Painting With Coffee

March 27, 2017

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.

Winsor and Newton Pigment Markers

March 19, 2017

Week 11 - Winsor and Newton Pigment markers on Yupo paper. I have to admit I was not very inspired to work on this project this week. I was on vacation, but felt very unmotivated due to the snowy, cold, icy weather. When I scheduled this time off a few weeks ago, I anticipated having springlike weather as we've had in February, with plans of going outdoors for a few sketching trips and photo making. I instead indulged in some much needed down time including numerous naps, reading and watching YouTube and Craftsy videos under the cozy warm blanket on the couch surrounded by cats. Tomorrow I feel I will be able to jump back into my daily commute, full workdays, and evening creative sessions with renewed energy until my next vacation with Brenda coming up in May.

I managed to spend one afternoon working on a pigment marker drawing using a photo I shot last summer as reference. The photo was made at Codorus State Park using an OM10 camera with expired Portra 160NC film. The drawing was made on Yupo paper and that worked okay, but perhaps I'll use the Winsor and Newton Pigment Marker paper that I have at some other time when I feel like working with the markers again.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - painting with coffee and tea.

Drawing 100 People in One Week

March 13, 2017

Week 10 - #OneWeek100People2017 - An Urban Sketching challenge to draw 100 people in one week, from Monday, March 6 through Friday, March 10. I successfully completed this challenge, mostly drawing from the Sktchy app, but I was able to make about twenty or so drawings of live people during the week. I started a new sketchbook for the challenge, an Art Alternatives 4 x 6 hardcover sketchbook, just the right size for making quick portrait sketches. My drawings looked cartoonish, maybe caricature-like, but I think they mostly resembled the people I was drawing. I have to accept that I am primarily a cartoon artist and just go with it. I mostly used a brush pen for the drawings, emptying two brush pens, and a cartridge of another by the time the week was over. I used a little watercolor on some of the sketches, which made them look even more like cartoons.

By Friday, after completing the One Week 100 People challenge, my sketchbook was almost full, so I decided to challenge myself to finish filling the sketchbook with people sketches over the weekend, completing another of my Create-A-Thon 2017 projects - to fill an entire sketchbook in one week. I may try that one again with another sketchbook later in the year, but with making one long doodle in a Japanese style Moleskine pocket sketchbook.

I completed another Create-A-Thon 2017 activity, to attend a live model drawing session, which I did yesterday afternoon at Towson Plaza Art. The session was very enjoyable and relaxing, completely different from my usual day-to-day graphic design job. This is why I am challenging myself to a year full of creative projects, to allow myself time away from working on a computer all day. I really enjoy analog art, if that's what you want to call it. It puts my mind in a different frame from my daily problem solving design work.

On Saturday, Brenda and I invited my stepfather over for an evening of painting and pizza. We ordered up some Domino's Pizza, turned on the relaxation station on Pandora and painted for a couple of hours. I had envisioned my painting of a skull floating over a field of flowers turning out differently than the creepy clownish skull painting that it turned out to be. It was fun to paint though, I would like to get out and paint landscapes using my french easel. I had intended to do that on my vacation this week, but the weather is going to be snowy and cold.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - Winsor and Newton Pigment Markers on Yupo Paper.

Gouache on Black Paper

February 12, 2017

Week 6 - Reeves brand gouache from A.C. Moore on black sketch paper. I was inspired to try this technique when I watched a video demonstrating it on YouTube. I packed up my small traveling ArtBin that I take to work with all my tubes of Reeves gouache, metal paint palette, a few small brushes, pencils, pens, eraser, and collapsible water cup from Faber Castell. I also carried with me my backpack filled with the usual things and for this week, a small black paper sketch pad to use for the gouache paintings.

I intended to work on the paintings on my lunch hour this week, but one of the days I spent fiddling around with the new set of magnetic adapters for my Slate, which is always in my work backpack. Another day we all went out for lunch. I finally spent about two lunch hours working on just one painting that I was not really happy with when it was finished. That painting did inspire me though to create a revised illustration based on it with my iPad using the Procreate app.

