a clay pig with slot for coins

This is a childhood treasure given to me by my mother's distant cousin (their grandmothers were cousins--that's really far back).

I have no clue about his name, but he was a botanist who discovered a new grass species in . . . Peru perhaps? It was later named after him.

He bought this pig in South America and passed it along to me the one and only time I met him, when I was about 8 years old. I was very impressed to be given something from a foreign country.

Blue Prismacolor pencil on thin sketch paper.

first painting en plein air

I ventured out to sit on the river bank and paint the top side of the dam with its distinctive red brick building.

No bothersome bugs made it a successful trip, however the painting turned out!

W/c on an 8x8 Sennelier w/c block. I used a Winsor & Newton tiny kit of 20 pans that I'd loaded with Daniel Smith paints, plus waterbrushes.

arithmetic collage

A collage to appeal to the math majors and engineers--how many artists put sum symbols in their work?

I found the paper with sums on it and started there.

This is waiting for more tweaking. I'm calculating my next move.

Acrylic and pen on 300# Arches.

smears and blobs

This is about a 7x9 inch piece. Too spontaneous to duplicate, but I'd love it in a 3x4 foot size!

w/c in the journal

Same cat, different chair

. . . from yesterday.

With the same Derwent 4b watersoluble pencil in the Canson sketchbook.

Busy cat

Putting in naptime in all the chairs is a big job. He works hard at it.

I drew this with a Derwent watersoluble 4B pencil. I decided to paint it in, experimenting with a triad of Daniel Smith paints: quin gold, quin burnt scarlet, phthalo blue (red shade).

Surprisingly, the Derwent didn't dissolve under the strokes of w/c. I was able to keep the shading on the cat and the lines in the wicker! I flowed the paint on very lightly and didn't rub, but still, that non-dissolving was unexpected.

The second discovery was how well these paints made a light brown AND a near-black. Phalo blue always makes nice greens, no matter what yellow it is mixed with.

In the Canson sketchbook.

enough, part 2

Another page that I thought I'd add to, but decided this is finished. I love splotches and randomness!

w/c in the journal

it turned out to be an enso

This page was meant to be a decorated one, but after I made the circle, I realized it worked perfectly as an enso.

Enough.

w/c in the journal.

expanding into a whole scene

I've drawn the chair, but never the rest of the corner. Getting all the proportions right as I move across the scene is a challenge (because I draw quickly and don't erase or fix).

The round thing on the wall is a metal sculpture, small bits of metal punchouts braised together. We've had it for years. The artist said it was so maddening and difficult to do, he'd never do another one. A definite original!

Graphite in the journal

hanging out on the wall

This is a metal sculpture I've drawn before. She has such attitude.

W/c in the Aquabee sketchbook. The background is Daniel Smith's graphite grey, a new favorite.

accuracy with a brush pen

So challenging! No matter how often I've drawn the cat, getting the form close to recognizable is always a mix of luck and how I hold my tongue.

Brush pen in the Aquabee sketchbook.

Pentel Colorbrush

There's nothing like drawing with the vivid intensity of ink. Using the Pentel Colorbrushes makes using color easy, though.

My only goal was to get the strokes down accurately to sketch the rattan curves. I diluted the yellow ink for the background.

In the Reflexion journal.

Cretacolor 4-color pencil

This was an experiment with the very thick pencil that has 4 colors in the core lead. I ended up turning the pencil to get the color I wanted.

It's watersoluble, but those experiments were worse. I can't say this pencil is worth its $2.50 price, plus it's difficult to sharpen.

In the Aquabee sketchbook.

grasses out of control

I can't decide if the lefthand streaks are grasses or ghostly trees. They're too golden to be of a burned forest.

Or perhaps the perspective is that of a frog's, peering out of the water's edge.

Markmaking practice, again. W/c on good paper.

more than grasses

So after yesterday's piece, I started with the idea of near grasses against distant mountains. Playing with making marks again, using a sponge for the dark brown.

W/c in the Aquabee sketchbook.

abstract grasses

The plan was an abstract, but I turned it into a sort of stream with grasses. Mostly I was just making marks with the brush, a half-inch flat.

W/c on good paper.

good for a fabric pattern

Pressing paper into what's left on the palette often creates interesting shapes.

I'm liking the yellow/black/cream/gray combination.

rabbit in a coat

I was doodling with a brush, and this guy appeared. A couple days later, we went to see Alice in Wonderland, so clothed rabbits (from the ads) have clearly gotten into my consciousness.

I added some pen line to see if a line would add impact. Not a big improvement.

On a scrap of 140# w/c paper.

practicing that figure swoosh

So after yesterday's piece, I had to try that hooded figure swoosh again. This time I did a less defined background, made the swoosh, and decided it's a ghostly Inuit hiker in the tundra, perhaps with snow on a distant plateau.









And again, with only land to stand on.

Now I'm hooked on this guy! W/c in the Aquabee sketchbook.

phantom hiker

This figure was a total accident. I thought I'd dipped my brush in blue, to add to the sky of this imagined landscape.

The stroke was brown (oh!), so I turned it into a downward swoosh. After looking at it, I saw the back of a hooded figure. So I created the rest of him, with arm, legs, and hiking stick.

I kept him translucent--a swamp ghost.

These surprises are why I love watercolor!

In the Aquabee sketchbook.

tin pitcher

Re-interpreting gray tin.

After the scan, I put in a Gimp pattern for the base, which wasn't a good idea.

W/c in the Aquabee SD.

not to scale

Idly drawing little loose items, not to matching scale.

Nexus pen, Varsity fountain pen, w/c in the Aquabee Superdeluxe.