One Year/100 Paintings - #33 - Unfinished Figure - A rather blobby figure painting attempt from an earlier live model drawing session. Watercolor and Gouache in 8 x 5 Moleskine Watercolor Sketchbook.
One Year/100 Paintings
#30 - One Year/100 Paintings - The Village - white gouache mixed with watercolor in pocket Stillman and Birn Beta series sketchbook. Study from a Morguefile.com reference photo on lunch break.
One Year/100 Paintings
#29 - One Year/100 Paintings - PIneapple - gouache and watercolor in Moleskine watercolor album. I was inspired to paint this pineapple by a photo I took at my sister's place in Florida, though I didn't paint it until returning to Hanover.
One Year/100 Paintings
#24 - One Year/100 Paintings - Tugboat at the Baltimore Inner Harbor - Plein Air painting with Urban Sketchers Baltimore - gouache and watercolor in Moleskine watercolor album. This was the second painting of the day and though I do like the look of the painting, I feel that the tugboat appears to be sinking, much like the Titanic.
One Year/100 Paintings
#22 - One Year/100 Paintings - Something’s fishy... More practice with gouache and watercolor, this was a quick study from a Morguefile.com reference photo during my lunchbreak. Painted in pocket Stillman & Birn Beta Series sketchbook.
Painting With Coffee
Week 12 - Painting doodles with coffee. I have seen numerous photos on Instagram of people painting with coffee and also painting at coffee shops, and I thought I'd give it a try. At the beginning of the week, I mixed up a batch of coffee paint using instant coffee at a super concentrated strength. I cracked open a brand new Strathmore Visual Watercolor Journal and began my coffee paintings. I didn't make any sketches with pencil, I went straight in with the coffee concoction and just made doodles roughly based on a few photos, with some of them just being images that came out of my head.
I mostly painted on my lunch break at work, able to complete two doodles a day due to the amount of time it takes for the sticky coffee paint to completely dry. Painting with the coffee was very relaxing, as the scent of the strong coffee mixture wafted through the air around me as I painted. The first painting of what appears to be a wild man, or as one of my friends described it, a rock star - developed after starting to paint a face. I tried to loosen up a bit on the next painting of my cat by adding some drips, but my painting doesn't really look like a cat, instead more like a cat/racoon. I looked on instagram and YouTube for inspiration and tips on painting with coffee, and there are far more talented coffee art painters out there than I could ever hope to be.
As I look over the paintings from this past week, I think that I should definitely have made them more loose with coffee drips, splatters, and a couple of coffee cup rings. I still have my coffee paint mixture, perhaps I'll go back and create a few more paintings using those techniques.
Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - Mixed Media art using Prang Professional Watercolor Pans, Derwent Aquatone Pencils, Pocket Brush Pen, and Uniball Signo White Gel Pen.
Projects waiting to be completed and art supplies to be tried.
"Create-A-Thon" 2017 - A Year Long Creative Experiment
I've just completed my yearlong 2016 Film Camera project but I've been thinking about what I want to accomplish for 2017 for a couple of months now.
After years of being out of art school and with our children all grown, I've been sketching and creating projects with renewed artistic energy the past 2-3 years. The local newspaper took notice of my instagram postings and included me in a story early last year about artists carving out creative time while working full time jobs. I've been trying to squeeze in time to sketch and experiment with new art supplies or processes all year long while working on the the film camera project which brings me to my project idea for 2017 - a year long Create-A-Thon!
I will be trying out a new art material or process roughly on a weekly basis, depending on how much time I want to spend on each one, while blogging about my experiments and posting photos. My bipolar mind wants to try so many things and my studio is filled with no end of creative supplies that I've been buying like crazy with A.C. Moore and Hobby Lobby coupons. I have mounds of sketchbooks as I can't pass up a good looking sketchbook when we go to a new place to visit or I take my son shopping for art supplies for school (he's in the fine art painting program at MICA).
I still love film photography and will continue practicing it in the new year, but I would like to narrow it down to just a few of my favorite cameras, which currently happen to be ones using Fuji Instax Mini and Wide films. At some point during the year I will also try to get into my darkroom that I set up over a year ago.
