Category: art journal

Day 282 – Cataract Falls

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Took a nice walk behind the Sugarlands Visitor Center to Cataract Falls. 

The waterfalls are difficult to draw with water threading over dark black rock. I am going to add some white gouache to the water to see if it perks it up a little. It was drawn with my Noodler Ahab in my S&B Zeta with caran d’ache. 

I could not resist drawing the lady who was there taking pics of it. She had such an intersting stance I could not resist. Then she started talking to me. Scary!! What if she wanted to look?! 

 

 We even photographed a white trillium together. 

 

 There were yellow trillium everywhere along the trail. 

 

 The trail was loaded with flowers and  

  

a small black snake. 

 

 It  wound along by Fighting Creek. 

A lovely easy trail.  

Thanks for looking. 

Day 282 – Running out of ink!

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 and some more food sketching. 

 Brownie and chocolate chip ice cream desert  at the Wild Plum Tea Room.  I think I might be obsessed with food but it was delicious served on a sweet pink and white rose china plate including a doily.  

I used my kuretake brush pen  and a pitt pen plus caran d’ache. 

Need to add something to the title. Maybe a plum because I didn’t space the lettering out enough. 

 

 A warning about the kuretake brush pen.  I love it. I got a converter for it too but it runs out very quickly when doing a large sketch like this one with all the black line work. I think I refilled it three times in the process. My Pentel brush pen which I left back at home would still be full of ink. I guess it’s a small price to pay for being able to use  platinum carbon black ink in a brush pen but it’s annoying to refill so frequently.  

 The other day I went out sketching and ran out of ink. It was especially great for sketching trees but I ran out before I could finish. 

Now I have to drive back up the mountain and finish this. To make the scenario perfect I left my Pentel brush pen at home 234 miles away. Not fun to refill the pen with a bottle of ink in the car. Sigh! 

Thanks for looking!!


Day 281 – The Wild Plum Tea Room

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Lunch on a deck over a streams surrounded by flowering trees. Spring at its best in Gatlinburg. 
 

 Great charming ambience, terrific food on assorted old china plates. Wait staff is fabulous. 

 

  

 

This place won a well deserved Trip Advisor award of excellence in 2014. We will go back maybe even tomorrow!! 

I need to draw their lobster pie. Mike high lobster pie!! 

 

Desert was a gooey brownie sundae with chocolate chip ice cream with a wedge of pineapple.  I still have to paint it.  

This is colored with caran d’ache crayons over a watercolor base done with the crayons. Inked with my trusty Kuretake brush pen filled with Carbon Platinum black ink. 

Wish I had a few more things flowing over the border. Maybe I will cut something out and stick a few leaves on it?! Probably not.  On to the next picture. 

Thanks for looking. 

Day  280 -Making Accordion Books

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Why make them?? Because they are the easiest book to make because no sewing is involved. 

And because you can do this with them.  

My Sennelier USKsketchbook.

 Nice heavy paper but only one length of paper.   Too short. Another reason to make one.  Dull black cover. 

 

 210″ small Moleskine accordion 

Or the famous moleskines. Again a dull black cover. Great length but the paper is terrible now that they are outsourced to China. Watercolor and pens will bleed they to the back so you can’t use it.   

So now that we know why we need to make one lets get started and gather our supplies. 

 Supplies

Book board or heavy cardboard

2-3 sheets of All purpose paper such as Stonehenge. 

PVA glue

Fabric for the covers – cotton muslin or sateen

Bone folder

Rulers

Pencil

Exacto knife or carton cutter

Optional

Self healing  mat

Parchment paper. Glue won’t stick to it. 

Let’s get started!

Sorry not to have better photos. I am out of town. No wifi no fabric or glue. I will update this when I return home hopefully next weekend showing how to cover the book board. 

Measure the width of the paper. 

Divide the width of the paper by 3 or 4. I made books ranging from 5″ – 7 1/2″ tall. I got three to four strips out of each piece of paper. 

Most books are 3 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ tall or 5″ x 7 1/2″ size. 

 

Folding the paper 

 Measure and mark your strips. It’s easiest to cut them with the Exacto  knife or a rotary cutter but I like the look of ripped paper edges.

 

Ripping the paper.  

