Category: Lettering

Day 897 More Urban Sketching or the Best Coffee in Georgia

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I drew this the other day when I met Nellie Brannan for coffee at the Dancing Goats in Decatur. It’s Decatur’s favorite coffee shop. Their coffee is sold in Augusta at Augusta’s favorite coffee shop the Inner Bean.  

I drew the brave people sitting out on the sidewalk in front of the dancing Goats as they walked thru the scene.  There was alot of coming and going. 

Colors used cerulean quin gold cad orange cad red hookers green ultramarine blue quin coral and marine blue.  Stillman and Birn zeta Lamy Safari Lexington Grey 

Sketchbookskool homework. Draw a still life with thick and thin lines. I used a tombow instead of a fine and a thick sharpie. 

I really didn’t like the line drawing so I got out a watercolor brush and some water and let the tombow bleed. Then I added some water to the shadows and picked up the grey to splatter it. Like it a lot better now. 

Thanks for checking by. 

Margaret xoxox 

Day 896- Happy New Years Again?! 

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Since it’s a Federal holiday and they even shifted the Rose Bowl Parade to today why not two Happy New Years wishes. I still have more Key West sketches but I finished this Atlanta sketch yesterday so thought I would “change it up” as some of my kids used to say. 

I dew this a Friday after I made a quick visit to  Sam Flaxs on Peachtree and I really like the way it turned out. 

I painted it with my water brushes and my two small travel palettes. One is full of Winsor and Newton colors plus Inathrodone and Quin coral. The other is full of a few leftovers from my old Windsor and Newton travel palette that broke like Thalo blue and green and black plus white gouache and eight various quinacridones from Daniel Smith including the Quin gold. 

Stillman and birn zeta with Lamy EF. Lexington Grey Ink. 

Not having enough to do I decided to join the sketchbookskool class a drawing a day lead by Veronica Lawlor who teaches I think at Pratt or Columbia in NYC. 

The directions were to draw a still life in a continuous line with a fine point sharpie. I couldn’t resist adding shadows oops.  And lettering is always irresistible to me. 

Since I still have Christmas up I decided to draw my collection of “misfit” snowmen and ladies. When Christmas is over I go to Tuesday Morning or TJ Max and get a deal on these who are usually missing an eye or a nose and I fix them. 

Now resisting the urge to paint it. 
Ttyl French class soon!! 

Margaret enjoying her new year. 

Day 882 Don’t Break the Painting! 

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Photo #3 Finally looks like Al our favorite art professor. He makes quips like 

  • Don’t Break the painting to have to fix it …because my students always tell me they will do it later and they never do. 

And of course I broke this one. I used gouache partly because Al likes it better than watercolor but also because the sketch was terrible. The face was too fat the eyes were off and at the wrong angle. All the black around it is where I corrected it and colored over the background. 


This is a not quite done pic. I take pics with my phone sometimes to see how it’s coming. I also sent it to a couple of friends who critiqued him. Face too fat and not enough top of the head. I only added a fraction of an inch and it really helped it look like him. 

The gouache was a lot of fun but I need a bigger tube of white. I am going thru it like potato chips.  

A few more Al-isms or painting according to Al. 

  • Nail it by doing prep work. The sketch and underpainting are fright before you start final painting. 
  • Warms and cools make a happy painting-Complimentary Pairs. 
  • Brush strokes – bigger the better. Use house painting brushes and paint it in one pass. 
  • 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. 

Thanks for looking in. 

Margaret whose sleepy. 

Day 881 - James

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Ok so another tv drawing. James Taylor was on CBS Morning News yesterday after being honored st the Kennedy Center. Always loved him so naturally I was tempted.  


He’s a little long in the face but otherwise I really love him. The eyes are great. 

Note to self. Take time to measure!!!

Painted with Ted Nuttalls transparent wc palette. Drawn with a pentel brush pen in a Beta Stillman and Birn mixed media journal. 

This is Teds actual hand held palltette.

These are the actual colors he recommends for the most transparency. I just have to add a couple. Cerulean and a Daniel Smith quin coral. The coral makes great skin tone mixed with quin gold or quin sienna or red orange. 

Thanks for checking in. Ttyl. Gotta draw another person but this time my own photo. 

Margaret staying in after yoga and another exercise class at the Y today. A nap soon!! 

Day 856 – Happy Veterans Day

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Once again I posted this yesterday on that OTHER website…sigh…

Somehow saying Happy Veterans Day seems like a conundrum to me because is not happy and people remembering it are sad.

That said I am sharing sketches of War Memorials I did in France last fall in Normandy at the sites of the Allied D Day Invasions 71 years ago.


The Canadian Cemetery at Beny sur Mer. It was odd to me that people to young to know the men buried there were crying over dead relatives.


That said I found myself doing the same thing as I shared a link to my dads historic battle of Foxhill at the Choisin Reservoir in 1950. PBS recently aired a riveting documentary about the week long battle. I had heard bits of the story but to actually see the 32 below conditions they fought in, the rugged almost arctic landscapes, the mass burials of the Marine dead,the frozen Chinese who were shot because the Marines had no other choice in this desperate time was a totally different experience.

