Category: Daily drawing

Day 262 – Some Art Before Breakfast

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  Sorry not to post this sooner but I have been drawing too much. And have too many pages to post. I did draw my breakfast this morning too but yet to paint it. Tomorrow or after I go for a walk tonite.  I seem to like to paint at nite. 

This was inspired by Danny Gregory’s blog post recently of his breakfast. I am not likey to make a habit of drawing before breakfast. I don’t like cold eggs. Grits however and tea take a while to cool down!  

This was done with my Pentel brush pen. Then I journaled on it a bit. And finally I painted it with Schminke gouache. The background color is watered down gouache. The grey on the cup was made with indigo and white. The mushrooms were painted with a brown made from yellow, red and indigo lightened with white. 

Thanks for looking. At least one more breakfast coming!! 

Day 261 – Tom Cat

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If you would like me to paint your. Animal on commission let me know at mc m hu nt@me. Com  

 

Tom copyright Margaret McCarthy Hunt 81/2 x 11″ $195. Gouache or acrylic 

My son found Tom as a tiny stray in the wheel well of a neighbors boat trailer. When he brought him home you could hold him on your palm of one hand. Now he’s a sleek kitty with fur that glows like fire when he sits in the sun light. 

He also yowls at me to go in or out. In this painting he wanted out. He was getting irritated because I made him wait while I drew him.  

I drew him with one of my Noodler flex nibs loaded with Drartremis brown document ink. Painted him with gouache in my stillman and Birn zeta with  mostly white, Indian yellow, and English red with bits of indigo in the shadows.  

 

Detail Tom copyright Margaret McCarthy Hunt 81/2 x 11″ $195. Gouache or acrylic 

 Because he such a red cat I watered down some Quin Sienna watercolor and brushes it over his fur to make it redder.  I also added some watery burnt umber and burnt sienna Wc for shade. 

Background is watery titmouse with some Azo yellow to make the green spots. 

Day 259 – Life Model time 

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WIP caran d’ache on kilimanjaro half sheet 

This Is the first standing pose I have ever drawn so I was thrilled to get her in proportion.  I have to give ilanya kudos for holding a rock steady pose for two hours. Not easy to do. 

Today I started drawing her with a light grey crayon. Next came flesh color.  That went well. 

Then I went for burnt sienna instead of yellow ochre and it was just too dark. When I added cobalt well. That was trouble.  I almost destroyed her with burnt sienna and cobalt blue.  Made an icky green. But when you think it’s ruined it can be a good thing. You don’t care what you do with it and experiment. 

I got out an ultramarine blue crayon burnt umber and the black. I never use the black. And I try not to use the dark colors on a young life model. Today I didn’t care. Anything was better than the ick blue and burnt sienna. 

I like the fake blues and Browns I used in her.  Anyway thanks for looking!!!

Day 258 – A Change of Pace

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I actually bought two pieces of art in the last two days so I am going to share the one I just bought today.  It’s a giclee of 2  mourning doves by Mary Ann Brock.

Mourning Doves by Mary Ann Brock 

I have coveted several of her pieces since I first met Mary Ann a couple of years ago at her show at the Aiken Center for the Arts. Her work is just lovely. I would list her website but she doesn’t have one. You can see more of her work on the Aiken Artist Guild (http://aikenartistguild.us) website.

Anyway I guess you know I love birds and hers are wonderful!! Hmm maybe I need her Japanese Magnolia and those Pomengranates too!! 😃

Marsha’s Azaleas 

$250 

17×21″ framed

This is an original watercolor painting of mine for sale framed for $250 plus shipping. It’s a quarter sheet on 140# 100% cotton watercolor paper. Leave a comment or email me at m c m h u n t @ me. Com if you are interested.

It’s springtime in Augusta. The azaleas will be in full bloom soon. Time to paint more azaleas.

Thanks for looking.

267 – Dog of the Day 

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The Dog of the Day – my nieces lab Reagan with his birthday hat on. Happy Birthday Reagan!! Did I say a yellow lab is much harder to paint than a black one. Especially with a limited gouache palette.

 All you need for a black lab is a dark indigo blue for the  black with a touch of the English red and a lighter blue and a bit of red for the collar and you gue.



 The yellow lab? 😳 So many shades of cream, buff, peach, Browns, purples, greys and white. Red for the tongue and a bit of dark purple. 

And ps Azo yellow is NOT a good color for a yellow lab. It’s too lemony and turns him green when mixed with white and painted over the colors I was using. Any blue remotely near it turned it green. 😜 Not so with the Indian yellow which is very strange. 

I did use a lot of light purples for the greys. 

Background is watered down turquoise.  

Thanks for looking!  

Day 266 A Few Seagulls or Thoughts on Fifty More Shades of Grey

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Sometimes it’s just fun to go sit in the middle of a parking lot and draw the seagulls. No idea why they congregate in the parking lots but they do. If you decide you want to draw seagulls take some crackers or old bread with you. They will follow you like you are the pied piper. 



I actually drew a lot of seagulls last week but didn’t get around to painting them till a few days ago. I like this one best. Drawn with Noodler Konrad flex nib and Noodler lexington grey ink in my Stillman and Birn Zeta it’s painted with watery gouache. Much faster than using it opaque. Or at least that’s my story so far.  

I have a bunch of premixed greys made from indigo and schminke English red. Sometimes I add more white. Sometimes more indigo. Thee indigo can make a great grey mixed only with the white. Try it.  U will love it.  

Lettering is done with indigo and a brush. The background is turquoise with bits of green made by mixing Indian yellow in with the turq. That makes a muddy green. 

