Category: Georgia

Day 322 – Good Books

5 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 313 – Painting my Coloring Book 

5 Comments

best thing about sketching is you end up with a grown up coloring book. 

Spent a few hours painting sketches I did this weekend. 

These are my favorite so far.  

 

Henry was so into Jake and the Neverland Pirates he hardly moved. These are stil quick sketches because you always think a child will move especially Henry. This is the only time he holds still when hes awake. 

Bytw he’s wearing his favorite monster Jammies a certain Gramy gave him for Christmas. 

 

 

Both of these have problems but one day it will be a nice memory of him. It’s easy to fix the one on the right. He has a little too much hair.  That’s saying something for Henry. He has a haystack of thick hair. I think the one on the right needs more hair. Interesting how these things show up in a camera but you don’t notice when you are painting or drawing the person. 

  Here he is with a better shaped head. The shape makes a difference. And I had to add a few drops. Love drips!  

TIP: Always check your picture in a camera to see where it needs improvement. This second one is going back to the drawing board.

Thanks for reading!!

Margaret XXX

Day 312 – sketching the grandkids

2 Comments

Difficult to say the least. Henry holds still better than Livia who is always reaching for something or other.   


Henry loves Jake and the Neverland Pirates and sits fairly still while watching them. 

  Here’s another one. The tiny feet are so sweet but hard to draw. I was using a sort of contour drawing to do all these not a searching sketchy line with my Noodle Creaper Ahab. Love that pen.  


One last sketch. I will paint these with watercolor soon. 

  My favorite Livia sketches.  Most of these were disasters because she rarely holds still more than a second. 

Check back. More later!! 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret XXX 

Day 308 – a Few more of Maestro Z

Leave a comment

  There are actually ten pages of these but this set messed up the other eight already finished pages. I was bored after painting the first eight and decided to try something different. 

Fealing gave us an example with this wash on it so I decided to try it. The background is a wash of 16 washes of color.  I applied the first eight backwards so I did 8 more in the right order and the washes leaked.  It’s a great color BUT not so great I wanted to mess up ten or twelve other pages. 

See below for color combos for the background. 

Here are the pages that were messed up.  Even worse I had finished painting them ALL. There are grey blobs on all of them. One set of  pages even got stuck together.   
I did use some white gouache on a few to try to fix them with varying degrees of success. White gouache my BFF.   

  
Just a small leak on this one. 

  
Big lean on this but it didn’t show so much. 

  
Thank goodness nothing to mess up on these pages. 
The 16 layers of washes are 

Cerulean 

Orange

Cerulean 

Orange 

Cerulean 

Burnt Sienna

Hookers green 

Cerulean 

Then I did them in the right order 

Cerulean

Burnt sienna

Hookers green

Cerulean 

Cad orange 

Cerulean 

Cad Orange

Cerulean. 

Now I think I will try another one with just the last eight washes. The correct way lol. It does make a beautiful blue grey. 

Day 307 Reportage?! Part 2

1 Comment

 
Love these new Isabey and Richeson squirrel mops that I got during my class with Fealing Lin. Not cheap but love the soft loose look of the paint you get with them. She paints all her landscapes with them.   
  Been busily painting the sketches I did during Pops under the Stars Saturday. This is Brad Means warming up the audience at Lady Antebellum Amphitheater in Evans Towne center. 

I sketched in the audience as they headed to get snack or a better seat.  There was a lot of movement. People standing and sitting down yakking with their friends. Sipping wine. Some people dressed to the nines. Others wore jeans and tees. I am sure there was some champagne in the crowds song with bud lite!

 

Gesture sketch of the orchestra warming up. The violinist was serious.  
 

Lee Anne enjoying the calm while Drew chased the perpetual motion machine Henry. 

 
Henry’s first concert. Every now and then he took off like a rocket with one of his parents racing to catch him. The child has a career as a future star sprinter. Get ready Decatur High School. 

Tomorrow more Pops Under the Stars. I only drew about 30 fast sketches and half an accordion book. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret XXX

Day 306 -Reportage?!

2 Comments

Happy Mothers Day. 

Last nite we went to the annual Pops under the Stars with the Augusta Symphony. I drew about thirty pages and half an accordion book. It was a lot of fun and felt like I really was in the groove. Pages of sketches of the conductor. They are so energetic. Just wish we were closer to see Maestro Z better. 

So here is part of what I drew. Can’t wait to slap some paint on these. 

   Sketching the orchestra warming up!! 

Maestro Z 

The conductor was very energetic!!  

Sketching the orchestra warming up and some of the crowd. 

  More Sketching the orchestra warming up

  Henry loved it. His first fireworks and he thought they were amazing. 

  One of my favorite sketches. Lee Anne.  
The crowd nearby. 

More later. Gotta run. Mothers Day company coming!! 
Thanks for reading!! 

Margaret XXX

Day 295 – Get Your Inner Jackson Pollock On!!

