Today’s entry is a serenading Sedge Wren, drawn from Bob Tarte’s fabulous photo and used with his generous permission. Thanks Bob! Do check out his books and podcast at bobtarte.com.
Birdy at left drawn with the Platinum EF fountain pen on Strathmore 140lb Windpower CP.
This is what kind of day it was outside today. Post-scanning, I realized that one of my feet looks like I’m wearing clown shoes. Ah well… this is what I get for diving in with an ink brush all come-what-may!
Jeans courtesy of PB60, Indanthrone Blue which I added to my palette this weekend. Painting on location demands speed, and I have come to rely more on using paint direct from the well (vs. mixing precise hues before applying to the paper). This might limit the hue range to whatever’s on hand, but drastically reduces the amount of time spent before brush hits paper. It also means there’s been an awful lot of people in my book wearing Prussian blue pants because I didn’t have a good “jeans” color on hand! As of yesterday, problem solved. Indanthrone is the best blue-jean-blue I know of, and makes a nice neutral with orange/brown as well. It gets a workout here, by itself and in combination with PO62 for the socks and shoes. Jadeite and Green Apatite were used for the lawn.
Is heaven any sweeter than Blue Jean?
There’s magnolia trees outside at at work. There was also a magnolia tree next door to the house I grew up in. Without my realizing it, that aroma seeped its way into my memories each year and became the olfactory theme for for late spring/early summer.
The first spring at this building I walked out the front door and immediately found myself feeling like school was about to let out. It’s a wonderful feeling, even if I only get to enjoy it for a lunch break!
This has been on my list for a while now. It’s the corner of the industrial property where I have studio space – the management recently saw fit to install a new fence with razor wire around the top. This amuses me to no end, because it’s really not a bad neighborhood at all. It looks all dystopian and prison-yardy though, and ensures that nothing short of birds, lizards, or very determined commandos can possibly be invading from that side of the property. Add some sun to create fabulous swirly shadows, and I can’t resist!
Here’s a sketch from my lunch break. The Platinum Carbon pen has been fascinating me, suddenly watercolor seems so much better with ink!!
Saw this guy in a food court, and his hair was a character unto itself. Fortunately he was also waiting for food, so I had time to sketch and paint him while my Pad Thai was cooking. One of the first faces I have attempted to draw in any detail.
Went rooting through a paper drawer this weekend, and look what I found! Don’t remember when I started it, must have been 2013 or so. I recall being disappointed with the sky at the time and sort of abandoned the effort. Last night, it started looking good! Some paintings just need to age apparently. Now I like it – time to finish it!
I wondered if this was the lighthouse at Orfordness in East Anglia, but the tops are different. This must therefore be a made-up lighthouse, probably as an excuse to paint the dramatic sky.
Ah, the tankers at sunset. Spent a lovely hour or two sketching while the sun went down. We were there late enough for the tankers’ lights to come on, so I dabbed those in with a bit of Bleedproof White. Otherwise, that’s cobalt, PO62, and a dash of PO73.
Tankers were not the only thing in view this evening – in addition to the usual birds and porpoises, I made friends with a beetle.
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Wanna see a BIG spider? Take a look after the jump!
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This was an unforgettable trip to the park – I was painting a fairly nondescript landscape of the pond when a man passed by, and asked if I had seen the osprey. I hadn’t, and of course asked him where it was. He pointed – maybe 20 feet away and practically over my head! All that time there was a fabulous bird of prey right out in the open, and I missed him completely!
I spontaneously decided to pick up a pizza one night and found myself with 20 minutes to kill and nothing to paint with. Curses! So I made good use of that time thinking through initial designs for this.
The plan was to create a unified thing that would hold paint, water, brush, something to sketch on, and a bit of paper towel to wipe the brush. It had to be 100% self contained – not that it’s bad to put a brush in a pocket, but in this case I wanted something that was entire and complete by itself, with no extra parts to forget. The palette could be limited but had to be adequate for general painting. Ideally all the parts would remain attached, so there’s nothing to drop while using it. Finally, I wanted it to fit in a back pocket, so it would be easy to grab-n-go without having to think about it.