Day 905 – the Bean

January 11, 2017Leave a comment

Everybody’s favorite place to eat lunch in Augusta or for a coffee or even better some of their amazing cake. They give you a slab of home made cake for $4 or $4.50. Today I had their Tuscan Bean Soup which was delicious. A big bowl and some delicious ice tea $5. A good deal.

I don’t think I have ever eaten anything that was not delicious at the bean as we call it. Their coffee is from that other fabulous cafe that I drew a couple of weeks ago The Dancing Goats in Decatur.

Painted in my new STillman and Birn Zeta. Drawn with a Lamy Ef loaded with Lexington Grey and painted with Ted Nuttalls transparent colors.

Sketchbookskool Homework.

Draw some textured objects. I might have gotten carried away but have had these on my art table for a while to draw. I can check them off my list now right?!

Pens used Staedler .01, carbon Platinum pen w carbon platinum black ink and a Pitt calligraphy pen which I soon abandoned because it was too dark to me.

Stillman and Birn mixed Zeta journal.

Ttyl

Margaret off to bed early after two hours at the gym and walking a couple of miles. Color me tahred. Xoxoxo

Day 904 Movie challenge

January 10, 2017Leave a comment

There’s something about a Miss Marple show. I love all of them in their various reincarnations.

I have sketched Miss Marple before – the previous actress before Julia McKenzie. Julia portrays a sharp tougher version of Miss Marple and GPTV our PBS channel has been replaying her series on Thursday nites and Sunday afternoon.

Sunday I like to just let PBS run as long as it’s not begathon time. Thank goodness they are done with that for a week or so.

I paused the tv and took a pic of her in an interesting pose.

I drew her with my pentel brush pen off my iPad. And it didn’t go well. I got too heavy handed with the dark shadows.

Gouache to the rescue. Almost like using acrylics. The background is watercolor. Peacock blue and hematite green. Then I scratched the wc off the palm tree.

Last spread in my Stillman and Birn Zeta. Hurrah.

Ttyl

Margaret xoxox

Day 903- I had to

January 10, 2017Leave a comment

Paint Calvin the guy who showed up for me to draw Friday. In the rain playing “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.”

47 degrees rain and I was out there with him drawing him. Which of us was crazier.

Stillman and Birn mixed Media zeta journal Ted Nuttalls transparent palette.

Here it is before I drew it.

Sketchbook School homework. Fill a page up with doodles using various pens and pencils.

Here are the six pens and pencils I used to make the marks with. I have to day I thought this was a dumb assignment but really enjoyed the 15-20 minutes it took to draw this.

Made me feel like Picasso or maybe Matisse.

Try it I bet you will like it too.

River Bend sunset out my back door tonite. So bright it lit the den up which was how I noticed it. I was too busy blogging to look. Oops.

Ttyl

Margaret xoxoxo

Day 902 Mahjong Ladies and a guy

January 8, 2017Leave a comment

Trying to fill up the last few pages of my Stillman and Birn zeta sketchbook. Drawn with my Lamy Safari filled with Lexington Grey ink.
Stopped by Higher Grounds cafe to look for a book and found multiple tables of Mahjong filling the cafe.

Irresistible. I sat down to draw them. I don’t think any of them ever noticed me sitting a few feet away sketching them. They were very involved in their games.

Oddly enough they had been there the day before when I played bridge there with my friends. I am now wondering if they are there everyday. Will have to drop by and see.

This old man was also irresistible. He was sitting there reading something and enjoying his coffee. Clemson orange shirt. A lot of that lately. Championship game tomorrow nite.

Painting. Ted Nuttalls transparent colors. Been adding slot of purple to the quin sienna in the backgrounds. And my painting with my Richeson #12 mop. Keeps me from getting too picky.

I resisted the urge to splatter. Think the guy could use some don’t you?!

Have a great Sunday. Stay warm.

Margaret xoxoxo who thinks it’s time to shed her flannel jammies don’t you?!

Day 901 And you thought it was Saturday

January 7, 2017Leave a comment

Didn’t make it to life modeling due to snowmaggeddon that never happened. We were told to stay off the roads. I didn’t fancy an early morning 60 mile drive on icy roads. But wait no ice no snow. Sigh.

I was going to draw the old railroad trestle downtown but could not get near it on the wet rainy day we had yesterday. I drove around to be sure I couldn’t get near it and draw in my car.

I realized I could park and draw this old church that way.

St Paul’s is one of the oldest churches in Augusta and is built on the site of old Fort Augusta. It has a great old cemetery which I wasn’t drawing in the rain. Lol.

This is drawn with my pentel brush pen and my noodler Konrad embellished with a grey and a black tombow which I wet down with a water loaded synthetic brush to let it run.

Splattered with the inky rinse water. Think it adds to the pic giving a raindrop effect.

This is how the sketch looked when I left downtown. Can’t decide which one I like better.

Thanks for checking by.

Margaret xoxoxo

Day 900 Augusta Ga

January 6, 2017Leave a comment

Home of James Brown. Yesterday I had wanted to draw a musician live and thought where the heck will I find one of those?!

Met a friend downtown at New Moon Cafe and as I was leaving guess what happened. A saxophone player started playing OUTSIDE!! Hurrah!!

So I sat out on this cold rainy day with Calvin and drew him. He was thrilled when he saw it. I also gave him a nice tip.

I asked him why he was out in 47 degree weather in the rain playing. He said he had gotten the notion that he needed to play “Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head” downtown today. So he did.

Here’s Calvin before I added the scratchy lines with my noodler Konrad. I think the thin lines really added to the energy of this sketch. He tended to stand still when he played so not much action to draw.