2 Comments

  When I ran across one of my favorite card ever the BMW Z 3 in. The Kroger parking lot  I knew I had to draw one more car. I have always convetted this car. And they were made up the road from me in Greer SC. This is painted in  my Stillman and Birn Zeta Staedler pen watercolor and gel pen. Bytw the gel pen hates this paper. Very odd. 

Chose yellow for the background because they are complimentary colors. 

  
Car #1

This is my friend Marsha’s 1995 Corvette also known as Baby. I drew her three times.  Twice before I got her right and a third time just for fun on ledger paper. 

Car #1 is obviously awful but I did find the ledger paper interesting so I fluster it again.  

I have a whole book of ledger paper. Not one of the old gorgeous books that Lapin loves but one from the 70s I think.  Does that make it vintage?!

I have used the paper quite a bit in mixed media and it always gives a fun effect so I thought I would try the corvette on it. After all she’s vintage too. 

  
Car #3

The paper wrinkles.  Strike 1. I thought about mounting it on a piece of illo board and I still might. Hopefully that would flatten it out. It also did not allow for the watercolor to be bright.  The colors are more delicate on ledger paper an effect that I do like. So will I paint some more on ledger paper. More than likely especially if I can find someone to cut the book in half. It’s a tall narrow book. The other problem with it was that it will take forever to fill it. It’s 252 pages long!! 

I did find that the gel pen loved this paper. No idea why but it would go on like butter. It’s not so fond of watercolor papers.  

 
Car #2

This is painted in my Stillman and Birn Zeta. My second attempt. It still has a few problems.  The left bumper is off. It should be square and her read end is too long which is why I drew it the third time. 

Splattering. Be sure to cover your car when you do the background. Mix up soupy cerulean and yellow ochre and sling it at the paper.  Get your inner Jackson Pollock on. So much fun to splatter paint. Just know that it will go everywhere including your phone your ipad and you!

Go forth and look for vintage cars. They are not Ez to find. 

Day 286 Another Accordion Book 

2 Comments

 

 Sennelier USK journal book. 

  Kuretake brush pen till it ran out. Then my Pentel brush pen. It was colored with Tombow markers and watercolor and flesh Winsor newton gouache.

  TIP: The flesh gouache makes painting skin tones easy! No mixing so no fuss. 

This one has been completed since earlier this week.  I was saving it for the weekend to post. 

 

  

Most of it was drawn at the local walking track or dog park. 

  

  

The stroller was amazingly easy to draw with a brush pen. A few stokes zip zip and done. 

The last half was drawn while patting in my car in the Earthfare parking lot starting with the lady in the black and white dress. 

  

 

Earthfare 

  

Earthfare

 

 Earthfare

  

  The entire strip. About 36″ long. Nice heavy paper. You could draw on the back but you would not have a lot of paper length which is part of what makes these books fun. 

Thanks for looking!! 

Day 278 – The Flying Biscuit

Leave a comment

  

Staying in Gatlinbirg with no wifi. Should be interesting. Going to see if this will post. I can see a wifi tower so maybe it will go. 

This is my breakfast at the world famous Flying Biscuit home of the creamy dreamy grits and mile high biscuits. Also as my friend Marsha says a vehicle to put butter in your mouth. 

I drew the sketch with a Kuretake brush pen loaded with Carbon Platinum black. Love that pen. Think refillable Pentel brush pen.  Heaven right.

 I colored it with the Caran d’ache  watercolor crayons. The bases are washes of watercolor using the caran d’ache crayons. Layers of color were  scribbled on the base watercolors with any color that I thought would look good aka show up. After I was done painting I reapplied lots of ink including cross hatching. 

The section where the name Flying Biscuit is written was a problem.  The name didn’t show on the red background. So I scribbled a lot of lighter colors over the dark red and rewrote the words. Now they show up well. 

Thanks for looking. 

Day 277- Earls

2 Comments

finishing up Atlanta sketches. As usual we hit the restaurants. 

 

Earls on Flat Shoals Road in East Atlanta Village was the perfect spot for an outside lunch on a gorgeous spring day.

 Hamburgers were cooked to order and delicious. Sweet potatoes fried were perfect and the Dijon cranberry dipping sauce was some kind of heaven.  Tasted like it had a bit of horseradish sauce it it too. Yumm. The tea was just the way I like it. Lots of ice too. 

I drew the sketch with a Kuretake brush pen loaded with Carbon Platinum black. Love that pen. Think refillable Pentel brush pen.  Heaven right. I colored it with the Caran d’ache  watercolor crayons. The bases are washes of watercolor using the caran d’ache crayons. Layers of color were  scribbled on the base watercolors with any color that I thought would look good. After I was done painting i reapplied lots of ink including cross hatching. 

The pale blue background was made by using a water  brush on the flat end of the crayon. Fun stuff!! 

  

I already filled up ️my Sennelier accordion book. No bleed thru so far.   The paper is lovely heavy stuff. Will be posting as soon as I do an accordion book tutorial and color the Sennelier.  

Thanks for looking!!