 An easy way to get the torn edges is to fold your paper across the width and crease it with the bone folder. Then SLOWLY slide the bone folder along the crease ripping the paper. Roz Stendahl (Www.rozwoundup.typepad.com) has a you tube video on how to do this. http://youtu.be/pzlXHZ0f3kg Amazingly easy. 

 

  The paper accordion folded. 

 Next fold your strips in half. Crease with the bone folder. Mark your fold lines either every 3 1/2″ or every 5″. Fold like a fan or accordion.

 Joining the pieces. There will be a tab of extra paper left on each end of your strips. Remove the tab from one end.  Cut the other tab down to a 1/2″. You will use this to glue the strips together. 

PUT THE GLUE ON THE BACK OF THE STRIP WITHOUT THE TAB AND GLUE THE TAB TO IT. AS IN THE PHOTO. 

BE SURE YOU GLUE ALL THE STRIPS TOGETHER ON THE SAME SIDE OR YOU WILL HAVE SOME TABS ON BOTH SIDES. YOU WANT THEM ALL ON ONE SIDE. 

 

 If this frustrates you you can also use Washi tape to join your paper. 

 

 You can glue as many strips as you want together. The small  moleskines have 210″ of thin Chinese paper in them!! The larger moleskines have 124″ of thin Chinese paper. 

Just remember that heavier the paper is the fatter the book. 

Cut the cardboard covers 1/4″ bigger than your paper strips. Cut your fabric about 2″ bigger than your cardboard pieces. 

Spread glue on the board evenly.  Be sure to cover the whole board. and apply the fabric. Smooth the fabric with your bone folder removing any wrinkles and bubbles in the fabric. 

 

Mitering corners /Gluing sides. OPPS a wrinkle. 

 (This photo is from a tutorial I did on how to make a pamphlet stitch sketch book.http://scquiltaddict.blogspot.com/2014/10/day-96-sketchbook-part-2.html?m=1)

 Miter and glue the corners. Trim the fabric diagonally down before you fold and glue the corners. 

Neatly glue the sides down. 

 

  

 Glue the paper to the covers.  (I am not happy with the wrinkly paper. In later books I glued paper over the fabric covered board to make the end papers smoother. 

You are done. 👍 See not so hard. 

This webpage has great instructions with pictures. http://www.designsponge.com/2013/03/bookbinding-101-accordion-book.html

Thanks for looking!!

Day 278 – The Flying Biscuit

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Staying in Gatlinbirg with no wifi. Should be interesting. Going to see if this will post. I can see a wifi tower so maybe it will go. 

This is my breakfast at the world famous Flying Biscuit home of the creamy dreamy grits and mile high biscuits. Also as my friend Marsha says a vehicle to put butter in your mouth. 

I drew the sketch with a Kuretake brush pen loaded with Carbon Platinum black. Love that pen. Think refillable Pentel brush pen.  Heaven right.

 I colored it with the Caran d’ache  watercolor crayons. The bases are washes of watercolor using the caran d’ache crayons. Layers of color were  scribbled on the base watercolors with any color that I thought would look good aka show up. After I was done painting I reapplied lots of ink including cross hatching. 

The section where the name Flying Biscuit is written was a problem.  The name didn’t show on the red background. So I scribbled a lot of lighter colors over the dark red and rewrote the words. Now they show up well. 

Thanks for looking. 

Day 277- Earls

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finishing up Atlanta sketches. As usual we hit the restaurants. 

 

Earls on Flat Shoals Road in East Atlanta Village was the perfect spot for an outside lunch on a gorgeous spring day.

 Hamburgers were cooked to order and delicious. Sweet potatoes fried were perfect and the Dijon cranberry dipping sauce was some kind of heaven.  Tasted like it had a bit of horseradish sauce it it too. Yumm. The tea was just the way I like it. Lots of ice too. 

I drew the sketch with a Kuretake brush pen loaded with Carbon Platinum black. Love that pen. Think refillable Pentel brush pen.  Heaven right. I colored it with the Caran d’ache  watercolor crayons. The bases are washes of watercolor using the caran d’ache crayons. Layers of color were  scribbled on the base watercolors with any color that I thought would look good. After I was done painting i reapplied lots of ink including cross hatching. 

The pale blue background was made by using a water  brush on the flat end of the crayon. Fun stuff!! 

  

I already filled up ️my Sennelier accordion book. No bleed thru so far.   The paper is lovely heavy stuff. Will be posting as soon as I do an accordion book tutorial and color the Sennelier.  

