Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays to all.

Thank you for stopping by my little corner of the world.

 

                                                                            

Virtual Paint Out - Rome

This month's Virtual Paint Out location is Rome. So much to see and choose from here.

If you want to see what I was working from click here.

I pushed my Bienfang sketchbook paper well beyond its water media capabilities and ended up overworking it.

But while my perspective is not perfect, I was quite pleased over all with the drawing, which took about 15 minutes to complete. I do wish I had scanned it before adding in colour though.

I really need to do a value study of the original and compare it to mine so I can see where I would need to fix it if the paper were to tolerate it. I know in my heart and mind that value studies are a key tool to being happy with the finished product but my lack of patience always gets in my way. 

ETA- In the meantime, I put this into drafts while I searched out how to do a screencapture - easy, peasy in the end. So here are the images in grayscale. This really does help me to see the value and perspective lines better and not get caught up in the details, which is what usually happens.

 

Okay, definitely need to add routinely doing value studies to my New Year's art resolutions LOL!
 

Another post

Nothing posted for a couple of weeks and then two in one day. This is one of the sketches I did when we were studying contour drawings a number of weeks ago in Sketchbook Skool.

I wasn't sure how I felt about it at first but now, after not seeing it for awhile, I'm quite taken with the results. Gotta love complimentary colours!

It was done using a photo reference from a class I took years ago where we all brought items in according to the theme of the week - fruit, vegetables, glass, metallic etc and then spent the afternoon putting together still life setups to photograph for our own reference libraries.

Bird's eye view II

Several months ago, I had done a small watercolour sketch of Abbeydale for Nan and Tom's summer party. That led to a request for a bigger version incorporating part of the hamlet surrounding them.

It took me awhile for my brain to get the perspective right when working only from satellite photos but I'm finally happy with the outcome. The preliminary sketch looked like this-
 

I've scrubbed the name out since it didn't make the final cut anyway and for privacy sake because it includes friends' names. The final piece is a combination of pen, watercolour and watercolour pencil work.

Sketchbook Skool 'Seeing' Week #6

This past week's instructor was Liz Steel, an Australian architect and sketcher. The key point being tackled is dealing with a complicated shape/pattern or structure by breaking it down into its simpler components. In the second assignment we'll be doing a building but first up is a patterned teacup and saucer.

Small thumbnail sketches show the detail of the pattern on the saucer and one panel of the cup. Grid lines are used to establish proportions. Since this is meant to be a quick sketch and not an exact replica, wonkiness is  perfectly acceptable. Thank goodness because my cup looks like it's getting compressed by the text to its right LOL.  I enjoyed doing the exercise and it's such a sensible way to approach a complicated or heavily patterned object.

At the Printers

Finally got my cards off to the printers this morning, hopefully to be picked up tomorrow so I can get them packaged up for sale. If things work out to plan that only puts me 4 days behind where I was last year at this time. Considering my xmas muse was late arriving - I tried to book her in for mid October but she was having none of that - I'm quite happy about that.

I ended up with four new designs, just not the ones I originally thought I would. In the end, the row of xmas balls seen below just didn't speak to me when it came time to putting it into card format. Neither did Claire the Christmas sheep (sorry Alison, by next year she should be ready). However, I did manage a humourous snow man and a more traditional bit of pinecones, holly and ribbon that I liked. These two, along with Rudy aka One Cool Dude and this year's Nuki and Friends will round out the class of 2014.

Note to self: images for printing were scanned at 300dpi with contrast increased to 20 in the hopes that the colours will be much more true to life when they're printed. Last year's colours needed to be more saturated - hopefully they now don't come out too garish, yikes. Time will tell.

Sophie waiting for Santa

Another card

I'm certainly not the first to put a reindeer in sunglasses but I do like the look of this fellow. The white was masked out with ordinary scotch tape and the rest of the paper flooded with paint. I continued to play with it until I had the mottled background I wanted.

 

I think Rudy is going to make the cut for xmas cards this year. I've also been playing with a circle template that I bought recently and that led to thinking about xmas balls, which led to the next card idea.

 

Instead of watercolour, these are coloured with Tombow markers, a new medium for me since I started with sketching classes this summer. They easily retain their vibrancy and dilute well when hit with a bit of water.

I was attempting to get some sort of depth of field by varying the size of balls and thickness of line but it didn't really work. Oh well, I like them anyway. 

 

 

 

 

SBS Seeing week 4

One of my favourite nature artists, Cathy Johnson, was our instructor this past week. Several of Cathy's books have made it into my art library over the years and I've followed her blog as well. You'd be hard pressed to find a more generous soul and she didn't disappoint in her teaching.

We were to paint from nature and now that the cold weather has returned some old friends have returned to the yard. Cardinals are plentiful around here and the males in their red brilliance are certainly eye catching but I do love the soft tawny colours of the female of the species. This was painted from a photo taken on our farm.

I'd love to spend more time doing the gesture drawing of birds from life, trying to capture their essence before they move or fly away but that will have to wait until later in the winter, when time slows down again.

The next lesson for Sketchbook Skool has already arrived in my inbox as well as the first concept from Sketching Now - Foundations. These two courses overlap for a few weeks so between classwork and getting my xmas cards in production - well let's just say my time management skills are getting a good workout as well.

Lest We Forget

This is my rendition of Georgia O'Keefe's Red Poppy in watercolour.

Coming along

Nuki and I had a lovely chat this afternoon and most of the major decisions are made except we can't decide what colour his hat band should be. I'm pretty sure it's going to end up being a dull red but decided to let that percolate overnight in case I have a lightbulb moment. I just can't quite let go of the idea of plaid but am not sure it would look the way I envision it and I think it would be a distraction so it stays blank until tomorrow.

Looking at it here I see I also need to darken his hat. That, plus all of the shadows still need to be put in so fingers crossed he'll be finished tomorrow. Then I just have to get him into card format so we can go off to the local print store sometime this week.

Cat hair not included - dang stuff gets everywhere!