One evening in my studio I painted a self portrait with white gouache going straight in with a brush without sketching myself first. I was happier with that result though it's not a complete likeness. Today I created two paintings, one from the art mannequin that I have and another from a silver Halloween skull from my anatomy collection. I liked the way the mannequin painting turned out, with the skull painting being more distorted and abstract.

Kind of hit or miss with the gouache paintings this week, but not every sketch or painting is going to turn out to be a great work of art. I found the exercise challenging because I had to think about painting in the lights on the black paper, leaving the bare black paper as the shadows, opposite of the way I normally work. Although challenging, I enjoyed the exercise and may incorporate it into a future project.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - Paint or draw the same subject in 5 different mediums.

Liquitex Ink!

February 5, 2017

Week 5 - Liquitex Ink! in Vivid Lime Green, Red and the new muted colors of Pink, Turquoise, and Violet. I also have Transparent Raw Umber and Dioxazine Purple, which I didn't get a chance to make drawings with this week. I made all of the drawings with a Speedball nib holder and drawing pen nib on Canson XL recycled Bristol Paper. I really like the muted colors and will probably get the other two colors in the set. I think that I need to get a little more practice getting a consistent line with the drawing nib, but I kinda like the uneven quality of the lines in these drawings.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017, Reeves Gouache Paintings on Kraft and Black Papers.

Old Bad Art - High School and College Art Projects

February 1, 2017

Over the past summer, Brenda and I climbed the stairs to the attic to look through my old art portfolios for a book that I remembered having in college. After seeing some of my old high school and art projects as I was going through the portfolios, I thought maybe the attic wasn't the best place to store them. I wanted to look at them again after 35 years of being stored away so we brought everything downstairs. I purchased under bed storage containers and started to sort through the projects, remembering my time in art school and the artist I was in high school.

My college commercial art education stressed highly the importance of good craftsmanship in producing all of our art projects. I spent many late nights and a few all nighters painstakingly drawing and painting typographic designs, making alcohol marker renderings, and creating gouache illustrations. Each of our finished projects then had to be wrapped cleanly and neatly with acetate to protect them.

My college art experience did not include computer graphic training (this was before the introduction of the Macintosh computer), I learned all of what I know now on the job and with a couple of training classes. I have continued to increase my knowledge of computer graphic design programs with online training using services like Lynda.com and YouTube.

I have in the past three or so years, been re-acquainting myself with my analog art roots by experimenting with various art materials and daily sketching. I had not created much artwork up until then, being busy raising my children with their extracurricular activities, and a full-time job with a long commute. Now that they're grown and out of the house, I am on a quest to fill sketchbooks with ideas, and find ways to express my artistic vision, whenever I figure out what that might be.

Value Studies with Koi Waterbrush Pens

January 29, 2017

Week 4 - Value studies with Sakura Koi Waterbrush Pens. I picked up a set of these at Hobby Lobby with a gift card I received for Christmas. I made a swatch sample of the colors using a waterbrush, but I really just used them as markers when creating the value studies. I gathered some photo samples from the Morgue file website for reference material and spent about 5-10 minutes on each sketch using the three warm grays in the set. I made the sketches in a pocket-sized Stillman and Birn beta sketchbook.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - Liquitex Ink!

Nicole Premieré Dual Tip Markers

January 23, 2017

Week 3 - Premieré Dual Tip Markers by Nicole, A.C. Moore's house brand of alcohol markers similar to Copic markers. Brenda bought me a starter set of these markers for my birthday a year ago and I liked them well enough to purchase quite a few more throughout the past year when they would go on sale. I have an assortment of 50 colors, which have names like, Mango, Cabbage, and Grass.