Anyway. Gotta run. My paints are waiting and drying out. 

Thanks for looking. 

Day 254 – Sunday!! 

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Sundays I like to watch CBS Sunday Morning and Super Soul Sunday but not today. Zoe sat down next to me and she was watching to see what I was doing. And I thought “What a great painting she would make! so I took a photo of her.

 And then of course I drew her. If I had drawn her from life she would have gotten on the back of the sofa and turned her back to me before I was done drawing her. 





Zoe version 4. I realized she was way to fat In the last photo so I put her on an instant diet. I think she is done I hope she is done. She lost an inch in about a half an hour. Best diet ever. But who knows?!😃 in the morning she may need something else done. Stillman and birn zeta gouache Kuratake ink pen. #drawyourdog

She went they several stages. This is the finished one. Well you never know I may change her again. Zoe is done in schminke gouache and with my Kuretake brush pen in my Stillman & Burn Zeta. I had thought she was done twice before. 



This was the first time I thought she was done. Till I realized her back should be curved and NOT straight. OOPS!! I did like the odd wonkiness to her face. More on that in a minute. 



Here she is with her back curved the right way. I thought she was done for about a minute till I realized I needed to add some white to the Mohawk down her spine to make it look fluffier.  Back to the gouache. 



So here Zoe is with white hairs added to her Mohawk. Then I realized her nose was a twitch off as was her right eye. I got my #2 Isabey out. It’s a lovely  sable brush that will point like no other. I started adding bits of fine hair here and there on her face with white and caramel colors on her darker bits. I used indigo around her nose mixed with a bit of Sienna for blacks and greys. I also added some whiskers. 

Thanks for looking!!!

Day 253 – It’s Saturday

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so it’s time to go to life modeling. Erica was our model and she always does a great job. She’s a lovely girl who is great fun. I had to bake her some cheese crackers because she missed them last time I made some a few weeks ago. So the rest of the group all got some too.  Anyway I used the caran d’ache and kilimanjaro paper and a lot of paper.

I blocked her in with the yellow ochre crayon. Then I checked her measurements.  They were right!  Sometimes things just work. Sometimes they don’t. This time they did.

I used the plumb lines like Roz Stendahl talked about in Sketchbookskool to check hand and arm placement as well as her ear. Only her ear was off.  Miracles do happen – or maybe it’s practice.

And I had great fun laying on the colors and then spraying them with a very fine mister. Love to let the caran d’ache drip. I am finally learning to control the dripping somewhat. To keep it from running so much. There are two things you can do.  Lay the board down and it will not run as much OR mop it up before it runs. Once it starts running it usually stains the paper and you loose your whites.  I also like rubbing it out with either a damp bounty paper towel or my dads  old hog bristle grumbacher filbert.

If I remember next time I think I will draw her with the flesh colored crayon because I do not like the way the yellow ochre shows thru the background blue and makes an icky green.   Of course I will probably forget  I like that yellow ochre crayon!

I think her head went well. It looks like Erica. It’s very hard to get detailed with the caran d’ache which gives it a dreamy look. It also causes you to loose the whites easily like between  her hands.

I had intended to finish her hands at home because I knew she would move them when she got back into her pose after the first break. Models always do.  Instead I ran a few errands and came home and took a good long nap.

Hopefully I will finish her tonite or tomorrow.

Thanks for looking!

Day 251 – The Brown Thrasher

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i had three other things I meant to be working on today instead I drew more birds?! I have had a touch of bronchitis and was sitting on the den sofa feeling bad. I glanced out the window to see a huge brown bird on the back deck. He was at least five times as big as any bird out there. Thrashers are ground dwellers and I had only seen one once before on the deck though I see them in the yard a lot. 

And my sketchbook was in my purse so I grabbed a nearby piece of paper so as not to scare the bird off. 



I drew a few quick sketches before he flew off. 



Using my noodoee flex oen and De Artremis brown document ink I redrew him in my S&B Zeta and added another from memory. Then I painted them with gouache. I used English red, indigo, white and yellow Schminke. The best discovery I had today was that a filbert makes a great comma stroke. I used it to make all the brown marks on his chest. 

Thanks for looking!!

Day 250 – A Painted Collage  

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Our art group took a paper collage class from the very talented Virginia Bojanowski. I painted one of my favorite subjects my sweet dog Zoe. 



Zoe 
5″x7″

Made from painted scraps of paper and old book paper. 

The following is a short version of how it was made. Of course Ginnie had bags of already painted stamped paper pieces that we could use to collage with or we would have been there for days!!  You could substitute any appropriately colored paper for the painted paper we used. 



First we drew our subject on the canvas. Usually a piece of 1/2″ or 3/4″ plywood is used for this but for expediency sake we used a canvas. 

Next we painted the background color.   After it was dry we stamped over it with a stamp. I used a marble texture stamp. 





Then we painted our subject in blocky colors. 



Last using  gel medium  we glued down many pieces of paper starting with the bottom layer to the top aka from her chest to scarf to ears, to dark side of head, to eyes, eyebrows, nose trying to get a 3 d effect.  Difficult to do on such a tiny piece of canvas ripping even tinier bits of paper. 

In Art 130 at UGA we had to copy an Old Master print assigned to us by our teacher. I got an A+ but my rooms floor  was littered with piles of pieces of Life magazine photos trying to match the exact colors. My poor roommate. 

Art 130 was a Josef Albers color theory class, a fascinating class and my favorite that year. 

Let us know if you want your favorite animal done!!

Anyway thanks for looking!!!