Day 328 – Quick Dog Sketches

June 1, 2015Leave a comment

The Watch Dogs aka Pits on guard

Happy June!! Can hardly believe it’s amer again!

After one false start this one went very well. The two dogs were guarding the house while strangers were getting giveaways on Craigslist off the porch.

They will sit still barking their heads off for what seems like hours. This sketch took at most ten minutes and perhaps ten to color it. Quick and dirty. It was done with my Noodler creaper Ahab loaded with carbon platinum plus. The ink should not have run. Maybe I will make this mixed media when I get home by adding a piece of ledger paper over the lettering on the right.

Tips aka How I did it. Colored with Caran d’ache watercolor crayons wet with a waterbrush. The brindle pitty was a problem as usual with his tiger striped coat. I started with the same colors as the fawn pit bull Livia. Then I added black to Bear. I wet it down hitting it here and there with the waterbrush. If I had brushed the water on it it would have blurred the colors.

The blinds were done by coloring with a burnt umber crayon and washing the blinds with it. Then letting the wash dry and drawing new lines on the blinds with the burnt umber crayon.

I had thought about getting my fine mister out and spraying it allowing the colors to run. Glad I didn’t. I really do like this sketch. The mister spray effect is totally unpredictable.

This is the first attempt at drawing them. A contour sketch that didn’t have room for all of Bear the pit on the left or all of Livias tail or the chair. Sometimes it’s just easier to start over.

Thanks for reading!!

Margaret xxx

Day 327 – a few more planes

June 1, 2015Leave a comment

If it was hard drawing a plane with one wing a biplane doubles the opportunities to screw up. Oh my gosh. Hard to draw. I actually lost a propellor. And all kinds of struts and ties. I think they are there now. I hope. Hate for it to fly apart.

My grandson Henry loved this little yellow plane. He has watched the short video of it at least 20 times. He wanted me to draw it for him. So we did.

First problem. Do not paint with a two year old and not expect ho to add his favorite color red to a yellow planes wing. Oops. I drew another one do him to paint and he was happy.

Then the yellows were a problem. Cad yellow was not Orange enough. I finally used a dab of Indian yellow gouache. I have a white marker that I used to add the reflection on the bottom of the wing and some of the wires. Why was there a reflection there?! No idea.

Last problem. No idea what kind of biplane this cutey is.

Here are Henrys paintings with a little help from his gramy. The yellow plane was painted with my Winsor Newton and Daniel Smith watercolors. The one on the right was painted with his Watercolors. I never could get a dark black to draw the plane. So the next time you want to save a little money and buy student grade paints don’t. What if your grandson I mean you paint a masterpiece with the cheap paint?! It won’t last forever. That would be sad.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 326 Flying High

May 31, 2015Leave a comment

Went out to lunch yesterday with my sister in law Jan at the Peachtree DeKalb Airport where they were preparing for their Spring Open House. We watched the planes come

And go during lunch. Then I decided to draw a few. All their antique WW2 planes lined up asking to be drawn.

These were drawn on site with a Noodler Creaper Ahab in my Stillman and Birt Alpha painted with watercolor and touches of white get pen.

The Grumann Avenger Torpedo Bomber was the first one I drew. A nice Navy blue. How could u resist it shining in the sun, saying draw me?!

Sometimes crosshatching the background fixes mistakes but NOT this one. I think A bad line would have been better. Planes are hard to draw because there are so many angles going every which way. Typical perspective rules apply but don’t seem too. Easy to get off track.

I tried to stay on track by looking at the angles of the real wings compared with the angles I drew on the page starting with the fusillade then adding wings and tails. As it is I forgot to add the tail gun. So many small details it’s easy to miss a few.

When I got home I looked up the plants to try to figure out which ones they were. The Grumann Avenger was the plane Pres George Bush flew in WW2.

The navy blue is a mix of ultramarine and black a color I rarely use. It was hard to get a deep deep blue without the black.

Next was the infamous WW 2 Mitsubishi Zero famed for dogfights in and kamikaze missions in the Pacofoc campaign. We thought surely it was not a zero but it had that big red circle on it. We knew what that meant. I looked it up and yes it was. This was fairly easy to draw. Profile views are easter even in a plane. Even the military green was easy. A bright green mixed with yellow ochre. Piece of cake. Success at last. I added a touch of Quin burnt sienna to the cad red of the circle.

Not sure what kind of plane this is. A WW2 Army Spotter plane I was told. Of course now the tail says USAF. Hmm I noticed that as I was drawing.

I used the same greens on this plane as the zero. The gold is Quin gold. Yellow ochre was just being when I tried it. Grey is ultramarine and Quin burnt sienna.

More planes tomorrow and a comparison of paint.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 318 just a quick post

May 24, 20152 Comments

because I am busy painting. More about that tomorrow.

Cropping can be a good thing. This was a practice sketch. A warm up for painting this sketch. I did not like the way the drawing went.

I liked this sketch much better than the one in the first picture.

