Day 318 just a quick post

May 24, 20152 Comments

because I am busy painting. More about that tomorrow.

Cropping can be a good thing. This was a practice sketch. A warm up for painting this sketch. I did not like the way the drawing went.

I liked this sketch much better than the one in the first picture.

This is the whole spread uncut. The sketch of Livia on the left is pretty bad. A warm up for the next sketch. But the good thing about a bad sketch or painting is that it liberates you to slap paint around and have fun. Loved making the drips and applying the sheer colors. Think it helped with this painting. I did the drippy baby painting first. Do you see a connection? Sometimes the most interesting painting gets done on a painting that you no longer care about the way it turns out. The fun stuff in this bad sketch are the dots of the hair and bow on her head the washes and drips from the dress and the luminous center of the spread. Really like that luminous glow and. I used all of that in the lady in the white dress.

Anyway that’s my theory and I am sticking to it. Try it. Let me know what you think!

Thanks for reading.
Margaret XXX

Day 317 – Grace and Frankie

May 23, 2015May 23, 2015Leave a comment

Summertime or Tea Time or Julia. What do you think I should call her?!

11×15″

300# Fabriano

The wonderful costumes on the show Frankie and Grace which I have been binge watching on Netflixs made me want to do a girl in a hat.
I don’t know if you remember but I did a lot of girls in hats back at Easter. I love hats. I just done like the way I look in them. Anybody else line that!?

Now that summer’s approaching its hat time again! And of course a glass of iced tea with mint is required.

Here she is penciled in with a 2HB mechanical pencil and the initial background wash done. Very light washes of several colors all painted while the others were still wet so there are no blooms.

This is after. Added the first cerulean shadows to the dress and Quin coral and aureolin for the skin tones.

Here she is later. Colors added. Alizarin cobalt Burnt Sienna Inathridone and burnt umber Quin burnt sienna Quin gold. You really don’t need a lot of colors to paint a picture.

My favorite part of the painting though the hair is giving the skirt stuff competition. A lot of the colors were applied wet on wet. Others were added as blobs or dry brushed. A lot of fun to paint.

Still lots to do!

Thanks for reading! Go draw a girl in a hat!

Margaret XXX

Day 316 of my almost year long odyssey

May 21, 2015Leave a comment

Fifty more days and I will have posted daily for a year. Oh my!! I drew Rhineharts the other day while waiting for friends. Rhineharts motto is beyond casual and it lives up to that. It’s one of Augustas favorite restaurants and is a higgily piggily old house that has been added on to over the last thirty years. The floors are concrete, you sit at picnic benches, oyster shells cover the pine shaded parking lot. Both the picnic tables and walls are covered with names inscribed with magic markers. I added ours with my Noodler Creaper Ahab. If you’re lucky a cat will beg for your shrimp tails.

The drawing had problems. The building is very long and hard to fit on the double page spread. The bits and pieces that jut out here and there make it a perspective nightmare or maybe it’s that nothing in this place is level or square. A builders nightmare!!

Fun making all the greys out of various blues and Browns. Dashes here and there. Of the two colors and greys everywhere. Like the sparkle of the turquoise and the three cooks hanging out in the back porch SmOkiNg done with their lunch shift.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 315 of my almost year long odyssey

May 21, 2015Leave a comment

I drew Rhineharts the other day while waiting for friends. Rhineharts motto is beyond casual and it lives up to that. It’s one of Augustas favorite restaurants and is a higgily piggily old house that has been added on to over the last thirty years. The floors are concrete, you sit at picnic benches, oyster shells cover the pine shaded parking lot. Both the picnic tables and walls are covered with names inscribed with magic markers. I added ours with my Noodler Creaper Ahab. If you’re lucky a cat will beg for your shrimp tails.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 315 – Kirkwood Spring Fling

May 20, 2015Leave a comment

Random people at last weekend’s Spring Fling in Kirkwood in Atlanta at Bessie Branham Park, a beautiful spot with lots of shade trees around for sitting under as well as an open green space where a band played.

I actually like this odd assortment of people. Originally there were more tents planned in the background but I didn’t paint them because dark large leaks from from other pages in the book. The guy in the hat had green on his face from the leaks. 😳 Got out the flesh gouache to fix him but it was not to successful. It was a dark green. Sigh. No feet. Not sure why other than people were just whizzing by. I couldn’t ask them to stop. Lol.

Noodler creaper Ahab loaded with Carbon Platinum black ink in my Strathmore 500 mixed media. Really not happy with the way it’s leaking watercolor washes along the binding and ruining pages.

This one was never finished. See the leaky clothes on the pages at the center? Nasty mess.

More random people at the Spring Fling. No idea why not one of these people have feet either other than they were moving so fast. They walked off before I could add their feet. Some of the people are compilations of several people walking by like the red head with the backpack in the middle. Drawing moving people is much easier to do with a brush pen. No drag on the surface like my Noodlers have when you draw with them.

Really pleased with the greens I mixed in both of these.

So here’s the tip for today. The dark greens in the trees are made by mixing burnt sienna and Inathridone blue pb60. I added Quin gold to the mix on the paper. Really like the color variations the mixture gave me.

