Category: art journal

Day 551 – Sapphire Valley NC

Leave a comment

SweetwaterThompsonRiver
Out the Back door. Watercolor, Noodler Konrad w D’artrementis Document Brown in strathmore Mixed Media 500 sketchbook. .

Spent the last week in Sapphire Valley at my sons trout farm that he bought last fall. A truly lovely spot. I sketched this as I sat on the back deck on one of the few sunny days we had.

The Thompson River, a trout river, runs through the property with at least two waterfalls. When you fall asleep at night you can here the river rushing by.  It’s surrounded by stands of hard woods and pine trees.

This was painted with my whisky painters watercolor box and waterbrushes.

Colors used. Cerulean sky. Grey is Inathrodone and burnt umber with touches of hooker green for the moss on the trees. River. Hookers, cerulean and yellow ocher.

Rhododendrons hookers and cad yellow.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

 

 

Day 450 – O.P.Taylor’s Toy Store

Leave a comment

  
O.P.Taylors Toy Store – Watercolor, Noodler Konrad w D’artrementis Document Brown in strathmore Mixed Media 500 sketchbook. 

In Brevard NC a charming small mountain town near Sapphire Valley. We all love to visit O.P.Taylors Toy Store http://www.optaylors.com in downtown Brevard on the corner of Main and Broad Street. 

O.P.Taylors Toy Store is truly a fantastic store that kids dream about. Toys packed to the ceiling in this old two story store. Even the staircase ballisters are popping with stuffed animals. There are several other locations including one in Biltmore Village and a website. If you find one nearby check it out. It’s truly ToYLaND!! 

I drew the store as I sat outside waiting for my kids to come out of it. It’s a dangerous place for a grandma to go with her sweet grandchildren. They didn’t need another thing after the largesse of Christmas so I sat outside to avoid temptation. 

This is not the front of the store but the side that faces Broad. 

Colors used. Everything in my whiskey  painters travel box. And a white gel pen on the Christmas lights. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

 

.  

Day 546 – Sycamores 

2 Comments

  
Line the streets of Paris. The French like to prune them into odd shapes. I don’t like trees that Americans prune like this but in France there are so many I grew to like them. They line the Seine River and many streets.

 In the 1880s it became fashionable  to take the air but one did not want to get a tan so trees were planted and pruned to indulge this whim especially in Paris. 

Colors used. Leaf French ochre w Quin sienna and Quin burnt orange. Cerulean.  Splattered with whatever soup was on my palette. Strathmore 500 mixed media journal, Konrad Noodler, carbon platinum black ink. 

Thanks for reading.  

Margaret xxx

Day 542 – that travel journal 

Leave a comment

🇫🇷Or breakfast at the Rochester hotel.

 A lavish spread. Heaps of croissants and tasty rolls. Several kinds of delicious cheeses, quiche, home made yogurt and the list goes on and on.  There was even some kind of baked chicken and veg. 👀

 
🇫🇷If you didn’t like what they had you could order whatever you wanted. I always ordered an omelet. We were up so early I did’t want to get hungry before we found a place to eat lunch!! And of course since it was a buffet we tried lots of goodies-perhaps only a bite. 


🇫🇷This lady sat next to me at breakfast one day. I knew she would not notice me drawing her since she was engrossed in her IPad. 

🇫🇷Strathmore mixed media 500 paper, Noodler Konrad pen, platinum carbon black ink, Daniel smith, winsor Newton, and Holbein watercolor.    

🇫🇷 I think I left my heart in France when it’s not in Decatur with my grandkids. 😢 I dream about it a lot!! 

Merry Christmas🎄🌲🎄🌲🎄🌲🎄

Thanks for reading. 

Day 540 – quite a few travel journal pages done

Leave a comment

  Paris Day 1 – Giddy with excitement. 

Now but since I am once again traveling will parcel them out and hope I get some more done. Not easy with an adorable three year old grandson “helping” you out. Lol

Like the layout. It evolved. The right page was done first sketched while we waited for our food. L’Artoise is a sweet little restaurant on Rue d’Artois around the corner from our hotel the Rochester. The Yelp reviews were spot on. Food was passable but not memorable.  

 Debbie and Tucker also cruising on Viking and staying at the Rochester. 
 The Proprietors were sweet and oh so French. The eggplant entree w a slab of store mozzarella was not great. The chicken an improvement – cow au vin I think. 

