Category: Lettering

Day 321 – I meant to be 

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 drawing more strips today. What did I do? Long arm quilted all day. For 7.5 hours. Good to have those done. I do free motion quilting which is mine drawing all over a quilt. All designs are drawn no markings.  One of my favorite people strips. Love all the action and different clothes.  


  These were drawn at the concert a few weeks ago. I drew tons of pages. The brush pen allows for a lot of quick drawing.  These people in the chairs were an experiment. Something different after filling up an accordion book. . Not sure how successful it was but fun to do. 

 
Here’s some of what I did today. 

   This king sized trip around the world quilt has been waiting for 15 years to be finished. Worst part of this was taking out the jillion safety pins. More to come. 

  It’s about 100×120 inches. All two inch squares. 

  Mostly made of Hoffman fabrics which is a Cadillac fabric. 

     
Friends granddaughters first quilt.  Her grambo  helped. 

 

A baby quilt for my nieces son. