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 325 – Dog Days

May 30, 2015Leave a comment

dog sitting my sons pit bulls.

Bear is always a challenge to paint with his brindle fur. First he was painted with a mix of Quin gold and Quin burnt sienna. Then I daubed in burnt umber and ultramarine for the blackish brindle in his fur. I also added the shadow under him when the fur was still wet. And that’s all I did. It was all wet on wet except the dab of muddy Quin red in his ears.

Livia is always interesting to draw with her curves. And fairly easy to paint. A wash of Quin gold, burnt umber shadows and burnt umber and ultramarine to make a black for her muzzle.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 323 Dr Sketchys Part 1

May 28, 2015Leave a comment

Great nite! Mickey Lay was a great model! Always our favorite sketching activity. It’s worldwide so see if there’s one near you.

2 Minute pose Head is a little small Done w brush pen in a strathmore mixed media sketchbook. I have one just for Dr Sketchys. Thank goodness the drawing went better than the ones I did at Good Books. Perhaps those earlier drawings loosened me up?!

We started with several two minutes poses.

The poses were very interesting. He did a lot of muscle poses. Seemed to have trouble getting the whole body on the paper.

Another two minute muscle pose

The first five minute pose. Hard to hold the spear up in the air for 5 minutes but Mickey did well. Hard pose to hold.

Two five minute costume poses. Finally managed to get his legs on the page. Hallelujah. These were embellished with Pentel brush markers and Tombow markers. The Tombows cover a lot of area quickly and are fun to wet down with a water brush giving a watercolor effect.

Thanks for reading. More dr Sketchys tomorrow!!

Margaret xxx

Day 322 – Good Books

May 27, 20155 Comments

shopping for Franklin and Froggy books at our Gucci Goodwill. Found a stack. Sat down to draw the customers in the Good Eats Cafe there.

Some days you can’t draw at all. Viewing it as a warm up for Dr Sketchys tonite. Hope I do better then.

These are the best of the trash that I drew. Could not get in the rhythm today.

I brought in a sketchbook with only two pages left DUH! So I drew over some screwed up pages of Rhineharts Oyster Bar.

Browsers and worker bees at Good Books.

Rhineharts roof. Guess I could have drawn on the napkins!?

Sorry about the quality of the photos. Weird shadows from the lights in Good Books.

Maybe color would improve these?! Or a brush pen!?

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 321 – I meant to be

May 27, 2015May 27, 20152 Comments

drawing more strips today. What did I do? Long arm quilted all day. For 7.5 hours. Good to have those done. I do free motion quilting which is mine drawing all over a quilt. All designs are drawn no markings. One of my favorite people strips. Love all the action and different clothes.

These were drawn at the concert a few weeks ago. I drew tons of pages. The brush pen allows for a lot of quick drawing. These people in the chairs were an experiment. Something different after filling up an accordion book. . Not sure how successful it was but fun to do.

Here’s some of what I did today.

This king sized trip around the world quilt has been waiting for 15 years to be finished. Worst part of this was taking out the jillion safety pins. More to come.

It’s about 100×120 inches. All two inch squares.

Mostly made of Hoffman fabrics which is a Cadillac fabric.

Friends granddaughters first quilt. Her grambo helped.

A baby quilt for my nieces son. Only a year late. 😳 But he will be here home fromJakarta to nap under it in a week or so!!! Exciting!! I would post a whole pic of it but it’s upstairs and I am downstairs and TahrEd!!

A wild storm rolling in from Georgia out my back deck. Now a deluge and lightening aka dogs NOT happy!

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 319 – Grace and Frankie again!

May 24, 2015May 24, 201513 Comments

i drew this while I was watching Grace and Frankie. Frankie’s hat made her hard to resist. I love a lady in a hat. Remember you can always pause the TV and have the actors pose for you.

Here it is for now. This is in my big 8.5×11 sketchbook.

Actually drawn in pencil. I rarely do that in my sketchbooks.

First face washes.

Adding some cad red light for her clothes. Nfrankie wears the most interesting clothing

Hair. Now that was almost a disaster. Too solid.

Added brown to little worms of color and dots coming off it. Better. Her face is still too delineated n thinking about that. What to do?

The wispy hair is my fav part of this spread.
Jane Fonda. Much smaller than Lillie Tomlin so quickly done.

Almost done.

Done for the moment.
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 317 – Grace and Frankie

May 23, 2015May 23, 2015Leave a comment

Summertime or Tea Time or Julia. What do you think I should call her?!

11×15″

300# Fabriano

The wonderful costumes on the show Frankie and Grace which I have been binge watching on Netflixs made me want to do a girl in a hat.
I don’t know if you remember but I did a lot of girls in hats back at Easter. I love hats. I just done like the way I look in them. Anybody else line that!?

Now that summer’s approaching its hat time again! And of course a glass of iced tea with mint is required.

Here she is penciled in with a 2HB mechanical pencil and the initial background wash done. Very light washes of several colors all painted while the others were still wet so there are no blooms.

This is after. Added the first cerulean shadows to the dress and Quin coral and aureolin for the skin tones.

Here she is later. Colors added. Alizarin cobalt Burnt Sienna Inathridone and burnt umber Quin burnt sienna Quin gold. You really don’t need a lot of colors to paint a picture.

My favorite part of the painting though the hair is giving the skirt stuff competition. A lot of the colors were applied wet on wet. Others were added as blobs or dry brushed. A lot of fun to paint.

Still lots to do!

Thanks for reading! Go draw a girl in a hat!

Margaret XXX

Day 316 of my almost year long odyssey

May 21, 2015Leave a comment

Fifty more days and I will have posted daily for a year. Oh my!! I drew Rhineharts the other day while waiting for friends. Rhineharts motto is beyond casual and it lives up to that. It’s one of Augustas favorite restaurants and is a higgily piggily old house that has been added on to over the last thirty years. The floors are concrete, you sit at picnic benches, oyster shells cover the pine shaded parking lot. Both the picnic tables and walls are covered with names inscribed with magic markers. I added ours with my Noodler Creaper Ahab. If you’re lucky a cat will beg for your shrimp tails.

The drawing had problems. The building is very long and hard to fit on the double page spread. The bits and pieces that jut out here and there make it a perspective nightmare or maybe it’s that nothing in this place is level or square. A builders nightmare!!

Fun making all the greys out of various blues and Browns. Dashes here and there. Of the two colors and greys everywhere. Like the sparkle of the turquoise and the three cooks hanging out in the back porch SmOkiNg done with their lunch shift.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX