Category: art journal

Day 262- and Some Art Before Lunch 

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Art before lunch. Very fast sketch from a distance. Think I was more into drawing the fountain than the couple who were having the best conversation outside at the inner bean while smoking and enjoying the weather.

  

This was drawn with my Pentel brush pen. Lettering was done with my Lamy Vista fine nib. The painting was done mostly with watercolor and with some gouache. 

I had a lot of trouble painting the flesh tones. The best thing I finally discovered while painting this was how to make flesh  using gouache. I tried the way I mix it with watercolor. Light yellow and a clear red. Not good when combined with white.

Then I tried white with a tiny bit of English red and bingo. Great flesh color!! Who knew?! I painted the skin before I went to book club and while I was there I studied the other ladies’ skin tones. Studying always helps. Then I came home and repainted them. Thank goodness. 

Random success!👏I have to say I think the girl is a little skinny and the arm too short but oh well. It’s done and I am turning the page!! 

Thanks for looking!!

Day 262 – Some Art Before Breakfast

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  Sorry not to post this sooner but I have been drawing too much. And have too many pages to post. I did draw my breakfast this morning too but yet to paint it. Tomorrow or after I go for a walk tonite.  I seem to like to paint at nite. 

This was inspired by Danny Gregory’s blog post recently of his breakfast. I am not likey to make a habit of drawing before breakfast. I don’t like cold eggs. Grits however and tea take a while to cool down!  

This was done with my Pentel brush pen. Then I journaled on it a bit. And finally I painted it with Schminke gouache. The background color is watered down gouache. The grey on the cup was made with indigo and white. The mushrooms were painted with a brown made from yellow, red and indigo lightened with white. 

Thanks for looking. At least one more breakfast coming!! 

Day 261 – Tom Cat

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If you would like me to paint your. Animal on commission let me know at mc m hu nt@me. Com  

 

Tom copyright Margaret McCarthy Hunt 81/2 x 11″ $195. Gouache or acrylic 

My son found Tom as a tiny stray in the wheel well of a neighbors boat trailer. When he brought him home you could hold him on your palm of one hand. Now he’s a sleek kitty with fur that glows like fire when he sits in the sun light. 

He also yowls at me to go in or out. In this painting he wanted out. He was getting irritated because I made him wait while I drew him.  

I drew him with one of my Noodler flex nibs loaded with Drartremis brown document ink. Painted him with gouache in my stillman and Birn zeta with  mostly white, Indian yellow, and English red with bits of indigo in the shadows.  

 

Detail Tom copyright Margaret McCarthy Hunt 81/2 x 11″ $195. Gouache or acrylic 

 Because he such a red cat I watered down some Quin Sienna watercolor and brushes it over his fur to make it redder.  I also added some watery burnt umber and burnt sienna Wc for shade. 

Background is watery titmouse with some Azo yellow to make the green spots. 

267 – Dog of the Day 

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The Dog of the Day – my nieces lab Reagan with his birthday hat on. Happy Birthday Reagan!! Did I say a yellow lab is much harder to paint than a black one. Especially with a limited gouache palette.

 All you need for a black lab is a dark indigo blue for the  black with a touch of the English red and a lighter blue and a bit of red for the collar and you gue.



 The yellow lab? 😳 So many shades of cream, buff, peach, Browns, purples, greys and white. Red for the tongue and a bit of dark purple. 

And ps Azo yellow is NOT a good color for a yellow lab. It’s too lemony and turns him green when mixed with white and painted over the colors I was using. Any blue remotely near it turned it green. 😜 Not so with the Indian yellow which is very strange. 

I did use a lot of light purples for the greys. 

Background is watered down turquoise.  

Thanks for looking!  

Day 266 A Few Seagulls or Thoughts on Fifty More Shades of Grey

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Sometimes it’s just fun to go sit in the middle of a parking lot and draw the seagulls. No idea why they congregate in the parking lots but they do. If you decide you want to draw seagulls take some crackers or old bread with you. They will follow you like you are the pied piper. 



I actually drew a lot of seagulls last week but didn’t get around to painting them till a few days ago. I like this one best. Drawn with Noodler Konrad flex nib and Noodler lexington grey ink in my Stillman and Birn Zeta it’s painted with watery gouache. Much faster than using it opaque. Or at least that’s my story so far.  

I have a bunch of premixed greys made from indigo and schminke English red. Sometimes I add more white. Sometimes more indigo. Thee indigo can make a great grey mixed only with the white. Try it.  U will love it.  

Lettering is done with indigo and a brush. The background is turquoise with bits of green made by mixing Indian yellow in with the turq. That makes a muddy green. 

Anyway. Gotta run. My paints are waiting and drying out. 

Thanks for looking. 

Day 256 – Another Dog

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Dogs are big in my family. All of us have at least one and some of us have several. I have two. A Jack Russell who I posted a couple of days ago and a huge lab. Honey is a chow hound. Loves biscuits and I mean the southern kind not cookies but she will eat those too. She is always thinking about food.  

