Category: Kuretake brush pen

Day 345 – That Paper!!

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 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 324 Dr Sketchys Part two

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 Ten minute pose. This one is going to be used on social media to advertise the Sweeney Todd show at Chat Noir this weekend. Wish I could be there to see it but in Atlanta dogsitting. The red is a wink of Stella brush pen. All red glitter. Makes him look even more gruesome. 

The sketching went much better but I do wish I had used my Noodler Creaper Ahab for some of these. Instead I used the Pentel Brush Pen, Tombow Markers, Pentel color brush pens, and Wink of Stella brush pens for some glittery sparkle. both the Tombows and the Colorbrush pens are water soluble and fun to use with a water brush. 

  
This was a ten minute pose. We were supposed to make a poster of him so I turned him into a pirate because I messed up his left eye. Perfect place for a patch. Problem solved. Most of the coloring was done with the Tombows. There was a prize of two free tickets to Sweeney Todd but since I wasn’t going to be there I didn’t enter. 

  
Mickeys a great singer so we drew him as he played the guitar and sang. Tombows and Pentel color brush.  10 minute pose. The challenge of this was drawing his moving arm as he played. 

  
15 minute pose. His leg is too short. Oopsey. It was hard to see in the dark theater. And as I was sitting in front of him I had to peek over the sketch book to see his lower half. Or at least that’s what I am blaming this on. Lol. Couldn’t be me!! 

  
Not quite a disaster but almost.  Had her body too long and her legs too short.  

 

Then I shut the book before the black wink of Stella I did the lettering with was dry and it glued the pages together. Poop! 

The grey on her legs is where I shortened her body. I used gouache to try to straighten up the stray pen marks and the grey on her legs. For some

Reason my flesh Tombow kept lifting the Pentel brush pen. I don’t remember it doing that before. 

At any rate I added the gouache and the black Tombow this morning. 

  
Sometimes a good crop can improve the look of a sketch. Lol. 
Thanks for looking. 

Margaret xxx

Day 320 – only 45 days til it’s a YeAr!!

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Oh my the goal is getting so close. I will be in Key West I think then so look south for skyrockets. Lol. The year long odyssey can almost see the finish line. 

  
What’s for dinner? Caran d’ache, brush pen  8.5 x 11″ 
Memorial Day a day for families getting together to eat. So I drew my dinner yesterday.  Haven’t done that in a month. 

  The first time I thought it was finished.  Scribbling red and orange around the border to frame it. Also scribbling random colors on the various objects like the knife. 

A fast fun sketch with caran d’ache in my sketchbook. They are a lot of fun. You can use them as crayons or you can hit them with a waterbrush and turn them into watercolor.  They are a touch opaque if you color too heavily. Also great fun to spray with a fine mist and let them drip drip drip.  All those juicy colors sliding down the paper and mingling into mini rainbows. Really a must try. 
  
 

Adding some  finishing touches with my Pentel brush pen  or so I thought. The crayons always lighten the brush pen so a lot of times I go back over it when I am done with the caran d’ache.  

So treat yourself to a pack of Neocolor ii Caran d’ache crayons. You can get as few as ten though I think 30 or so is better.  More is always better right?!! 

Thanks for reading!!! 

Margaret💋

Day 315 – Kirkwood Spring Fling

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Random people at last weekend’s Spring Fling in Kirkwood in Atlanta at Bessie Branham Park,  a beautiful spot with lots of shade trees around for sitting under as well as an open green space where a band played. 

 I actually like this odd assortment of people. Originally there were more tents planned in the background but I didn’t paint them because dark large leaks from  from other pages in the book. The guy in the hat had green on his face from  the leaks.  ðŸ˜³ Got out the flesh gouache to fix him but it was not to successful. It was a dark green. Sigh.   No feet. Not sure why other than people were just whizzing by.  I couldn’t ask them to stop. Lol. 

Noodler creaper Ahab loaded with Carbon Platinum black ink in my Strathmore 500 mixed media. Really not happy with the way it’s leaking watercolor washes along the binding and ruining pages. 

  
This one was never finished. See the leaky clothes on the pages at the center? Nasty mess. 

More random people at the Spring Fling. No idea why not one of these people have feet either other than they were moving so fast. They walked off before I could add their feet.  Some of the people are compilations of several people walking by like the red head with the backpack in the middle. Drawing moving people is much easier to do with a brush pen. No drag on the surface like my Noodlers have when you draw with them.  

Really pleased with the greens I mixed in both of these. 

So here’s the tip for today. The dark greens in the trees are made by mixing burnt sienna and Inathridone blue pb60. I added Quin gold to the mix on the paper. Really like the color variations the mixture gave me. 

The green in the grass was made with manganese blue and aureolin yellow with touches of Quin gold. New Gamboge would be great too instead of the Quin gold. The flowers of alizarin and purple were added while the grass was wet as were the shadows under the bench. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 311 – Finished Accordion Book 

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Hard to take good pics of these. It’s about 80″ long.  Sorry they are crooked. The paper is Stonehenge print paper I think. Cream colored. Lovely paper. You can actually paint on both sides which I did because I had filled up the front at Pops Under the Stars.  It was so much fun drawing that I kept on drawing and filled up the back. 

So here are  close ups of the front.    

  I started this in Gatlingburg. Only got two people done. Oops!  I drew the first lady while waiting for my mom who is the second lady.     

       

Love the lady to the right so much I drew her three times.   
Thanks for reading. 

Margaret XXX

Day 308 – a Few more of Maestro Z

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  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 Accordion Style 

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Maestro Z 

Drawing the conductor Maestro Z at Pops under the Stars was so much fun I wished I had brought an empty accordion book. This is just half of one. It would be fun to do a ballerina like this. 

  
Detail 1

The blacks were made with Inathridone blue and burnt umber.  Grey on the jacket is cerulean and burnt sienna or cobalt and burnt sienna.

 

Detail 2 

The background is Quin gold and Quin red painted on with my big Isabey squirrel mop and allowed to blend when they were wet. I think I might cover up Maestro Z and splatter this strip. 
 
Detail 3 
Drawing this was so much fun I drew ten pages of these in my sketchbook. Will post them tomorrow. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret XXX

 

Day 306 -Reportage?!

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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 298 – 70th Anniversary 

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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 286 Another Accordion Book 

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 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!!