I had only used them once or twice up until this week simply because I was very much occupied with my film photography project in 2016 and had too many other art supplies to experiment with. I thought I would draw some dragons this week with the markers and spent the beginning of the week sketching out several ideas at lunch. I finally sat down with the markers on Saturday and started with Bienfang marker paper, but I found that the markers over saturated the paper. I made do with that drawing and started a new one today on Bristol paper. The color of the markers was very vibrant on this paper, but they didn't blend at all, forcing me to render the dragon in solid blocks of color. I like the way the drawing turned out though I will look for another paper to try, perhaps Copic marker paper. I've also tried drawing on Strathmore Visual Journal Watercolor paper which turned out pretty nice.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - value studies using Sakura Koi Gray Watercolor Brush Pens.

Derwent Graphitint Tinted Graphite Pencils

January 15, 2017

Week 2 - Derwent Graphitint Tinted Graphite Pencils. I heard about these first on one of my YouTube watercolor channels and then more recently on The Art Supply Posse podcast. I found a good price for a new complete 24 pencil set on ebay.

The graphite pencils in this set are in assorted muted colors, that are perfect for nature drawings, landscapes, and portraits. I made a few wildlife drawings in my nature journal and a Gettysburg landscape, but I haven't experimented with drawing portraits (drawing portraits will be one of my projects this year)

I liked the way the finished drawings looked, with the texture of the graphite pencil strokes showing through the washes created after activating the graphite with water. I got the idea for drawing the Maryland Rockfish and the crappie from a YouTube video demonstration on how to use the pencils. My father fished for Rockfish on many Chesapeake Bay boat trips with his buddies while we were growing up. He also took us fishing for Crappies from the Beckleysville Bridge on many summer nights.

One of the things I want to create is a journal of bird drawings and paintings, so that prompted the drawing of the Bluebird. For the landscape drawing, I used one of my film photos from a day at Gettysburg last winter as reference material.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017 - Nicole Premieré Dual Tip Markers from A.C.Moore.

iSkn Slate

January 8, 2017

Brenda really surprised me this year with a Christmas gift that I've been eyeing up since I saw it advertised in my Instagram feed a couple of months ago. It's a new drawing tablet called "The Slate" by the iSkn company located in France. For week one of Create-A-Thon 2017 I've been sketching with it attached to my iPad Mini and MacBook Pro. The Slate can also be used in standalone mode for on-the-go sketches that can later be imported with your computer or iPad using the Imagink app.

The tablet includes a paper sketchpad, two clips to hold sketch paper to the tablet surface, a ballpoint pen equipped with a magnetic ring, graphite pencil with removable magnetic ring, and a usb cable for charging. My Slate also came with a nice carrying case with a snap closure with room to carry my iPad Mini. The Slate is very lightweight and of nice build quality.

The Slate works with paper attached, allowing you to make sketches while seeing the results in real time on your bluetooth synced iPad or usb cable connected computer using the Imagink app. Imagink has several tools with size and opacity adjustments and the ability to create layers. Throughout my testing of The Slate this week, I found both the pen and the pencil with magnetic ring to be very accurate in capturing what I was drawing. The removable magnetic ring can be attached to your own pencils, provided they fit the included adaptor. I've only found a few of my art pencils that fit, but a larger size adaptor is available from iSkn as well as a stylus called The Tip that allows The Slate to be used as a drawing tablet. I've added the larger magnetic ring adaptor and The Tip to my birthday wish list.

The Slate can also be used on-the-go to make sketches that can be edited or imported later on your iPad or computer (pc and mac). Sketches can be exported from the Imagink app in jpg, psd, svg, png, bmp, as well as video mp4. I experimented with exporting different file formats, and found the files imported as expected for further editing in Photoshop and Illustrator, with layers also being imported.

I have to say that I really am impressed with The Slate and how well it captures my sketches, though I'm not really sure how it will fit into my creative workflow. I will be practicing drawing more with it and look forward to watching what others create using The Slate. I've included side by side sketches, actual pen or paper sketch on the left with Imagink files on the right.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017, I will be trying out Derwent Graphitint Pencils.