Day 739!! Sunday

July 10, 2016Leave a comment

Mike High Overlook – Balsam point Great Smoky National Park.

And it’s my grandsons fourth birthday so still busy busy busy. Off to Walmart to buy a pool to hide dinosaur bones in. We are digging for bones this afternoon. And a bouncy house. Who needs presents??!

Oconaluftee Farm – Great Smoky National Park. If you haven’t been to the park you should. It’s truly a national treasure. So much to do and see and it’s all free.

All of these sketches were done on Strathmore 500 watercolor paper or in a Strathmore mixed media 500 sketchbook.

Most were done with a fine nib Carbon Platinum Pen with permanent Carbon Platinum ink. When I get home I will paint them and hopefully bind them into a book.

Barred Rock chickens at Oconaluftee Farmstead.

More Barred Rocks. Adding some elk prints to this one. They are everywhere at the farm eating the crops just like the deer.

Oconaluftee River with a gain sycamore. A few lines was enough. I can always add more when I am done.

Hopefully it will look like this when I get done.

Huge hemlocks at Oconaluftee.

Day 735 – Parrot Mountain

July 6, 2016July 6, 2016Leave a comment

I am off to draw and paint plus a little sock yarn buying therapy as soon as I post.

Parrot Mountain is wonderful. Lovely gardens filled with birds all owner surrendered or rescued. Parrots macaws parakeets and a lot of other exotic birds.

The place is just lovely with many quiet spots to sit and enjoy the birds but I was HOT to draw them and did. However the rain was NOT conducive to painting them.

The Parrots and cockatoos have perches with little straw hats on top. I wish I had one yesterday when it started raining. Finally pouring but the lovely trees in the Parrot Mountain Gardens saved me from a soaking.

What are you doing my dear? Drawing. Some of the birds were so curious.

One of the caretakers. He loves the birds and they love him.

How’s this for a family portrait you will never forget?!

Misty A highly endangered Blue Hyacinth macaw in the petting area. This is the bird the movie Rio is based on.

Misty standing on her head half the time while I tried to draw her.
There were probably 100 different birds of all types in this area.

One of the cockatoos showing off for my son. Just the best $20 I have spent in a long time. Thoroughly enjoyed the place. I wish we could have stayed longer but we had a dinner reservation at the Buckhorn Inn and had to leave. We didn’t even have time to change for dinner we stayed so long.

Drawn in a strathmore mixed media 500 journal with Noodler Konrad and Carbon Platinum plus black ink.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret off to paint something today. Xxx

Day 508 – Sketching the Smokies

November 30, 2015November 30, 2015Leave a comment

first you better have a good breakfast. We started with some of the best eggs and bacon ever cooked in a restaurant at the Little House of Pancakes in Gatlinburg near our condos.

I got there early and of course I sketched the perfect line up of happy Customers mere feet away from my table.

This is drawn with my brush pen in my Stillman and Birn zeta colored with watercolors.

I always love it when people sit nearby never noticing they are being drawn. These actually look like the couple eating.

Fun drawing.

Thanks for looking.

Day 345 – That Paper!!

June 19, 2015Leave a comment

Gets five Gold stars in my book.

as I said yesterday I bought a landscape tablet of Aquabee Super Deluxe paper when I was at Binders at Ponce Market in April. Great store!! How often have you had an art store manager ask you what you would like to see carried in their store?! Told her a class with Charles Reid. I hope I hope!!

Anyway I had read in David Millards great watercolor books about Super Deluxe Bee sketchbooks. These books are 140 pages each just packed with information on watercolor. The price can not be beat. $4 or less on Amazon. Why do you ask?! The books are from the early 80s. The author died in 2002. Sadly I can’t take a class from him. He is big on sketchbooks big lots of tips on drawing crowds and buildings. The man knows sketchbooks. His favorites took all the water I threw at them and flattened out when I was done. Rare in a 93lb paper. And reasonably priced. Amazon has the big 11×14 listed for $22 and full price is $25 for a 100 pages!! I am stopping by Cityart in Columbia on my way to Charleston to pick up an 11×14 for Dr Sketchys and a smaller one to take to Key West in July. And maybe a tube or two of paint. Last week Randy the owner had Holbein paint half price. Why didn’t I order some?! Cityart is the store that Charles Reid and Mary White use to supply their classes. Great store down in the Vista. They also have a great website and shopping is almost overnite and so reasonable.

I drew this last April in my super deluxe bee 6×12 landscape book with my Kuretake brush pen from an overlook in Gatlinburg. Never quite got around to painting it. I was too tired from all the running around. The brush own had loved the smooth paper. Would the watercolor?! Despite what Millard said I am always a sceptic. And as Roz Stendhal says one thing you can count on is that paper will change. His books are 30 years old.

Thank goodness he was right. I lost count of the washes I threw at this paper. Big watery wet washes layer after layer. While the paper buckled a little as I painted it was almost perfectly flat when it dried!!! Hallelujah. A 93# paper that dries flat and doesn’t cost a fortune?!

