've also found that I'm problem solving situations with more confidence and greater speed.

Having said that I think the biggest thing to come out of this month is I've learned to slow down and be patient. Watercolour insists that I work at its pace and not my own. Accept that and all sorts of possibilities open up to me.

EDM2015 - a birdhouse or feeder

Just checking my perspective - close but not quite right yet.

EDM2015 - a faucet

There's so much more that I want to do with this but it has to be really, really dry before I move forward . Plus I need a little trial and error practice on another drawing so I can see if what I'm thinking will work will in fact give me what I'm looking for. That is the one downside to working in a sketchbook as  opposed to a loose sheet of paper - there's nowhere to hide the mistakes.

So all of that to say, this is as far as it goes today; more tomorrow. Shocking, I know LOL!

EDM2015 - a yard ornament or statuary

I wanted to do something different for today's look. These toadstools were a gift to our family from dear friends many years ago. I wanted them to be the front and centre, hence the background tree is graphite with a bit of help from my smudging fingers, just to provide an anchor to the sketch. 

   Okay, happier with that look.

Hmm, I always see much more clearly when I post things here. The right side of the biggest toadstool needs more of a shadow. Will fix that tomorrow - I'm done for today!

EDM2015 - something fuzzy or furry

Sometimes I know right away what I want to do for the daily prompt and other times I just want to throw caution to the wind and see what happens.

For this one, I decided to just google fuzzy and see what came up. This guy immediately drew my attention for obvious reasons, nevermind that any critter that wears apple green is a star in my book!

Meet the saddleback caterpillar! Funny, to me he looks like he's wearing a basketball jersey rather than a saddle LOL. I don't know where his real eyes are but mother nature sure gave him an interesting mask with the big green pair on his face. He will eventually turn into a stout-bodied much less colourful brown moth. If you see one of these look but don't touch - those spines will sting! Painted from an online image seen on a blog called the Walden Effect, using watercolour pencils and marker.

EDM2015 - a sign

 I had every intention when I started this piece to colour it in black, the way the original sign is, but when I scanned it I liked this look. So for now this is the way it stays in my sketchbook. That is not to say I may change my mind later LOL.

The sign was a housewarming present for my sister and brother-in-law from very dear family friends. It was the perfect touch to their new home.

For Abbey, with love.

EDM2015 - an apron or coverall

Not particularly inspired by today's prompt. When I think of aprons I think of my grandmother wearing hers as part of her daily uniform. She was of an age where every day of the week had a specific purpose - bake day, wash day, beat the rugs day - in addition to her regular chores keeping house.  I doubt the routine ever varied much.

So I wanted to do something non-utilitarian; no plaids or dreary little floral prints but something with a little colour and joy.

EDM2015 - some keys

Oh, I'm struggling with this one. I'm posting this at what I call the ugly stage. I seriously considered ripping the page out (there's nothing on the other side yet) and starting over but I am persevering. And yeh, it's meant to be viewed in landscape orientation but I couldn't be bothered to redo the scan.

If I can salvage this I will definitely be patting myself on the back LOL!



25/5 - okay this is as good as it's going to get. I don't even want to look at it anymore LOL. The keys are fine but I totally botched the background. This is where knowing photoshop would be a handy skill to have.

EDM2015 - interesting detail of a building

Well I decided to do a feature from a building that I used to pass all the time in my old neighbourhood. It's the spire atop the old 'Normal School' on Elmwood Ave.
When it first opened in February 1900, it was considered to be the most modern teacher-training facility in the country.

The structure is trimmed with cut stone and its once orange-red brick has now weathered to a pale salmon colour. Several miniature cupolas, typical of its Victorian architecture adorn the roof. It has served several education related purposes after the faculty moved to new digs in 1958. I'm not sure what is housed there now but it remains a fixture at the epicenter of the Old South community.

EDM2015 - something that is attached or hangs on the wall of your house

I promised myself when I started this challenge that I would do my utmost best to post every day and to share everything that I did, no matter the results. Up until now that last part hasn't been an issue, but oh boy, did I ever want to disregard it today LOL.

Hanging in our dining room is a print of Renoir's The Small Painter. 
It appears to have been done in sanguine pastel so I tried to reproduce that here as well. Renoir has nothing to fear from me. This barely resembles the original - I got just a tad carried away with trying to blend on the paper so this poor child's face just looks like s/he got heavy handed with mom's makeup!

Back to working on yesterday's detailed piece and looking for an interesting subject for tomorrow's.

EDM2015 - a spot you regularly sit to read

This one's going to take awhile because of the style I want to use, so the preliminary sketch is all I've got to post for now. I'm hoping for it to end up like the kitchen sketch I did for SBS last fall.

I'll probably be working on it off and on over several days, while I'm continuing on with the daily prompts. Will post it when it's finished. 

ETA 21/5:  now with ink and a bit more detail added.