Day 934 Urban sketching and a cartoon

February 8, 20175 Comments

I drew this apartment building from the porch of the Partridge Inn last Wednesday. It was bathed in the late afternoon sun. I don’t know if I captured it but it’s my other favorite sketch from yesterday.

Color Quin cold and Quin coral on the building w a violet in the shadows. Hematite green bushes w ultramarine blue. Sky cerulean.

Sketchbookskool homework. Draw a cartoon.

This is our beloved art professor Al saying his quips that keep us laffing and coming back for more of his teaching. I am starting year two. Some people in Advanced Painters have been there for twenty years. His New Yorkness is still there all these years later.

Some more Al-isms.
Looks like a gorilla painted this.

Don’t mess it up to fix it. Never happens.
You owe me some time.
You need to leave room 140

There’s a world outside room 140

This is not a democracy.

Steal from the best.

“These two areas of your painting need to talk to each other”.

“Get working. Stop talking”.

“Don’t let me paint your painting for you. You decide”.

“Seven years he has been here and he has never done anything I’ve asked him to do”. (Like in a way he is sort of proud of the guy for that)

“So do you think you have another painting in ya?”

“Work on this for your next 20 paintings”.

Kawfee
“You got it!” (I.e.do we understand?)

“You are in danger of finishing this painting”.

” It’s your painting; I don’t want to micromanage it”
“Be thinking about your next painting” ”
“Keep it fresh!

“Don’t get too.close.to me….or might be I don’t want to get too close to anyone, I might be coming down with something.”

“I am very tired.today” ” I have to go crack my back”.

Stop.talking….start painting…….and/or. “Get to work”!😕🎨
Have the same person paint this side.
Watch those edges.

Big brush strokes.

Warms and cools make a happy painting
Complimentary Pairs.
Brush strokes
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.

Day 932 – Al Beyer

February 6, 2017February 7, 2017Leave a comment

I drew this during art history lecture last Wednesday. Not meant to look like him exactly just the essence and to take notes on the lecture about how to compose a painting and be sure you get all the parts in perspective. When people are added the heads have to line up on your sight line or they will appear to float. Check out John Salimen, another great art teacher. He’s a master at composing from photos with many national and international art awards. His new coffee table book is just gorgeous.

His DVD on urban landscapes explains how to compose a picture from several photos.

Painted with my tiny whiskey painter palette loaded with Windsor newton travel Paullette colors. Refilled with Daniel Smith using the same colors plus DS quin coral.

A bientot Happy Mondayoff to class I go.

Margaret xoxox

Day 930 – Saturdays in Aiken

February 4, 2017February 4, 2017Leave a comment

Maggie’s Van Gogh aka Ilaina. 24×30″ acrylic

Sorry for no progress photos. I left my phone in the car lost under the seat!! Thank goodness Rachel found it for me. Cars do eat telephones.

She came together really fast. By first break Ilaina was mostly done. So I decided to paint the background to fill up it most especially the chair. I had a lot of green paint on my brush left over from the drape and decided to put it on the chair. LOVED The look. Added some thalo blue for shadows using a huge 14 bristle filbert. I decided to spread the thalo around with dabs on the figure.

And then I painted the rest of the background. Nothing too focused. Just colors.

Colors used cobalt and thalo blue, pyrrole red, nickel azo gold, titanium white, Winsor violet, primary yellow, Indian yellow

Love the peachy tones in Drew Murphys soft painting

Al Beyer’s oil. He was in an odd spot behind the chair which made her head quite tiny.

Lady who painted next to me.

Tom Needham’s small watercolor.

Dawns large oil. And that’s all I had time to take pics of

Progress on Looking Down -Ponce City Market.

My friend Drew Murphys awesome elephant painting.

Here it is earlier last week. Ruth and I told him to take the buckets out. Like it better without.

Ttyl off to run errands.

Margaret xoxox

Day 928 Getting Squirrely

February 2, 2017Leave a comment

The back porch squirrels and their antics are always fun to sketch. A ready model. Cheap. Will work for bird seed anywhere anytime anyplace. And of course I like to imagine what they are thinking as they gobble. Really need to name them Oreck and Dyson or Hoover. Miele?!

Drawn with a Lamy Safari in a Stillman and Birn Zeta mixed media.

Colors. Background Quinn gold squirrels cerulean Piemonte ultramarine. Splattered with Quin sienna or burnt orange.

Have a go at the squirrels. The back porch birds are fun to draw too. Use some gestures. It doesn’t have to look just like a particular squirrel it just had to look like a squirrel – the way they hold their food and hunch up over thier paws or spread their tails. Fun stuff.

Ttyl

Margaret off to look downtown and see what there is to sketch in this 72 degree day of sunshine. Xoxoxo

Day 927 Inner Bean again

February 1, 2017February 1, 20172 Comments

But I was drawing lunch not drawing the restaurant. First piece of cake from Inner Bean in months. I used to eat cake there a lot. Not since I have lost 30 lb.