When I got her from the Aiken pound she weighed about 75 lb. We have fixed that. She now weighs about 110 pounds.  The dog seriously loves food. She also steaks food off the kitchen counter especially any bread product. 

Anyway this is drawn with a black Pentel brush pen. The highlights are gouache as is the background.  The lettering is done with the Kuratake brush pen. 



The thought of food makes her joyful. And you can see it I this picture. 

Thanks for looking!! 

Day 255 – Dinosaur time

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It’s a lot of fun to draw dinosaurs. I bought this one recently at Target but I hear I need to start checking goodwill and you consignments for them. I now have four of them as well as a few other animals. 

My grandson loves dinosaurs and trucks. This is a postcard on watercolor paper for him. Next time I think I will let him paint it after I give him some paints. In the meantime I painted it with my caran d’ache since I didn’t feel like getting out the watercolors. 

Added bonus I found two contests to enter it in on Instagram. Who knew they have dino drawing contests on IG?!





Here it is just done with my Noodler Creaper Ahab with carbon Platinum black ink.   It’s about 6×8 on #140 kilimanjaro from cheap joes. 

Thanks for looking. 

Day 254 – Sunday!! 

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Sundays I like to watch CBS Sunday Morning and Super Soul Sunday but not today. Zoe sat down next to me and she was watching to see what I was doing. And I thought “What a great painting she would make! so I took a photo of her.

 And then of course I drew her. If I had drawn her from life she would have gotten on the back of the sofa and turned her back to me before I was done drawing her. 





Zoe version 4. I realized she was way to fat In the last photo so I put her on an instant diet. I think she is done I hope she is done. She lost an inch in about a half an hour. Best diet ever. But who knows?!😃 in the morning she may need something else done. Stillman and birn zeta gouache Kuratake ink pen. #drawyourdog

She went they several stages. This is the finished one. Well you never know I may change her again. Zoe is done in schminke gouache and with my Kuretake brush pen in my Stillman & Burn Zeta. I had thought she was done twice before. 



This was the first time I thought she was done. Till I realized her back should be curved and NOT straight. OOPS!! I did like the odd wonkiness to her face. More on that in a minute. 



Here she is with her back curved the right way. I thought she was done for about a minute till I realized I needed to add some white to the Mohawk down her spine to make it look fluffier.  Back to the gouache. 



So here Zoe is with white hairs added to her Mohawk. Then I realized her nose was a twitch off as was her right eye. I got my #2 Isabey out. It’s a lovely  sable brush that will point like no other. I started adding bits of fine hair here and there on her face with white and caramel colors on her darker bits. I used indigo around her nose mixed with a bit of Sienna for blacks and greys. I also added some whiskers. 

Thanks for looking!!!

Day 252 – Those Beards!!!

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I must be feeling better because last nite I decided to draw Matthew Perry with his scruffy beard last night a la Roz Stendahl who posted guys with beards lol last week on her blog. I took a pic of him on his show Odd Couple. And that was it. 





Then I drew my son Ben who has been known to sport lots of chin hair of all kinds. They were going so well that I did a third one. 



Have always lived Jonny Lee Miller since I saw him in a Jane Austen movie. Combine him with Sherlock and some chin hair. I had to try. I will say I am not as pleased with him as the first two. 

 What was the quote on Matthew Perry. Ideas at 3 am might not be so great.Well neither are they at 11 pm when I did Johnny!! But they were a lot of fun. So much that when I met my friend Marsha at Waffle House I kept sneaking photos of guys with beards. They were everywhere. 

So how did I do these?  I found that the easiest way to do these was with the Pentel color brush. It’s easy to lighten and move the ink to shade with it. Then I went back in with my Pentel brush own to finish it off.  The background was done with gouache. Lettering with the Pentel brush pen. 

Bytw my son thinks I should do a graphic novel so I guess he linked his. He loves graphic novels and comic books. 

A lot of fun. Bet you can’t do just one!!

Day 251 – The Brown Thrasher

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i had three other things I meant to be working on today instead I drew more birds?! I have had a touch of bronchitis and was sitting on the den sofa feeling bad. I glanced out the window to see a huge brown bird on the back deck. He was at least five times as big as any bird out there. Thrashers are ground dwellers and I had only seen one once before on the deck though I see them in the yard a lot. 

And my sketchbook was in my purse so I grabbed a nearby piece of paper so as not to scare the bird off. 



I drew a few quick sketches before he flew off. 



Using my noodoee flex oen and De Artremis brown document ink I redrew him in my S&B Zeta and added another from memory. Then I painted them with gouache. I used English red, indigo, white and yellow Schminke. The best discovery I had today was that a filbert makes a great comma stroke. I used it to make all the brown marks on his chest. 

Thanks for looking!!