216 more miles to Key West. Posting from the Florida Turnpike S.
Boone 300# cold press Half Sheet 15x 22″ Another one done earlier this year. Always fun painting mustaches.
A great summer time recipe!! Love tomato pie.
Only 115 days till we leave!! Meant to do one of these in the car today for Key West BUT everything is buried in the heap in the back end so maybe when I get to Key West?!
Thanks for reading
Margaret ️xxx
I almost forgot to post. From the middle of I 75. Big day off to Key West via Decatur and my grandsons third birthday.
So more of my favorite art for the year
Inscrutable – 1/2 sheet Fabriano 300# for Sale in box me at mcmhunt @ me. Com if you are interested.
An old Chinese man from Shanghai. Based on one of my dads photos from pre World War 2 China.
Ilena 12x 18 Fabriano Artistico 140# my favorite watercolor done during life modeling sessions at USCAiken.
Thanks for reading.
Margaret ️xxx
of daily blogging and creating art. I have grown a lot as an artist in that year which included a class with Charles Reid and one with Fealin Lin four online Sketchbookskool classes. Highly recommend them all.
Currently seemed to be obsessed with painting girls. Making progress on the latest one. She’s big. A half sheet of 300# fabriano which is about 15×22. That’s a big watercolor.
ALOT of negative painting. And a lot of wet in wet.
I added a lot of why Fealin calls jewelry which are light blobs of paint. Most of mine are small but may add more larger ones to the girl before I am done.
Painting the background has been a lot of fun. Colors used green apatite marine blue cobalt ultramarine cerulean mineral violet alizarin a bright yellow green.
More to do.
Thanks for reading.
Margaret xxx
Day Dream 1/2 sheet 300# fabriano
This one just squeaked in last year but she won’t be finished for a while. I love the way she’s going so why not show her off?!!
She needs more jewelry aka dots in the grass and more done to her hair more curls and frizz aka dots. Not sure if I will do more to the left side. Will think about it a while. They always tell you what to do if you are patient and don’t hurry them.
My favorite part of the field. I love all the negative painting. The batchelor buttons are cerulean and Inathradone blue painted wet on wet as so much of this painting is. The stem is DS green apatite added while the flower was still wet so it bled. The small white flowers are alizarin, cerulean and a touch of orange added all while wet. Love the way it looks like tiny white flowers in the grass.
My son Ben.12×18″ All wet on wet on 140# fabriano artistic cold pressed. Love all the drippy runny colors. Let me know if you need a portrait commissioned mcmhunt @ me.com!!
A quick dirty journal page. Major excitement here. Booked a Viking cruise from Paris to Normandy yesterday!!
I am going to sketch the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame oh and did I say Giverny?!😳 Good enough for Monet good enough for me!!
Pentel Brush pen in my SuperBee
Buy something!! I have a cruise to pay for!!
Thanks for looking!!
Margaret ️xoxoxo
Onward toward year two!!
Since I am going to be traveling the next few days I am going to be posting a few retrospective paintings. Some of my favorites over the last year.
Tea time. All southerners love to drink tea. I love the way the colors mingle and flow on her. Also her hair. She’s for sale $350! Mcmhunt@me.com
This is a detail of the skirt.
Lily Tomlin from Grace and Frankie series. Drawn off tv.
Some old board books that I am taking with me to draw in at key west. I bought them for .50 at goodwill and painted them with a credit card a few years ago. They have languished since I didn’t know what would write on them. All my pens bubbled off. Gel pens died on them. But today my friend Staci Swider said to try some acrylic markers. Stopped by Michaels. And yes indeedy they work.
Get ready Key West here I come!!!
Thanks for reading.
Margaret ️xxx
of daily blogging.and creating art. I have grown a lot as an artist in that year which included a class with Charles Reid and one with Fealin Lin four online Sketchbookskool classes. Highly recommend them all.
Currently seemed to be obsessed with painting girls. Making progress on the latest one. She’s big. A half sheet of 300# fabriano which is about 15×22. That’s a big watercolor.
ALOT of negative painting. And a lot of wet in wet.
I added a lot of why Fealin calls jewelry which are light blobs of paint. Most of mine are small but may add more larger ones to the girl before I am done.
Painting the background has been a lot of fun. Colors used green apatite marine blue cobalt ultramarine cerulean mineral violet alizarin a bright yellow green.
More to do.
Thanks for reading.
Margaret xxx
Did a great hand today. But darn what happened to her eyes?!
I decided on a do over. There’s a lot I like about this painting but darn the right eye. I did try to fix tomorrow or add it to my bin pile. Lol. Or the compost heap.