Here is a list of materials and processes I will be using for Create-A-Thon 2017:
1. Derwent Graphitint pencils
2. Derwent Inktense pencils
3. Derwent Aquatone pencils
4. Peerless watercolors
5. Prang Professional Pan watercolors
6. Prima Decadent Pies watercolor pans
7. Prima Classics watercolor pans
8. Prima Tropicals watercolor pans
9. Coptic Stitch Sketchbook
10. Gelli Printing
11. Museum sketching
12. Urban sketching
13. One Sketchbook, one pen, one week
14. Watercolor Painting
15. Oil painting
16. Acrylic painting
17. Oil pastel
18. Mixed media
19. Doodles
20. Live model drawing
21. Take a class
22. iPad drawing in Procreate
23. iPad drawing in Paper by 53
24. iPad drawing in Autodesk Sketchbook
25. iPad drawing in Concepts
26. iPad drawing in MediBang Paint Pro
27. Week of portrait drawing
28. Self portraits
29. Winsor and Newton Pigment markers
30. Faber Castell Pitt artist pens
31. Nicole dual tip markers
32. Grayscale Value studies
33. Line art with brush pens
34. Duct tape sketchbook
35. Dip pen and ink drawing
36. Hand lettering
37. Sketching people at the mall
38. Mono printing with 3D objects
39. Sun prints
40. Cyanotype printing
41. Darkroom printing with caffenol
42. Fuji Instax peel aparts
43. Print photo or painting on watercolor printer paper
44. Use Bristol board
45. Use mineral paper
46. Use canvas paper
47. Watercolor painting of cats
48. Loose watercolors
49. Fill one sketchbook per month
50. Toned gray sketchbook drawings
51. Toned tan sketchbook drawings
52. Christmas card art
53. Collage
54. Winsor and Newton Watercolor markers
55. Variety of Watercolor pencils
56. Tim Holtz Distress crayons
57. Tim Holtz Distress markers
58. Koi Waterbrush markers
59. Sketching with Carpenter pencils and lumber crayons
60. Make watercolor blocks
61. Drawing on the Iskn Slate
62. Drawing on Wacom Intuos tablet
63. Assemble Skilcraft Visible Head model
64. Assemble Skilcraft Visible Cow model
65. Assemble Lindberg transparent alien
66. Assemble Lindberg transparent woman
67. Draw the same subject in 5 different mediums
68. Copic marker drawing
And anything else that catches my fancy in the new year.
My basement darkroom
Things I draw in My Fauxdori While Waiting at Places
Last year I purchased a ZYLC leather pocket Traveler's Notebook from Amazon after comparing it to the Midori Passport. I had been researching the Midori Passport and watched a few YouTube videos to get more information about them when I found this version of the leather notebook having an embossed floral pattern on the front. I really liked the look of it and also that the elastic straps that hold the notebooks inside were in the center of the spine instead of the back of the notebook like the Midori. After looking at samples of the Midori on Instagram, I also found that anything other than a Midori was referred to as a "Fauxdori".
The ZYLC pocket notebook came with a couple of notebooks, but is also compatible with all Midori Passport notebooks and accessories. I ordered a Midori blank sketchbook and use that for light watercolor ink and wash sketches with a Uniball Micro Fine Point Pen and a homemade pocket mint tin of watercolors. I also found that the ScoutBooks brand fit inside very well and have used the blank journals prepared with a Gelli Printing plate to give the pages some texture and background color for my line art sketches and doodles. I use a Uniball Signo White pen, brush pen and a Uniball Vision pen on these.
I carry the notebook and pens with me always in my messenger bag or in my pocket if I'm not carrying the messenger bag. I use this to occupy my time while waiting at restaurants for dinner, doctor's appointments, car repairs, and even while at the ER with my mother in recent weeks while she waits to be treated. I feel this is more productive and creative than checking my phone for email and social media updates.
World Watercolor Month - July 2016
We all know how I love to participate in daily artistic and photographic challenges, so I was all in when I saw postings of World Watercolor Month on social media sites from some of the artists I follow. The challenge is to try to paint something in watercolor or use watercolor in some way in your artwork, for each day of the month. The watercolor challenge was made to help support the Dreaming Zebra Foundation, that provides art supplies and opportunities to underprivileged children. I've taken this opportunity to practice my watercolor skills and try some new things with watercolor.
So far, I've missed one day of the challenge, simply too exhausted to paint after a frustrating evening trouble shooting a problem with a digital design situation. I've tried to use different techniques than my normal line and wash painting style, experimenting with different types of paper, watercolor paints, pencils, and markers. I even signed up for a class in painting clouds in watercolor that took place for one evening at the local arts council.
I watch a lot of instructional videos on Artists Network TV, YouTube and such, but I think I just need to actually paint more. I finally tried the Winsor and Newton Watercolor markers that I purchased last fall, and I have to say, I'm very impressed with these and definitely want to experiment with them. I also took this opportunity to start my bird journal in the very nice handmade watercolor book that I bought at Hobby Lobby last year. The handmade paper in the book is not really ideal for watercolor, but the texture is so interesting, it gives a different effect to the finished painting. We are in the last week of the challenge, but I'm confident I can complete it.