The beautiful Canadian Juno Beach Museum shaped like a maple leaf on the beaches of La Manche, the Sleeve as the French call the English Channel. A stunning building wrapped in glowing aluminum with state of the art exhibits.

The Ranville Eglise next to another Canadian Cemetery in Caen Normandy France. The day was getting dark and somber threatening rain that afternoon.

The Pegasus Bridge Museum. Using gliders brave British paratroopers jumped behind Nazi lines BEFORE the Allied invasion forces landed on the Normandy beaches. I am sure many of them are now buried at the nearby Ranville Cemetery. They are immortalized in the movie The Longest Day.
Thanks for stopping by.

Margaret xoxox

Day 840 Almost a nightmare. 

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The pen I used on this page was not one of my normal ones. THE INK LEAKED WHEN I TRIED TO PAINT THE PAGE with a light blue tombow pen. EEEKKK.

So I painted almost all the letters grey with water thinking I would stop there. I painted All but the numbers which is why the letters are a darker red.  I blotted alot of the excess ink with kleenex and take out napkins.

When the numbers did behaved ok I decided to go back over the grey letters with the same red marker. And a dark red resulted…not the lite blue I had in mind BUT when catastrophe strikes you have to make lemonade right?

Then I colored the background with what I thought was a yellow marker…it was really orange…oh well …I wet it and lifted alot of it too with the kleenex heap which was growing.

Not bad but I will not be using that pen again unless I want the ink to run. Here’s a picture of the offending pen.  Its a Japanese pen with a brush on one end and a really fine point on the other end.

I tried to go with the bleedy color. It occasionally  got me into trouble as I colored and painted. So I blotted some more with the growing heap of kleenex!
I used tombow markers and a couple of caran d’ache neocolor ii crayons on this. Strathmore 500 mixed media journal a lovely crispy paper. Highly recommend this one or stillman and birns series. Great sketchbooks for watermedia.

Ttyl

Margaret off to the y for yoga!!😳xoxox

Day 737 A parakeet

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And a parrot
Rosy ring necked parakeet

Parrot that needs more work I think. 


Hmm well you shouldn’t paint at midnite. What else can I say!? He should be more of an emerald green but that’s easy to fix.just another coat of darker green. 


One coat of a nice green and he’s better. Not so pale and washed out.  

The background is cerulean and Quin sienna. Not a big fan but the sienna works well with the cerulean. Splattered with the same colors. 

Check by for a parrot update. Off to find something to draw I hope. 

Margaret xxx

 

Day 73? – About that Parrot 

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Hot off the paint brush. Red macaw at parrot mountain. Best sketching fun I have had in a while. And it looks so much better painted. 

Pyrrole red alizarin Crimson maganese blue and the usual culprits cerulean burnt sienna Inathrodone blue all done wet on wet. Oh burnt umber for the blacks. 

I often wonder why I can draw animals and scenery in public as people drift by but if I am drawing people I like to hide my sketchbook. 

A peach cockatoo. He was too far away and people kept walking in front of the bird. Painted with a red orange soup that was on my Pallette. 

Entrance to Parrot Mountain and yes those are very steep steps. Pant pant. But the flowers are lovely.  Parrot Mountain takes in rescued birds of all types but most exotic birds like parrots and macaws and large parakeets. Owners don’t realize that some of these birds can out live them. 


We went in this way which is I guess the handicapped access- a concrete ramp which should be labeled ramp to heaven. Very steep!


A few macaws under their hats near the parking lot. Someone asked why they don’t fly away. They can’t. The wing feathers are cropped so the best they can do is flutter a short distance. Sad for the birds but at least they are well taken care of in a lovely jungly spot. 

Off for some lunch at the Plum Tea Room on the artists loop and away from the mobs of Gatlinburg or should I say herds?  So many people!

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 726 – Almost two years. 

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My Van Gogh Sunflowers 20×24 Acrylic For Sale 
Coming up on two years of daily posting on Day 730 or at least attempting to do that. 

One of the things I learned this year – if you are taking a Viking cruise up the Seine River the wifi is definitely UNdependable. Have to think about a cure for that next time we go. 
My friends and fellow artists say they have seen a lot of growth since I started this journey. I started out to do a month then 50 days then 90. It grew like topsy. 


Auvers sur L’Oise – Prints available Watercolor 8 x 11″ approximately 

I love Van Gogh. Ever since the Viking Cruise and a tour of Auvers where he died I have been thinking about painting sunflowers because I knew I could never afford a real Van Gogh. I had to paint my own another that mine is in his league!! 
This week was the week. I bought a bunch of sunflowers at Krogers and Costco to paint in my blue Shishir pot from Tire City Potters in Augusta.  

Colors used – Pthalo blue, cerulean, ultramarine blue, golden Green Gold and nickel Azo gold, hookers Green, cad yellow medium, cad yellow light, cad red light, burnt umber, titanium white. 
I had a lot of trouble with the yellows. They tend to be transparent which did not work well over the turquoise background. I finally found a tune of Golden Primary Yellow that I drew petals on straight out of the tube. The impasto ( thick) paint finally did the trick.