TIP!!! Bytw I started the lower hills with a wash of light yellow Aureolin for the trees and gradually darkened it with very watery layers of red for the red oaks in the spring and darker greens and blues and mineral purple. Really like using the mineral purple as a dark. Using lots of layers of this colors let me keep the colors transparent. Aka didn’t make MuD!! Sky is a couple of layers of cerulean.

This is another sketch from the same overlook up in the Gatlinburg bypass. I meant to fill in the town but never did. It started raining. It rained a lot the week we were in Gatlinburg. And the pen ran out of ink. My kuretake converter holds a drop of ink. I swear. I did later find cartridges of platinum carbon black that fitted it so now I am good to go.

Another plus for this paper. I just realized that the Pentel brush ink supposedly permanent but so often runny in my Stillman and Birn zeta did not run on this paper when I went back over the lettering and decided to add yet another wash. Hurrah.
Thanks for reading.

Margaret who needs to get packing!!!xxx

Day 299 – Silver Wyandottes

May 3, 2015May 3, 20156 Comments

aka chickens. More of the reason I drove across the mountains. Sketching chickens is THE most fun and I highly recommend giving it a go.

Silver Wyandottes are interesting looking chickens. With white diamond and a swirl of light feathers streaked with black around their heads.

Stillman and Birn Zeta with a Noodler Conrad Flex loaded with Lexington Grey ink. I am actually not sure if all these chickens were Silver Wyandottes but they are colored like they are.

The bottom left chicken was colored with a tombow pen. It’s fun to wet them and see them run. You can lift the colors. I thought it might be a good way to color these oddly colored birds. Actually I think the Tombow was a little strong for these chickens. Next I tried a black and an indigo inktense pencil. Things were going better. The blue softened the black. I drew a diamond pattern all over the hens bodies. Then I added white gouache after the inktense dried. The benefit of inktense is that once it dries its permanent and you can paint over it. White gouache was also used around the beaks and heads to eliminate dark grey lines I didn’t want especially on the big chicken on the right. That defined the face and beak better. The waddles and red bits on the head where colored with watercolor pencils- red yellow and orange! The background is 2 light blue watercolor pencils and a purple one for shadows. White gouache was brushed over the neck feathers to make them look fluffier.

My gift to you this Sunday is these chicken picture so you can join in the chicken sketching fun. At least these aren’t running anywhere. Have fun and I would love to see what you do with them.

Don’t forget to draw the silver Wyandotte earlier on this post.

Drawing chickens is like drawing bumpy triangles. The legs are two sticks with upside down trees on them.

More park sketches tomorrow.

Thanks for looking!!

Maggie XX

Day 298 – 70th Anniversary

May 3, 2015May 3, 20153 Comments

Don’t know if when you sketch you have trials and tribulations like I seem too. Do some of your drawings just not turn out like you planned? That would be me.

Drawn while waiting for my parents to arrive with my kuretake brush pen in my Stillman and Birn Zeta this sketch at the Park Grill is one. Just plain boring and not very attractive. All those huge pine logs are yellow. The chairs were oddly fun the sign thru the windows very interesting but for what ever reason it wasn’t working. It did become the perfect journal page.

Journaling added some interst to it. At least to me it did. My parent s have been going to this restaurant for 30 plus years and where looking forward to having their 70th anniversary there. Sadly the restaurant had changed from an upscale restaurant with a piano player to screaming blue grass piped music, one inch thick fried bologna sandwiches and “naner pudding” served in pint mason jars. However my expensive grilled trout was delicious.

So how was this picture saved? Not sure it was but at least it’s worth a look. Journaling in the background helped and adding white gel pen anywhere I thought light might hit the furniture and the windows. Crosshatching on the sign made it appear to have shape.
I think I will stick to drawing chickens and landscapes for a while.

Thanks for reading!

Maggie XX

Day 296 – A few Barred Rocks

April 30, 20154 Comments

you know what those are. Chickens. They were so cute and fluffy. Eating constantly. I drove all the way across the Great Smoky National Park just to draw them. Over a huge mountain. I may be in love. There’s just something about these chickens that’s so appealing.

I hear you shaking your head. I used to do the same thing before I started drawing birds. If the cars were all Lapins fault the chickens are all Roz Stendahl’s fault. I want to go to the fair and draw more in the fall!!😳

These were actually drawn as the chickens ran around me at the Oconaluftee Farm. I should have drawn them with black or grey ink but for some reason I drew them with De Artrementis Brown in my Noodler standard flex.

It’s not a good idea to draw in the rain but I did that a lot the week I was in Gatlinburg because it rained almost daily. Thank goodness the ink dries quickly.

They were colored with my Caran d’Ache using the side of the flat end. I decided it was easier and quicker to use them than my watercolors though thinking back I don’t supposed it mattered that much.

I still have two more pages of chickens to color – silver wyandottes a much shyer chicken that ran any time anyone was near it and even worse to color than the barred rocks. I will probably use my watercolor pencils. But these will take a while to color!!

Silver Wyandottes

I also had fun journaling stray thoughts about the chickens as I drew them and later as I colored them.
Hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I need some chickens.

Thanks for looking.