Worst thing about drawing your food is that you can’t eat it til you draw it. I got

The delicious strawberry cake first. Before the salad. And I was hungry. I resisted. Did I say Inner Bean is famous for its cake? They won Best Cake in Augusta recently. The cake is Just THE best.

Ttyl

Margaret with a busy week. Getting ready for My solo show next week. Xoxox

Day 926 – Ponce City Market-Day 3

January 31, 2017January 31, 2017Leave a comment

Working little is Looking Down

This is day three working on this huge acrylic. Well huge for a very short person. Lol. It’s 3’x4′.

Sorry the picture is not better.

Bytw the photo I am using to paint from was taken from the second floor of Ponce City Market looking down on the restaurant tables below. The ceilings are very high so it’s like it was take from the third story.

The day I took photos the man on the right was everywhere. Always in the background cleaning. Always working silently in the background.

This is what it looked like yesterday when I worked on it. Still a lot to do. I don’t have the picture of the sketch because I started painting it as I was sketching it.

The sketch lines were becoming jumbled and confused so I started blocking in the colors so I could see what I was drawing. What was right and what was wrong.

Colors used. The undercoating is Nickel Azo gold. Other colors pyrrole red, Winsor purple, thalo blue, black, burnt umber, titanium white. Also

Using up lots of tail ends of tubes before they dry out like yellow ochre.

Ttyl gym time.

Margaret tearing herself away from the tv. Xoxoxox

#poncecitymarket

Day 925 the rest of the pile

January 30, 2017Leave a comment

Notice how this painting started as a gesture sketch after I measured.

So did this one. In Two minutes gesture is about all you can do.

Day 922 You Knew It

January 27, 2017Leave a comment

Part 2 Dr Sketchys. I did more than a dozen sketches Wednesday nite. And met friends for a delicious dinner at Bees Knees before. Avocado chop chop. Who knew a baked avocado could be So delicious. Loaded with crab. I really must draw one. And the rainbow trout perfection. All the while we sat in a store display window eating all this deliciousness.

Going to have to go back and snap some pics when the bar is full. Love this shot it just needs people.

More jujitau sketches. This one was five minutes I think.

Hmm his head is too small I think. Hard to tell now with no reference pic.

We were suppose to add a monkey to this contest sketch but darn I forgot. Too busy drawing and painting.

Not bad but head is off. Ilaina really is a gorgeous woman inside and out. Doesn’t do her justice.

The best of three attempts. Body is good but face too cute.

Chin too long. Legs too short. As I told Rachel I peaked too early. Lol.

And oh my – legs ridiculously short. Actually head doesn’t look bad. The vagaries of fast sketching.

Another contest sketch. I will actually be selling this one at Wet Paint an auction for Greater Augusta Arts Council Feb 18. Funny while sketching it I realized that I had no idea what an ak 47 or a kolishnikof looks like. I don’t even know how to spell the later. lol.

Busy day. Ttyl

Margaret who needs to shed Her cat and dog blanket and get dressed. Xoxoxo

Day 917 Urban Sketching the Woman’s March

January 22, 2017Leave a comment

Despite the deluges yesterday a large crowd turned out. It was a rainbow kind of crowd – old and young, men and women, LGBT and even a few dogs.

I drew these yesterday on a very wet day in downtown Augusta. The March and the speeches were at historic Springfield Park where Morehouse College started at Springfield Baptist across the street.

The flame like sculpture on the rampart is all a part of the park. I did paint these at home. I didn’t think watercolor would work too well in deluge weather. Besides there was nowhere to put anything down because it POURED all morning too.

A second even faster sketch of the happy crowd of raincoats and galoshes. I think the correct number of marches was actually 671 but the speakers said 370 and 20 countries.

The sketches were done in my Stillman and Birn Zeta mixed Media with my very patriotic Red Noodler Konrad. I added the flags and the signs to give more interest to the sketches.

Notice the big raindrop blotches on the ink?! Oops. Bravely I kept on sketching standing on top of a bench for a better view.

Here’s the first sketch and a picture of the crowd and park. The local news reported 600 people were there. I think there were closer to 1000. Guess it’s impossible to count.

Somebody asked me how I drew these. The only thing I can say is start at the front and fill in the crowd moving back or you won’t have room for the people in the foreground.

You can not draw a counter in a restaurant and then add people. You have to do it people first then the counter or pencil in the counter which I rarely do. Sometimes it gets me into trouble when I forget the order :

People first background last!

Happy sketching.

Margaret madly painting black edges on canvases for her show at 4p in February. Xoxoxo and yes it’s still raining.

Day 916 skies

January 21, 2017Leave a comment

When you live on a river you see a lot skies. Sunrises sunsets and

wild storms blowing in from the west across Georgia and the Savannah River.

Because it was a stormy sky I used a lot of marks to make it hopefully seem stormier.

These are done with Prismacolor art sticks and colored pencils in my Stillman and Birn Zeta Mixed Media Journal. Lines and lettering with the Lamy Safari I think or the EF.

Ttyl Margaret xoxox