staying dry

My feet and my drawing medium, for awhile.

Conte on 140# w/c paper.

gritty bear

I coated a piece of hardboard with Golden "ground" medium. It's like painting on sandy concrete.

This is "alla prima" painting--all at once, no drying in between layers. The actual piece looks a bit like a painting on an old barn board.

pastel pencils

I'm starting a series of this bear in multiple media. He's a wood carving I bought in Bath, England in 1994.

This image is with 5 colors of pastel pencil in the Hand Book Artist Journal (great paper!). The colors are green, blue, yellow, ochre, red.

I put a little w/c in on top of the background red, just to fill the spaces.

I love the intensity of pastel colors, the simplicity of use, but (have I said this before?) I hate the dust. Does every medium have one significant quality to dislike?

the back side

The image on the back of yesterday's journal page that showed through.

Pencil.

lines come and go

I'm in a journal volume with lines, so for the next month impromptu sketches will have to suffer through them and the see-through images on the back.

I captured this sitting position without the head, then Chaucer moved. Of course.

So I finished with a close, but slightly generic, cat head. Pencil.

cats always near

I haven't drawn with charcoal in years. It grinds into my fingers, gets all over my clothes, smears into blurs, and I hate having to fix it.

But coming back to it once in awhile reminds me of the joys of intense black and the versatility of charcoal.

The matte fixative was sooooo chemically penetrating--smelly 2 floors up in the house in spite of spraying in the garage--that I resorted to hair spray on these.

On a heavy cardlike paper with good tooth, plus Derwent aquatone orange and conte white.

entwined vine

The power of drawing something to help you SEE it is amazing.

I had no idea of all the entwined parts of this grapevine piece, how it's held together, until I sketched it.

Tom Bow soluble marker and w/c on Canson drawing paper.

the indoor tree

It's usually so loaded, you can't see the brass limbs.

Sketched on a prepainted piece of paper, which did not match well with the image I put on it so I took out some color digitally. Not good, but better than before.

W/c and tech pen on Canson drawing paper.

It's been a long time coming

And he's only just begun.

May we all join in to actively assist the expansion and growth of this joyous, world-changing, world-improving moment.

In so many ways, we're finally entering the 21st century.

phthalo blue and cad. orange

Practicing blending and dry brush and dropping in color, on 140# Fabriano Artistico, with a #10 Master Blick Sable and Daniel Smith paint.

Is that enough method talk?

scrapes and scribbles

First I put down the gold, in scraped acrylic paint. Then I added blue w/c crayon scribbles.

To frame it, a penciled box, with dark blue crayon filled in the empty spaces, washed to a solid.

Then more light water washed, wiped, smeared. It's a very random process.

On Canson drawing paper.

features of faces

The penciled guy was on TV. The colorful one is imaginary. He has many fewer worry lines.

I'm practicing how to make features not look cartoony, not that there's anything wrong with that :-)

Pencil and Art Stix.

tombow tree

Playing with markers.

Tom Bows (my favorites because they don't penetrate the paper, have flexible plastic tips, and are water-soluble for painting strokes) on Canson drawing paper.

idling while snow falls

Nine inches of snow, piling up outside. How to enjoy yourself anyway.

Take cardboard, brush on iridescent gold acrylic, then wipe most of it off.

Apply a coat of Golden fiber paste, thinly.

Draw a bit of a face with Sharpie brown. Add w/c, Tombow pen, w/c pencil and play with lost edges.

Total joy in fiddling with art supplies, waiting for the plow to go by.

tombow mug

Just to play with colors.

Markers on Canson drawing paper.

fruity colorfulness

Pears are so great for color studies. Not that this was a real one.

Colored pencil on 6660# sketchpaper.

the three minute pose set

Chaucer was lying in front of the woodstove when I noticed his first pose. Like any good life model, as soon as I finished one drawing, he'd move to the next pose.

I'd grab a new media choice and keep drawing.

In order: w/c in a brush pen, marker plus w/c, fountain pen plus w/c, and pen alone, on Canson drawing paper.

scrapings

Making these is so satisfying. I like the intensity and the color blending. And I can go until I run out of paint pools.

Perhaps they'd make good fabric prints

1920s London

These are characters in the British series House of Eliot, about two sisters who are fashion designers in 1920s London.

I found out that one of our DVD players leaves the picture on when paused, instead of going to a screensaver. Wow, time to draw the whole face, instead of my usual fleeting glimpse of features.

But I draw it fast, to get back to the story. Good series!

Pencil on 60# sketchpaper.

planes and layers

Just watercolors on this one, no other media. Scraping and layering until I felt it was enough.

The title "Stepping Through" comes to mind. Moving through the cave to the Light outside.

On 140# Saunders Waterford paper.

blue and brown

I have great fun prepainting backgrounds with glorious color, then have no idea what I'll put on top.

In my current constant activity of filling the woodstove, the bellows came forward to volunteer as model. And they fit my ongoing attraction to some form of brown/blue palette.

Tech pen, w/c, w/c crayon and pencil on 140# Fabriano Artistico.