 We were so excited that dog food would have been wonderful lol. We imagined we were Phil who we followed on his adventures on PBS What is Phil eating. A hoot. Phil would not have eaten at L’Artois. 
 Dessert créme brûlée. Yummy. Then we walked the champs Elysees. I think we walked five miles even with out jet lag. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret off to make Christmas cookies but dreadfully in need of a long winters nap. On the 26th right?! 😊 xxx

Day 537 – Finally

2 Comments

  
Figured out the title page for my France travel journal. I filled up two Strathmore 500 mixed Media journals but still have a lot of pages to paint in what I call my coloring book. 

The light was bad on the boat for painting so I mostly drew with my Noodler Konrads while I was on board. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret making headway in her journals finally. 😘

Day 522 – Last of the Marais

3 Comments

  
St Gervais a beautiful odd church near the Hôtel de Ville. The facade  is neoclassic but the rest of it is gothic with flying buttresses like nearby Notre Dame. 

   
Hôtel de Ville – the city hall. Where else but in Paris would you find an encrusted crenellated palace for a town hall?

  Lights on the plaza. 

 
From Rue Rivoli.  

  
The riverside.  It sits right by the Seine. 

  One of the three back doors. Probably 12 feet tall. Amazing huge things. Statues of famous Parisians march across  the facade. 

Riverside in the sun.   
  Riverside no sun.  
The front from the river.  

Thanks for reading. 
Margaret xxx

Day 521 – Paris to Normandy

4 Comments

  
Another map of the places we went on our voyage down, or is it UP the Seine River. I guess we went both ways. Lol. 

Maps are a lot of fun and make a great memory for a travel journal. You should try one.

First make a list of what u want to include. Sites restaurants places u stayed. Then make a rough draft of the roads or river you traveled. Use your photos to jog your memory. They are a lot of fun and your friends will love them. 

I used Carbon platinum ink on strathmore 50o mixed media paper. Love that ink and that paper. Inked with the carbon pen, a Kuretake brush pen for lettering and a Noodler Konrad. The river was inked with the Kuretake for emphasis. 

I drew the river with a pencil first but the rest was drawn straight on the paper with the carbon pen. 

Colors used cerulean cobalt Inathrodone blue burnt sienna burnt umber yellow ochre cad yellow cad red and alizarin. Oh and hookers green. 

Now go make a map!

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 520 – A Map of the Marais

Leave a comment

  
I like to draw maps of my trips sometimes. This one is definitely over the top compared to most of the ones I do. I probably have twenty hours in it so far. 

This is a WIP.  I think it needs something more on the right bottom corner but not sure what.  Sooner or later it will come. 

This is the walking tour we did of the Marais – about 2.5 miles- when we first got to Paris. It takes about 2 1/2 hours to complete it. 

The biggest problem I had doing it was figuring out where we went. I had to use google maps to find the street names that went with my photos of the sites. I knew we started at Place de la Bastille and ended at the Hôtel de Ville. That was about it. I didn’t know the names of the streets and couldn’t remember the names of some of the sites like the Biblioteque. 

Bit by bit I found my way thru the Marais so I could draw the streets. The next step was to put the buildings in their proper places. I tried to be accurate with my street layout but sometimes to fit buildings in I had to move the streets a little like around my favorite Merveiulleux de Fred and the oldest buildings in Paris on Francois Miron. Oops.  

I also turned quite a few buildings around to face the viewer like Carnavalet and the Jewish école (school) on Francois Miron. 

I drew this first with a pencil and then inked it with my Carbon Pen for two reasons – the fine point and the ink. Carbon ink doesn’t smear a lot. All done, all erased successfully with no smears. I noticed something that I did not ink. Took off the lid. Started drawing. 

Suddenly I had ink blobs by the river and on La Pause Baubourg. The top of the pen was full of ink. I had ink all over my hands. 😢 I was seriously annoyed. I guess it’s a challenge to fix it right?

  Something else to think about. 

Sooner or later I will probably paint this or maybe just paint some things like the river. 

Bytw I found this very cool map of the Marais on BHV/Marais’ website http://www.bhv.fr/plan-marais/ when I was trying to see what the right side of the BHV looked like. I only had a photo of the domed entrance. Having been in the BHV by the other entrance I knew it was different. Such a plain entrance.   

  
I also found this very cool photo of the BHV there. I had to share it.  It’s all decorated for Christmas now with a British theme. Mine was taken during the daytime. How cool is this store. Too of my list for a revisit whe. I get back to Paris. 

This is a fast sketch Christine  our  tour guide in the Marais and a bit of journaling about it. 
Thanks for reading. Time to tackle drawing the Seine now. 

Margaret xxx