The green in the grass was made with manganese blue and aureolin yellow with touches of Quin gold. New Gamboge would be great too instead of the Quin gold. The flowers of alizarin and purple were added while the grass was wet as were the shadows under the bench.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

Day 314 – More Grandkids Paintings

May 20, 20155 Comments

Love the background on this spread. Scroll down to see how it was started. This is a practice painting for the next one. I think she needs a neck or her heads too big. Or maybe her head just looks pasted on becaus it has no shadows around the baby’s chin. I think that’s the problem. What do you think?!

Pleased with the way Henry turned out on the right.

Definitely more work required. Liking the drips and splatters which I actually purposefully made. Stay tuned I will show u how but not tonite. Too late posting. Sorry.

TIP: This is how I started the background in the first double spread. A wash of several soft colors Quin red Quin gold yellow yellow ochre burnt sienna cerulean and mineral Violet.

Then u tone it down by painting more washes of a variety of colors over it which is how the background in the first one was done. Just don’t go dark with your washes. You can do that later!

Here she is so far. More work required. No drips and no splatters yet. The soft pink skin is made from Quin coral and yellow ochre. Hope the dress is not too dark.

Decided to make this a journal page of our weekend together.

Henry’s head reshaped from yesterday’s post. Now I think he needs more back on his head but at least it’s not shaped like a football helmet.

I added some drips and some dark darks behind his head and under his arms to this one.

Don’t know why I didn’t do any drips and splatters. Have a few paintings from spring fling that I did drip and splatter. Wondering if that is because the kids paintings are more important to me than the others? I think so.

Do you find it freeing not to care if you mess up a painting? Sometimes the most fun happens with watercolor then.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 313 – Painting my Coloring Book

May 19, 2015May 19, 20155 Comments

best thing about sketching is you end up with a grown up coloring book.

Spent a few hours painting sketches I did this weekend.

These are my favorite so far.

Henry was so into Jake and the Neverland Pirates he hardly moved. These are stil quick sketches because you always think a child will move especially Henry. This is the only time he holds still when hes awake.

Bytw he’s wearing his favorite monster Jammies a certain Gramy gave him for Christmas.

Both of these have problems but one day it will be a nice memory of him. It’s easy to fix the one on the right. He has a little too much hair. That’s saying something for Henry. He has a haystack of thick hair. I think the one on the right needs more hair. Interesting how these things show up in a camera but you don’t notice when you are painting or drawing the person.

Here he is with a better shaped head. The shape makes a difference. And I had to add a few drops. Love drips!

TIP: Always check your picture in a camera to see where it needs improvement. This second one is going back to the drawing board.

Thanks for reading!!

Margaret XXX

Day 312 – sketching the grandkids

May 17, 2015May 17, 20152 Comments

Difficult to say the least. Henry holds still better than Livia who is always reaching for something or other.

Henry loves Jake and the Neverland Pirates and sits fairly still while watching them.

Here’s another one. The tiny feet are so sweet but hard to draw. I was using a sort of contour drawing to do all these not a searching sketchy line with my Noodle Creaper Ahab. Love that pen.

One last sketch. I will paint these with watercolor soon.

My favorite Livia sketches. Most of these were disasters because she rarely holds still more than a second.

Check back. More later!!

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 311 – Finished Accordion Book

May 16, 20154 Comments

Hard to take good pics of these. It’s about 80″ long. Sorry they are crooked. The paper is Stonehenge print paper I think. Cream colored. Lovely paper. You can actually paint on both sides which I did because I had filled up the front at Pops Under the Stars. It was so much fun drawing that I kept on drawing and filled up the back.

So here are close ups of the front.

I started this in Gatlingburg. Only got two people done. Oops! I drew the first lady while waiting for my mom who is the second lady.

Love the lady to the right so much I drew her three times.
Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 310 – Rhododendrons

May 15, 2015May 15, 20152 Comments

Rhododendrons

Half sheet 15×22

cold press 300#Fabriano

Based on some photos I took on Valle Crucis a week ago. I am not wild about painting flowers. All the negative painting is just HARD!! I usually do something terrible to screw then up and have to get out the gouache. No gouache so far. Maybe I should quit?!

This was painted almost entirely with my Isabey squirrel mops. The stamens were done with my #6 Isabey Kolinsky sable. Love all those brushes. Their kolinskys point like no other brushes I own. Better than a rigger.

I started with a good drawing of the flowers. I still got lost painting them. All pink rhododendrons look the same.

The background is done with diluted washes of four or five colors that is eventually painted over. I tried to leave a lot of white and used light pink in the initial flower washes. Mineral Violet was used to do the negative painting on the flowers.

Beginning detail.

Masked the stamens with a throw away kids model paint brush. I used Quin red for the pink hookers green on the leaves with Quin gold and ultramarine blue and mineral violet.

Progressing

The background blue is Inathridone blue or as we call it Pb60. It’s the blue in indigo blue. Drips are made by standing the board up when wet and slamming it in the table.

The splots are deliberate and done by placing the whole mop down on the painting with a light wash of color in it, ie more water than color. Fun stuff. Try it!! I also splattered some. If I knew where my toothbrush was I would use it to splatter too.

So Far

Here it is for now. I added a lot of small dots of color with my #6 Isabey Kolinsky sable. It might need more jewelry I mean dots but it’s too late and I am tired so that’s when it’s a good idea to quit for the nite I think.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX