March 5, 2015 – Margaret McCarthy Hunt Art

This was the first chicken that posed for me when we went to Key West. I bought a box of Schminke gouache from Wet Paint last week and Roz said use them for two weeks. Painted on Strathmore 500 Mixed Media Paper.

Till I did the chicken all I had done was paint backgrounds to cover up boo boos like yesterday. I meant to paint my house or a church downtown that I have always loved as the last assignment for the last teacher in the last week of Sketchbookskool.

I ran across this chicken pic. He cocked his head at me and said paint me. I succumbed. What can I say?! Maybe that’s why I have been doing all the bird drawings. Practicing for this rooster.

First I drew him quickly on a scrap of paper laying on the table.

That did it. He hooked me. I got the sketchbook out.

And the lovely new box of Schminke gouache.

It came in this great wooden box. Almost too pretty to be touched! But I managed.

I used all the colors and tubes of M.Graham Azo yellow and pyrole red that I already had. It was much like painting with acrylics without the shiny plastic look they have. The colors covered well. Easy to mix. I did have to get out my acrylic brushes. The long watercolor brights were not stuff enough.

Tip: I used my monarch Winsor & Newton filberts and an escoda Prado filbert. After I switched to these the paint behaved so well. Went on easily and smoothly. Yesterday I discovered the stiffer hog bristle brushes leave ridges in the paint. Not a good look.

Thanks for looking.

I make some spectacular screw ups to fix. I was trying to capture the birds doing something besides a profile view. Upside down, looking over their shoulder, diving in,etc. For some reason while I was drawing this I decided to use a pilot varsity to do the lettering like I don’t have five other pens loaded with permanent inks in three colors. DUH what was I thinking?!

Fast forward to I thought watercolor wash for the background. White is so boring. It needed a little umph, don’t you think?!

The pilot began to run. See the top left corner?! Nasty. Had such nice writing. All done with that Pilot. I liked this spread and I wanted to save it. What to do?!

The Pilots come in seven great colors. NONE of them permanent. BEWARE if you want to watercolor over them. And yes I have all seven of them.

So what all did I try to fix the mess?! Read on!!

Got the bright idea to wet the pilot own words down and wipe some of the ink off. Maybe that would help when I painted over it?! Nope!!!

Then I painted over it with white gouache after all Roz said it would cover anything. Make that anything besides a non permanent pilot pen. More Grey. Sigh.

Next I got out some acrylic paint. Since its plastic I didn’t think the ink could bleed thru. I was right EXCEPT the paint was semitransparent. You could still see the lettering and the grey gouache mess.

OnWaRd!! At this point I thought why not paint over it with gouache. I was right the ink would not leak they the yellow green acrylic paint aka plastic layer. But since I didn’t feel the greatest I couldn’t find a tube of bright clear yellow to mix with the turquoise for a great yellow green. BUT even though I knew it would make a muddy green – think pea colored-I persisted and lo and behold a massive pile of pea green. I used it. Didn’t want to waste it. Did NOT like that layer. A sock pea color.

I finally found a tube of Azo yellow gouache I had accidently bought at Sam Flaxs. A deep turquoise will over power a light yellow. I knew that. Did I hold back on the blue?! NOPE. Most of a tube of yellow later I finally got a light enough color. And painted it for the third time if you count the coat of white gouache.

Success finally. How many hours and a whole tube of paint. Here’s how it looks now.

TIP: Gotta make it worth your reading.

I had tried my Noodler Creaper Ahab on gouache yesterday. It really HATED the gouache.

No problem. I have a lot of felt tip pens. Pitt pens Staedler pens Micron and Kuratake pens including a nylon brush Kuratake pen similar to the Pentel Brush pen.

I didn’t try the Staedler or the Micron after the gouache gummed up my Pitt pens. The Kuratake brush pen was super with the gouache.

The fiber tip Kuratakes not so much. Started clogging up. I may have a lot of pens but I treasure them all and DONT want to ruin their tips.

Bytw you can buy a Kuratake on amazon. Very Japanese looking pen. Even has a loop on it.

Thanks for looking.