This is the whole spread uncut. The sketch of Livia on the left is pretty bad. A warm up for the next sketch. But the good thing about a bad sketch or painting is that it liberates you to slap paint around and have fun. Loved making the drips and applying the sheer colors. Think it helped with this painting. I did the drippy baby painting first. Do you see a connection? Sometimes the most interesting painting gets done on a painting that you no longer care about the way it turns out. The fun stuff in this bad sketch are the dots of the hair and bow on her head the washes and drips from the dress and the luminous center of the spread. Really like that luminous glow and. I used all of that in the lady in the white dress.

Anyway that’s my theory and I am sticking to it. Try it. Let me know what you think!

Thanks for reading.
Margaret XXX

Day 315 – Kirkwood Spring Fling

May 20, 2015Leave a comment

Random people at last weekend’s Spring Fling in Kirkwood in Atlanta at Bessie Branham Park, a beautiful spot with lots of shade trees around for sitting under as well as an open green space where a band played.

I actually like this odd assortment of people. Originally there were more tents planned in the background but I didn’t paint them because dark large leaks from from other pages in the book. The guy in the hat had green on his face from the leaks. 😳 Got out the flesh gouache to fix him but it was not to successful. It was a dark green. Sigh. No feet. Not sure why other than people were just whizzing by. I couldn’t ask them to stop. Lol.

Noodler creaper Ahab loaded with Carbon Platinum black ink in my Strathmore 500 mixed media. Really not happy with the way it’s leaking watercolor washes along the binding and ruining pages.

This one was never finished. See the leaky clothes on the pages at the center? Nasty mess.

More random people at the Spring Fling. No idea why not one of these people have feet either other than they were moving so fast. They walked off before I could add their feet. Some of the people are compilations of several people walking by like the red head with the backpack in the middle. Drawing moving people is much easier to do with a brush pen. No drag on the surface like my Noodlers have when you draw with them.

Really pleased with the greens I mixed in both of these.

So here’s the tip for today. The dark greens in the trees are made by mixing burnt sienna and Inathridone blue pb60. I added Quin gold to the mix on the paper. Really like the color variations the mixture gave me.

The green in the grass was made with manganese blue and aureolin yellow with touches of Quin gold. New Gamboge would be great too instead of the Quin gold. The flowers of alizarin and purple were added while the grass was wet as were the shadows under the bench.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

Day 314 – More Grandkids Paintings

May 20, 20155 Comments

Love the background on this spread. Scroll down to see how it was started. This is a practice painting for the next one. I think she needs a neck or her heads too big. Or maybe her head just looks pasted on becaus it has no shadows around the baby’s chin. I think that’s the problem. What do you think?!

Pleased with the way Henry turned out on the right.

Definitely more work required. Liking the drips and splatters which I actually purposefully made. Stay tuned I will show u how but not tonite. Too late posting. Sorry.

TIP: This is how I started the background in the first double spread. A wash of several soft colors Quin red Quin gold yellow yellow ochre burnt sienna cerulean and mineral Violet.

Then u tone it down by painting more washes of a variety of colors over it which is how the background in the first one was done. Just don’t go dark with your washes. You can do that later!

Here she is so far. More work required. No drips and no splatters yet. The soft pink skin is made from Quin coral and yellow ochre. Hope the dress is not too dark.

Decided to make this a journal page of our weekend together.

Henry’s head reshaped from yesterday’s post. Now I think he needs more back on his head but at least it’s not shaped like a football helmet.

I added some drips and some dark darks behind his head and under his arms to this one.

Don’t know why I didn’t do any drips and splatters. Have a few paintings from spring fling that I did drip and splatter. Wondering if that is because the kids paintings are more important to me than the others? I think so.

Do you find it freeing not to care if you mess up a painting? Sometimes the most fun happens with watercolor then.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 313 – Painting my Coloring Book

May 19, 2015May 19, 20155 Comments

best thing about sketching is you end up with a grown up coloring book.

Spent a few hours painting sketches I did this weekend.

These are my favorite so far.

Henry was so into Jake and the Neverland Pirates he hardly moved. These are stil quick sketches because you always think a child will move especially Henry. This is the only time he holds still when hes awake.

Bytw he’s wearing his favorite monster Jammies a certain Gramy gave him for Christmas.

Both of these have problems but one day it will be a nice memory of him. It’s easy to fix the one on the right. He has a little too much hair. That’s saying something for Henry. He has a haystack of thick hair. I think the one on the right needs more hair. Interesting how these things show up in a camera but you don’t notice when you are painting or drawing the person.

Here he is with a better shaped head. The shape makes a difference. And I had to add a few drops. Love drips!

TIP: Always check your picture in a camera to see where it needs improvement. This second one is going back to the drawing board.

Thanks for reading!!

Margaret XXX

Day 278 – The Flying Biscuit

April 11, 2015April 12, 2015Leave a comment

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

April 10, 2015April 12, 20152 Comments

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 – Michonne

April 9, 2015April 9, 20152 Comments

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.