Day 934 Urban sketching and a cartoon

February 8, 20175 Comments

I drew this apartment building from the porch of the Partridge Inn last Wednesday. It was bathed in the late afternoon sun. I don’t know if I captured it but it’s my other favorite sketch from yesterday.

Color Quin cold and Quin coral on the building w a violet in the shadows. Hematite green bushes w ultramarine blue. Sky cerulean.

Sketchbookskool homework. Draw a cartoon.

This is our beloved art professor Al saying his quips that keep us laffing and coming back for more of his teaching. I am starting year two. Some people in Advanced Painters have been there for twenty years. His New Yorkness is still there all these years later.

Some more Al-isms.
Looks like a gorilla painted this.

Don’t mess it up to fix it. Never happens.
You owe me some time.
You need to leave room 140

There’s a world outside room 140

This is not a democracy.

Steal from the best.

“These two areas of your painting need to talk to each other”.

“Get working. Stop talking”.

“Don’t let me paint your painting for you. You decide”.

“Seven years he has been here and he has never done anything I’ve asked him to do”. (Like in a way he is sort of proud of the guy for that)

“So do you think you have another painting in ya?”

“Work on this for your next 20 paintings”.

Kawfee
“You got it!” (I.e.do we understand?)

“You are in danger of finishing this painting”.

” It’s your painting; I don’t want to micromanage it”
“Be thinking about your next painting” ”
“Keep it fresh!

“Don’t get too.close.to me….or might be I don’t want to get too close to anyone, I might be coming down with something.”

“I am very tired.today” ” I have to go crack my back”.

Stop.talking….start painting…….and/or. “Get to work”!😕🎨
Have the same person paint this side.
Watch those edges.

Big brush strokes.

Warms and cools make a happy painting
Complimentary Pairs.
Brush strokes
Same intensity of two complimentaries make them pop. .
Change blue use thalo sometimes. Thick paint makes it closer glazes farther away
Texture brush strokes

People are stingy about their paint
A really great painter pays attention to the corners and edges not just the middle.

Day 933 Urban Sketching

February 7, 2017February 7, 2017Leave a comment

Went sketching downtown with my sweet friend AC Daniel. We ended up at the Soy Noodle house eating. Gotta keep your strength up. So far this is my fav sketch done that day. It looks terrible after I painted it but turned it into a journal page with the lettering.

Stillman and Birn Zeta Pentel Brush Pen and Lamy EF. My whisky painter travel palette and waterbrushes.

Wish I had taken a photo of it before the lettering. The brown was just dullllll.

Pleased to announce Augusta is having its first Urban Sketchers meeting. Hopefully Sunday February 12 at Earthfare Meeting Room at 1 pm. Click on the link to join our facebook page, to keep up to date, and to see our art!!! Lots of sketching will be going on.
Ttyl

Margaret xoxoxo who had to work on her sketchbookskool homework.

Day 932 – Al Beyer

February 6, 2017February 7, 2017Leave a comment

I drew this during art history lecture last Wednesday. Not meant to look like him exactly just the essence and to take notes on the lecture about how to compose a painting and be sure you get all the parts in perspective. When people are added the heads have to line up on your sight line or they will appear to float. Check out John Salimen, another great art teacher. He’s a master at composing from photos with many national and international art awards. His new coffee table book is just gorgeous.

His DVD on urban landscapes explains how to compose a picture from several photos.

Painted with my tiny whiskey painter palette loaded with Windsor newton travel Paullette colors. Refilled with Daniel Smith using the same colors plus DS quin coral.

A bientot Happy Mondayoff to class I go.

Margaret xoxox

Day 931 Panera on a Sunday

February 5, 2017Leave a comment

The Panera on Robert C Daniel Parkway was jam packed last week. It was much multiracial than the Evans Panera is.

This is the first sketch I did there. Not perfect but hey it gets you out of the house.

This one was better. I just dropped people in as they wandered by. Lettering could be a little darker.

Ted Nuttalls transparent watercolor palette. Lamy Safari Stillman and Birn Zeta.

Time to go do some urban sketching.

Xoxoxo Margaret

Day 930 – Saturdays in Aiken

February 4, 2017February 4, 2017Leave a comment

Maggie’s Van Gogh aka Ilaina. 24×30″ acrylic

Sorry for no progress photos. I left my phone in the car lost under the seat!! Thank goodness Rachel found it for me. Cars do eat telephones.

She came together really fast. By first break Ilaina was mostly done. So I decided to paint the background to fill up it most especially the chair. I had a lot of green paint on my brush left over from the drape and decided to put it on the chair. LOVED The look. Added some thalo blue for shadows using a huge 14 bristle filbert. I decided to spread the thalo around with dabs on the figure.

And then I painted the rest of the background. Nothing too focused. Just colors.

Colors used cobalt and thalo blue, pyrrole red, nickel azo gold, titanium white, Winsor violet, primary yellow, Indian yellow

Love the peachy tones in Drew Murphys soft painting

Al Beyer’s oil. He was in an odd spot behind the chair which made her head quite tiny.