I used my Pentel Brush pen and Noodler Konrad. Tried to use a thick sharpie but it bled thru the heavy pages of the mixed media S&B zeta. So I did not keep using it.

I may paint this. I haven’t decided.

The quote on the top right is a quip from my friend Marsha over our breakfast at New Moon Cafe this am. Yummy but FaTTeNinNG!!

Thanks for stopping by.

Margaret in rainy Georgialina xoxoxox

Day 898 The Best Burgers

January 4, 2017Leave a comment

Are at Farmburgers in Decatur. Locally grown food to table restaurant on Ponce de Leon. I drew this with my Lamy Safari during g the end of rush hour.

The guy in the foreground who was maybe a foot from me was so involved in his conversation that he never noticed me drawing him.

The waitress did though. She loved it.

Of course all the people were not where they are at the same time. I dropped in the foreground people adding the background and the people in line with menus after the foreground.

Sometimes I mess up and do it the other way. That NEVER works out well. Oops.

Remember FOREGROUND first then background. Ok?!

Colors used same as yesterday.

Today’s sketchbookskool installment. Draw an electric cord with a brush pen. I used my pentel brush pen.

Not as easy as you would think. Really didn’t like it til I added the grey tombow shadows.

Used a light grey tombow for the cord shadows.

And splattered it with a bit of black watercolor paint.

Both sketches are in Stillman and Birn zetas.

Ttyl playing bridge today. NOT played inmore years than I care to think. Twenty maybe?

Pray for me.

Margaret who better get dressed. xoxox

Day 882 Don’t Break the Painting!

December 7, 2016December 7, 2016Leave a comment

Photo #3 Finally looks like Al our favorite art professor. He makes quips like

Don’t Break the painting to have to fix it …because my students always tell me they will do it later and they never do.

And of course I broke this one. I used gouache partly because Al likes it better than watercolor but also because the sketch was terrible. The face was too fat the eyes were off and at the wrong angle. All the black around it is where I corrected it and colored over the background.

This is a not quite done pic. I take pics with my phone sometimes to see how it’s coming. I also sent it to a couple of friends who critiqued him. Face too fat and not enough top of the head. I only added a fraction of an inch and it really helped it look like him.

The gouache was a lot of fun but I need a bigger tube of white. I am going thru it like potato chips.

A few more Al-isms or painting according to Al.

Nail it by doing prep work. The sketch and underpainting are fright before you start final painting.
Warms and cools make a happy painting-Complimentary Pairs.
Brush strokes – bigger the better. Use house painting brushes and paint it in one pass.
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.

Thanks for looking in.

Margaret whose sleepy.

Day 856 – Happy Veterans Day

November 12, 2016November 12, 2016Leave a comment

Once again I posted this yesterday on that OTHER website…sigh…

Somehow saying Happy Veterans Day seems like a conundrum to me because is not happy and people remembering it are sad.

That said I am sharing sketches of War Memorials I did in France last fall in Normandy at the sites of the Allied D Day Invasions 71 years ago.

The Canadian Cemetery at Beny sur Mer. It was odd to me that people to young to know the men buried there were crying over dead relatives.

That said I found myself doing the same thing as I shared a link to my dads historic battle of Foxhill at the Choisin Reservoir in 1950. PBS recently aired a riveting documentary about the week long battle. I had heard bits of the story but to actually see the 32 below conditions they fought in, the rugged almost arctic landscapes, the mass burials of the Marine dead,the frozen Chinese who were shot because the Marines had no other choice in this desperate time was a totally different experience.

The beautiful Canadian Juno Beach Museum shaped like a maple leaf on the beaches of La Manche, the Sleeve as the French call the English Channel. A stunning building wrapped in glowing aluminum with state of the art exhibits.

The Ranville Eglise next to another Canadian Cemetery in Caen Normandy France. The day was getting dark and somber threatening rain that afternoon.

The Pegasus Bridge Museum. Using gliders brave British paratroopers jumped behind Nazi lines BEFORE the Allied invasion forces landed on the Normandy beaches. I am sure many of them are now buried at the nearby Ranville Cemetery. They are immortalized in the movie The Longest Day.
Thanks for stopping by.

Margaret xoxox

Day 840 Almost a nightmare.

October 25, 2016October 25, 2016Leave a comment

The pen I used on this page was not one of my normal ones. THE INK LEAKED WHEN I TRIED TO PAINT THE PAGE with a light blue tombow pen. EEEKKK.

So I painted almost all the letters grey with water thinking I would stop there. I painted All but the numbers which is why the letters are a darker red. I blotted alot of the excess ink with kleenex and take out napkins.

When the numbers did behaved ok I decided to go back over the grey letters with the same red marker. And a dark red resulted…not the lite blue I had in mind BUT when catastrophe strikes you have to make lemonade right?

Then I colored the background with what I thought was a yellow marker…it was really orange…oh well …I wet it and lifted alot of it too with the kleenex heap which was growing.

Not bad but I will not be using that pen again unless I want the ink to run. Here’s a picture of the offending pen. Its a Japanese pen with a brush on one end and a really fine point on the other end.

I tried to go with the bleedy color. It occasionally got me into trouble as I colored and painted. So I blotted some more with the growing heap of kleenex!
I used tombow markers and a couple of caran d’ache neocolor ii crayons on this. Strathmore 500 mixed media journal a lovely crispy paper. Highly recommend this one or stillman and birns series. Great sketchbooks for watermedia.

Ttyl

Margaret off to the y for yoga!!😳xoxox