Day 289 – The Walker Sisters Corn Crib

April 23, 2015April 23, 2015Leave a comment

I thought this was the barn. Turns out it is the corn crib. I had been wondering how it protected the mules and the pigs when it got snowed and iced. Evidently there was a barn but the park tore it down or moved it.

The Walker Sisters Corn Crib the old Cedar was there during the sisters lifetime.

These structures were sometimes called “plunder sheds,” as farmers used them to store miscellaneous items such as barbed wire, brooms, firewood, and tools. From Wikipedia The Walker Sisters Cabin. You can read more about it here. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Sisters_Place

Painting the picture

Drawn sitting on the sisters old log bench in the drizzly rain in my Stillman and Birn Zeta with a Noodler Conrad flex nib pen loaded with Noodler lexington grey ink.

I started with a wash of Sky aka cerulean and trees – spring green and viridian. I let that dry and added the trees in the background with Indigo and raw Sienna in different strengths.

The corn crib was painted with the same colors. Some burnt umber washed over the greys of the building. Also vermilion mixed with indigo.

The dogwood was painted with white gouache. I get to impatient to wait for the masking to dry but I really need to use it. I think for the lacy looking dogwoods it would look better.

The grass really was that bright from all the rain. It was made with spring green or sap green and viridian mixed with some negative painting.
The interior of the cabin. That fireplace had to let out a lot of heat!! I can’t imagine timbering the trees and chopping the wood to keep this fireplace roaring in the cold wintry weather.

Star Chickweed growing on the side of the mountain.

Crested Dwarf Iris a small plant. The photo was take. With the iPhone be 6 resting on the ground.

Another crested dwarf iris. It was a rainy drizzly day. Everything was set including us.

Wild Geranium by the old roadside to the cabin.

Greenbriar School above Metcalf Bottoms. The old school desks and black board are still in it. The cemetery is where the Walker family are buried. The sisters would have walked 2 miles from their cove to attend school or church here. There was a clapboard church built after this school where church was held until the park bought the land and tore down the church. The sisters lived here almost another 40 years with their family and community gone their 120 odd acres of land sold to the park for $4000. They were happy because they still had each other and could stay on their farm. Tough independent ladies.

Thanks for looking.

Day 288 -The Walker Sisters Cabin

April 22, 2015April 23, 20152 Comments

about 2 miles up a mountain and across a stream sits the Walker Sisters Cabin along with several out buildings. The five sisters held a lifetime lease and lived in this two room cabin till their deaths. Their father built the cabin when Abe Lincoln was still practicing law.

The hike up there is lovely with wildflowers on the side of the road but I can’t imagine what it would be like to live so far from civilization. I guess they didn’t go to the store very often!

Four of the five Walker Sisters. From a 1946 Saturday Evening Post article http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/time-stood-still-in-the-smokies-SEP.pdf

Painting the picture

Done in my Stillman and Birn Zeta. Drawn with A Noodler Conrad pen and lexington grey ink in the rainy drizzle.

I started with a wash of Sky aka cerulean and trees – spring green and viridian. I let that dry and added the trees in the background with indigo and a grey made by adding burnt sienna to the indigo. Different strengths of these two colors make the trees recede into the woods.

The cabin was painted with the same colors. Yellow ochre was added on the chimney burnt umber washed over the greys of the cabin.

The dogwood was painted with white gouache. Next time I think I will use some masking on a sponge to do this. I like the look better.

My son crossing the log bridge to the Walker Sisters Cabin
(Painting the picture continued)

The grass was added with the same spring green and viridian as the background just not as diluted. Some negative painting with the darker green was done to make the grass spikes.

A red salamander that was on the foundation rocks of the cabin.

A fern on the path to the cabin. Both of these pictures were taken by setting the end of the iPhone6 down on ground level and clicking away.

Day 287 – Mingus Mill

April 22, 2015April 22, 2015Leave a comment

just before the Oconaluftee Visitors Center in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park .

This statement is wrong : I thought it still was a working mill but the wheel seems to be missing. Did some reading on the Mingus Mill on Wikipedia. There was never a waterwheel but it has some kind of small metal turbine wheel that drives the mill stones. It is still a working mill. It underwent a second restoration in 1968.

You can buy ground corn meal and a t shirt. The money all goes to support the park. It is the only park that doesn’t charge admission so it needs additional funding to help with such programs as fighting the woolie aedelgid which is decimating the Eastern Hemlock. Dead hemlocks parade thru the Appalachians killed by this bug and the park service is engaged in a deadly battle with them treating 5000 infested hemlocks this year alone.

Watercolor in my Stillman and Birn Zeta.

But back to Mingus Mill, a very interesting old building that sits back in the woods. It was restored in 1937. The steps are old mill wheels. The mill race is still gushing with water.

You have to cross a small stream to visit the mill. Very picturesque setting.

Bishops Cap

There are some lovely wildflowers there.

Canadian violets with a wild orchis or orchid near the mill.

The mill painting is painted with the same colors as yesterday’s painting.
Paint the background first. Sky and leaves. Streak in the background trees with soft greys and Blues after it dries. The foreground tree limbs are darker to make the background recede.

Thanks for looking.