Lady who painted next to me.

Tom Needham’s small watercolor.

Dawns large oil. And that’s all I had time to take pics of

Progress on Looking Down -Ponce City Market.

My friend Drew Murphys awesome elephant painting.

Here it is earlier last week. Ruth and I told him to take the buckets out. Like it better without.

Ttyl off to run errands.

Margaret xoxox

Day 928 Getting Squirrely

February 2, 2017Leave a comment

The back porch squirrels and their antics are always fun to sketch. A ready model. Cheap. Will work for bird seed anywhere anytime anyplace. And of course I like to imagine what they are thinking as they gobble. Really need to name them Oreck and Dyson or Hoover. Miele?!

Drawn with a Lamy Safari in a Stillman and Birn Zeta mixed media.

Colors. Background Quinn gold squirrels cerulean Piemonte ultramarine. Splattered with Quin sienna or burnt orange.

Have a go at the squirrels. The back porch birds are fun to draw too. Use some gestures. It doesn’t have to look just like a particular squirrel it just had to look like a squirrel – the way they hold their food and hunch up over thier paws or spread their tails. Fun stuff.

Ttyl

Margaret off to look downtown and see what there is to sketch in this 72 degree day of sunshine. Xoxoxo

Day 926 – Ponce City Market-Day 3

January 31, 2017January 31, 2017Leave a comment

Working little is Looking Down

This is day three working on this huge acrylic. Well huge for a very short person. Lol. It’s 3’x4′.

Sorry the picture is not better.

Bytw the photo I am using to paint from was taken from the second floor of Ponce City Market looking down on the restaurant tables below. The ceilings are very high so it’s like it was take from the third story.

The day I took photos the man on the right was everywhere. Always in the background cleaning. Always working silently in the background.

This is what it looked like yesterday when I worked on it. Still a lot to do. I don’t have the picture of the sketch because I started painting it as I was sketching it.

The sketch lines were becoming jumbled and confused so I started blocking in the colors so I could see what I was drawing. What was right and what was wrong.

Colors used. The undercoating is Nickel Azo gold. Other colors pyrrole red, Winsor purple, thalo blue, black, burnt umber, titanium white. Also

Using up lots of tail ends of tubes before they dry out like yellow ochre.

Ttyl gym time.

Margaret tearing herself away from the tv. Xoxoxox

#poncecitymarket

Day 925 the rest of the pile

January 30, 2017Leave a comment

Notice how this painting started as a gesture sketch after I measured.

So did this one. In Two minutes gesture is about all you can do.

Day 924 Gesture sketches

January 29, 2017Leave a comment

A gesture sketch is done looking at a person usually but I got annoyed with the way mine are going and decided to draw the dogs with gestures.

I think I drew these Tuesday and they were great practice for Dr Sketchys. Here are the rest of them. I really want to draw dancers this way.

Esmeralda is the top left. Quasimodo, Frollo, and Esmeralda bottom right and left.

These were all drawn while I was watching Notre Dame de Paris on YouTube. A lot of dramatic gestures good for drawing.

So how do you draw a gesture sketch!? I used a brush pen on these. No drag! It lets you draw quickly. Gesture sketches are quick – a few lines to capture the gesture.

Why practice gesture sketches so you can mail sketches at Dr Sketchys or when you are out and about drawing people on the go. It really does help.
Here’s a pile of them.

The first one I did. Eekkk.

Dancers well NO. But they were suppose to be.

More dancers. Not the greatest but better.

And a few more dancers. I like these better today than when I drew them. The feet kept disappearing when I froze tyhe video to draw the dancers or they zipped off into artistic shadows. Visually great to look at but makes drawing HARD!!

Go try it. A lot of fun.

Margaret already in her flannel jammies for this cold winter weather. Well cold by Georgia standards. 52!! 😱

Day 922 You Knew It

January 27, 2017Leave a comment

Part 2 Dr Sketchys. I did more than a dozen sketches Wednesday nite. And met friends for a delicious dinner at Bees Knees before. Avocado chop chop. Who knew a baked avocado could be So delicious. Loaded with crab. I really must draw one. And the rainbow trout perfection. All the while we sat in a store display window eating all this deliciousness.

Going to have to go back and snap some pics when the bar is full. Love this shot it just needs people.

More jujitau sketches. This one was five minutes I think.

Hmm his head is too small I think. Hard to tell now with no reference pic.

We were suppose to add a monkey to this contest sketch but darn I forgot. Too busy drawing and painting.

Not bad but head is off. Ilaina really is a gorgeous woman inside and out. Doesn’t do her justice.

The best of three attempts. Body is good but face too cute.

Chin too long. Legs too short. As I told Rachel I peaked too early. Lol.

And oh my – legs ridiculously short. Actually head doesn’t look bad. The vagaries of fast sketching.

Another contest sketch. I will actually be selling this one at Wet Paint an auction for Greater Augusta Arts Council Feb 18. Funny while sketching it I realized that I had no idea what an ak 47 or a kolishnikof looks like. I don’t even know how to spell the later. lol.