Day 355 – like elephants better.

June 28, 2015June 28, 20152 Comments

Now I am done. The letters are Reinked with platinum carbon black ink in my favorite Noodler creaper Ahab. A great pen and so reasonably priced. Mine was $20. And it holds cats of ink.

In my 93# Super Bee Deluxe sketchbook.

Problems problems. I guess that’s why I like watercolor. It’s prone to misbehave.

I had started out with a yellow green background to go with my band of “kente cloth”. It was terrible. I painted over it with green. Also bad. Just not so bad. So I added cerulean blue to it. Improved. Then I added some cobalt blotches. And was happier with it.

The cad red light outside band was to cover up some of my ink smears.

For a while it looked like this. Decided the blue band on the right had to go. Made it to match the right side by adding the same colors.

So what colors did I use on the elephants?! Quin gold and Quin Sienna mixed with a grey made by adding Inathradone to burnt sienna or burnt umber. The darks are made with the Inathradone with cad orange added to it while it was wet. I also saved a lot of whites which makes the elephants sparkle.

I do still need to go over the lettering. It always seems to dull out when I paint over it.

Thanks for reading!!

Margaret xxx

Day 352 – More Super Deluxe Bee

June 26, 2015June 25, 2015Leave a comment

workout.

As you no doubt know I love sketching and lettering with my Noodler pens. They make such great lines. HOWEVER most bound sketchbooks do not like them. Well I don’t like the way the paper in them bounces when I try to draw on them leading by to stray marks I didn’t intend to do. I love the Strathmore 500 Mixed Media Paper but it feels oddly spongy and draggy to me when I use the pens on it.

Crosshatching – if you don’t use crosshatching the lines are streaky. Add in the cross lines the streaks go away.

NOT so with the Superbee. The letters are sharp and clear on the paper as are the sketches. There’s no drag on the pen so it’s easier to write the letters. Of course more practice would help. Big believer in practice even in art.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

Day 352 – Super deluxe Bee

June 25, 20152 Comments

Rommel 6×9″

Decided to give it a work out last nite while watching the Secret Life of Elephants on GPTV last nite. This was the last sketchbI drew off tv the big bull elephant Rommel.

Most of Rommel was painted wet on wet to loose the edges. I downloaded several of Thomas Schallers videos from Northlight. Good deal for $13. Though he does not paint animals I thought why not try out his techniques on this elephant. He’s big on transparent colors, letting the colors blend on the paper and loosing edges by keeping the paint wet. I do wish II had thought to add in some blips of others colors like orange and purple but I can use my handy fine spray bottle and do that later.

This was a very wet painting. The Super Deluxe did not wrinkle anymore than a 140# paper would. I lifted some of the shadows off the left back leg and as usual it was easy to do with this super sketchbook.

Colors used Elephant and dirt – yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and Inathradone blue. Sky cerulean trees green Apatite and Inathridone.

I did a pencil sketch first. As you will see in a bit the sketchbook loves the pencil.

This is the sketchbook. Just in case you did not see the last post about it.

Another sketch of Rommel a huge bull elephant that showed up on the Samburu Reserve in Kenya where the show was filmed.

I really like the way this pencil sketch turned out so I doubt I will paint it. It was done with a cheap HB mechanical pencil from Office Max.

One thing that’s great about sketching off tv is that you can pause it. Only thing I don’t like about pencil sketching is its tendency to smear. I need to spray this with fixative.

Save the Elephants http://savetheelephants.org. The show was all about an effort that is being made in Samburu to increase the numbers of elephants which were dwindling drastically. They seem to be turning around now due to the efforts of Save the Elephants.

I love drawing animals and now want to go to Samburu on a sketch safari. Would that not be fabulous fun?! During dry season they flock to the water holes in Samburu, prime time for sketching or photography.

Think about it. I know I am.

More about the Super Bee tomorrow!!

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

Day 346 – Goat time!

June 20, 2015Leave a comment

since taking Sketchbookskool classes online. Highly recommend them!! I have foud that I love to draw animals and people. I could have spent the whole day at the zoo drawing the animals and the people.

This was drawn with my Noodler Creaper Ahab in my spiral bound Stillman and Birn Zeta. A lovely book great paper that dries flat even with a lot of washes. Now if you want a paper that dries very flat this one is for you. I normally use small binders clips to hold my sketchbook paper down as I paint because I have yet to find one that does not curl when you wet it. The most important thing is does it dry flat and I can say YES Stillman and Birn Zeta does. My Stillman and Birn alpha which is much thinner paper does NOT ever dry flat. Most annoying since the Super Delixe Bee does. Both the Alpha and the Bee are the same weight paper. Hmm.

Before splattering.