Thanks for looking!! 

Day 276 Church Lady 

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sometimes I wonder why everything I seem to paint is full of problems that I have to solve.  How is it that I screw up over and over.  Maybe it’s the universe hinting I should go back to painting with acrylics!? I dunno. 

 

 I painted three ladies or manikin heads with fancy hats. Church Lady is the third one.  I meant to post this one on Easter Sunday but got busy and didn’t quite get around to it.  You notice that quote?! Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.  That’s me and watercolor. Something is going to  invariably mess up.   

I painted her face THREE times. Can you believe that?! I truly did.  I had a lovely face and was doing the letterig on the side and my pen caught on the string and slung blips of brown ink all over her face and a bit on her hat. Groan. That’s all I could do. 

   

  

Here she is right before instarted the lettering. Worst thing is I hated the lettering when I had finished it. So I messed her up for nothing.  

I painted over the ink splats with white gouache and never could get her face right. So I decided to cut out a new face. I did. I cut out three or four. One even ended up painted. It never laid down right so I peeled it off.  Oh what a mess. 

Finally I painted the remains of  her original face out with Daniel Smith watercolor ground. The surface was ripped and lumpy. I thought hopeless.

  

I redrew her face with my Noodler flex non and De Artrementis brown document ink.  I painted her face for the third time. Finally I pronounced her done.  I lettered her with a brush and the brown ink. I also painted out the quote with yellow gouache. I thought church ladies was a lot more fun than that quote which ended up I the border. Oh I highlighted the hat and the eyes with white gel pen. 

 

 Oh.  I made a few more accordion books. That make seven. Stay tuned for a how to on the accordion books. 

Love that new Kuratake refillable pen in the picture . Now loaded with platinum carbon black ink. Super pen. Busy drawing my way thru my new S&B Zeta. Still need to paint them. 

Thanks for looking. 

Day 276 – Michonne

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 WIP -Michonne-

 Walking Dead star. 

Caran d’ache in stillman&birn zeta. 

Odd how u look at sketches the next day and think they need more tweaking. I think she could use more red here and there. And oops her left eye is not done. Wonder how I did that!? Will I finish her? Probably. Have the urge to draw Darryl and Maybe Carol so I better finish Michonne. 

 

Made 5 accordion books today. This is two of them. Hope to do a how to make them this weekend.  Check back. 

Thanks for looking! 

Day 275 – Rick Misbehaving

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I started drawing Rick when my son and I were binge watching Walking Dead. 

  

It was the episode that they are arriving in Alexandria  and he was sitting still being interviewed. So I thought draw Rick!! 

OOPPPPSSS 

Of course as soon as I started to draw him he was done and the next interview began.  I kept trying to draw him. Oh what a mess he was. Just a little off here and there.  

This started out as an ink sketch. I didn’t like that at all so I added some caran d’ache like it was pastels. Scribbling it here and there. Adding odd ball colors like yellows,  red, light blue, and light purple. 

There are lots of things I liked about him and some not so much. I rewound and paused.  Slapped some flesh gouache to straighten out the hair line, erase bags, lengthen the cheek, sort the nose and hmm what else? Widen the brow, and get rid of a few stray ink marks. 

After the flesh colored gouache dried I added the same colors back again. Added some more black ink. I think I need to fix his neck. But otherwise he’s done. 

Thanks for looking. 

Day 274 – The Tale of the $43 Chicken Salad

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 A little Journaling about my very expensive chicken salad at Whole Foods. They ended up giving it to me because it rang up for $43.50!!! I have decided to try journaling a little on the sketches I have been doing in my new Stillman and Birn Zeta. What do you think?! 

 

This sketch was really bad for a while because of lack of good colors of Tombows. All I have with me are oddball colors to fill in the ones I already have. Then I remembered I had my box of Neocolor ii caran d’ache. I also hauled out the tube of flesh colored gouache that I bought. Caran d’ache can maximize coloring fun. 

 The mess – I had tried coloring their faces and the ink smeared. Why it does it sometimes and not others I will never know. I think a mess can be good because you no longer care if you mess up. Fun effects can happen then. 

How I cured it. Painted a couple of layers of gouache letting each layer dry. Then I played with the caran d’ache.  Last I Reinked their faces. 

Thanks for looking.