A Tip! I sometimes turn paintings into a gray scale photo to check the darks. I also do this when I paint from photographs.
Tomorrow I will post version two after I tinker with her some more.
Thanks for reading
Margaret xxx
Now I am done. The letters are Reinked with platinum carbon black ink in my favorite Noodler creaper Ahab. A great pen and so reasonably priced. Mine was $20. And it holds cats of ink.
In my 93# Super Bee Deluxe sketchbook.
Problems problems. I guess that’s why I like watercolor. It’s prone to misbehave.
I had started out with a yellow green background to go with my band of “kente cloth”. It was terrible. I painted over it with green. Also bad. Just not so bad. So I added cerulean blue to it. Improved. Then I added some cobalt blotches. And was happier with it.
The cad red light outside band was to cover up some of my ink smears.
For a while it looked like this. Decided the blue band on the right had to go. Made it to match the right side by adding the same colors.
So what colors did I use on the elephants?! Quin gold and Quin Sienna mixed with a grey made by adding Inathradone to burnt sienna or burnt umber. The darks are made with the Inathradone with cad orange added to it while it was wet. I also saved a lot of whites which makes the elephants sparkle.
I do still need to go over the lettering. It always seems to dull out when I paint over it.
Thanks for reading!!
Margaret xxx
If you love to use Watercolors and aspire to paint like Hmm Charles Reid or Fealin Lin or Thomas Schaller try some Fabriano cold press. It lifts back to almost white like a dream even staining colors.
This is 140# cold press. I don’t know that 300# cold press will lift like this but have no reason to think it won’t. Fabriano makes lovely paper. Their hot press as with most hot press paper is notorious for NOT lifting. Colors just don’t budge on it. You can literally push the paint around on the cold press with a flat brush. The whole highlight on her forearm was lifted when I raised her arm 1/4″ higher. And her nose and her brow and well I could go on.
This pose was quite a challenge. Foreshortened legs just are TOUGH!! Measure and measure and they can still go wrong. These did. Her thighs are too long and so were her calfs and feet. I managed to erase at least half an inch moving her feet up so she didn’t look so strange. I also moved the arm up about 1/4″. The upper arm was just too long.
TIP: My friend Ruth told me that when painting goes awry like the thighs did on this one to deemphasize them. Make the viewer look elsewhere which is why all those dark blue blobs are there. To lead your eye way from the offending body part.
This was after a half an hour of drawing and painting. I rather like this better than the finished one but oh well. I got her too blue. Added flesh tones to brighten the blues not thinking I had mixed Quin coral with opaque yellow ochre. OOPP!! Ah the trials of water color painting.
Here she is getting too blue. OOh well!!
Sometimes the chair is your favorite part. Lol!
Thanks for reading.
Margaret ️xxx
Rommel 6×9″
Decided to give it a work out last nite while watching the Secret Life of Elephants on GPTV last nite. This was the last sketchbI drew off tv the big bull elephant Rommel.
Most of Rommel was painted wet on wet to loose the edges. I downloaded several of Thomas Schallers videos from Northlight. Good deal for $13. Though he does not paint animals I thought why not try out his techniques on this elephant. He’s big on transparent colors, letting the colors blend on the paper and loosing edges by keeping the paint wet. I do wish II had thought to add in some blips of others colors like orange and purple but I can use my handy fine spray bottle and do that later.
This was a very wet painting. The Super Deluxe did not wrinkle anymore than a 140# paper would. I lifted some of the shadows off the left back leg and as usual it was easy to do with this super sketchbook.
Colors used Elephant and dirt – yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and Inathradone blue. Sky cerulean trees green Apatite and Inathridone.
I did a pencil sketch first. As you will see in a bit the sketchbook loves the pencil.
This is the sketchbook. Just in case you did not see the last post about it.
Another sketch of Rommel a huge bull elephant that showed up on the Samburu Reserve in Kenya where the show was filmed.
I really like the way this pencil sketch turned out so I doubt I will paint it. It was done with a cheap HB mechanical pencil from Office Max.
One thing that’s great about sketching off tv is that you can pause it. Only thing I don’t like about pencil sketching is its tendency to smear. I need to spray this with fixative.
Save the Elephants http://savetheelephants.org. The show was all about an effort that is being made in Samburu to increase the numbers of elephants which were dwindling drastically. They seem to be turning around now due to the efforts of Save the Elephants.
I love drawing animals and now want to go to Samburu on a sketch safari. Would that not be fabulous fun?! During dry season they flock to the water holes in Samburu, prime time for sketching or photography.
Think about it. I know I am.
More about the Super Bee tomorrow!!
Thanks for reading.
Margaret xxx
Margaret McCarthy Hunt Art 