Back to the goats. The only thing I did different than usual was to splatter the left goat with white gouache using an old toothbrush. Why?! The goat is a kind of roan color peppered with white. Hard to Dow I th watercolor. I could have used masking fluid but this is just a sketch so I opted for splattering. More fun than masking fluid anyway.

That’s it for today. It’s Henry and Livia time in Decatur!!

Thanks for reading!!

Margaret ️xxx

Day 345 – That Paper!!

June 19, 2015Leave a comment

Gets five Gold stars in my book.

as I said yesterday I bought a landscape tablet of Aquabee Super Deluxe paper when I was at Binders at Ponce Market in April. Great store!! How often have you had an art store manager ask you what you would like to see carried in their store?! Told her a class with Charles Reid. I hope I hope!!

Anyway I had read in David Millards great watercolor books about Super Deluxe Bee sketchbooks. These books are 140 pages each just packed with information on watercolor. The price can not be beat. $4 or less on Amazon. Why do you ask?! The books are from the early 80s. The author died in 2002. Sadly I can’t take a class from him. He is big on sketchbooks big lots of tips on drawing crowds and buildings. The man knows sketchbooks. His favorites took all the water I threw at them and flattened out when I was done. Rare in a 93lb paper. And reasonably priced. Amazon has the big 11×14 listed for $22 and full price is $25 for a 100 pages!! I am stopping by Cityart in Columbia on my way to Charleston to pick up an 11×14 for Dr Sketchys and a smaller one to take to Key West in July. And maybe a tube or two of paint. Last week Randy the owner had Holbein paint half price. Why didn’t I order some?! Cityart is the store that Charles Reid and Mary White use to supply their classes. Great store down in the Vista. They also have a great website and shopping is almost overnite and so reasonable.

I drew this last April in my super deluxe bee 6×12 landscape book with my Kuretake brush pen from an overlook in Gatlinburg. Never quite got around to painting it. I was too tired from all the running around. The brush own had loved the smooth paper. Would the watercolor?! Despite what Millard said I am always a sceptic. And as Roz Stendhal says one thing you can count on is that paper will change. His books are 30 years old.

Thank goodness he was right. I lost count of the washes I threw at this paper. Big watery wet washes layer after layer. While the paper buckled a little as I painted it was almost perfectly flat when it dried!!! Hallelujah. A 93# paper that dries flat and doesn’t cost a fortune?!

TIP!!! Bytw I started the lower hills with a wash of light yellow Aureolin for the trees and gradually darkened it with very watery layers of red for the red oaks in the spring and darker greens and blues and mineral purple. Really like using the mineral purple as a dark. Using lots of layers of this colors let me keep the colors transparent. Aka didn’t make MuD!! Sky is a couple of layers of cerulean.

This is another sketch from the same overlook up in the Gatlinburg bypass. I meant to fill in the town but never did. It started raining. It rained a lot the week we were in Gatlinburg. And the pen ran out of ink. My kuretake converter holds a drop of ink. I swear. I did later find cartridges of platinum carbon black that fitted it so now I am good to go.

Another plus for this paper. I just realized that the Pentel brush ink supposedly permanent but so often runny in my Stillman and Birn zeta did not run on this paper when I went back over the lettering and decided to add yet another wash. Hurrah.
Thanks for reading.

Margaret who needs to get packing!!!xxx

Day 344 practicing Palm trees.

June 18, 2015Leave a comment

Besame Mucho, Key West

Been painting all day. Color me exhausted. Stayed up til 2 am reading. Three paintings today. Trying out different paper.

The first two went so well decided to proactive my nemesis palm trees and the other one BuShEs😜. If u r going to paint in Key West u better be able do a decent Palm.

How to paint a descent Palm. I usually loose my lights. I painted the Palm area first with a light yellow. And then did negative painting in blue greens Inathridone blue and even Quin red and mineral Violet. I did a simile thing with the trees behind the house. But did I do it with the bushes?! NoPe!!

Lifting. Have had a super deluxe bee sketchbook for a while. I bought it because a great watercolor book I have More Joy of Watercolor by David Lyle Millard($4 on amazon!!!) said it was great for watercolor. He’s right. It is. You can lift off color so easily. Found myself doing that over and over. It likes washes. And it’s not exorbitant in price because the paper is fairly thin 93

Super paper. I did one earlier today on it with wash after wash. It’s now just about flat. Something I can’t say about other popular sketchbook papers of simile weight.

I lifted the light green Palm fronds on the right middle of the tree below. It was too easy. They are repainted light green in the photo below.

I got the Palm but what happened to the bushes. Did I say I love white gouache?! When all else fails gouache it. I do hope one day to get where I never touch that stuff but in the meantime I need stock in it.
I also lifted the bushes. And the guys left arm. This paper lifts clean as a whistle. It’s smooth as a baby’s bottom so would be great for colored pencils. If u check the seal it says it works with all medias. Guess I shall try it out. No pastels though. Messy.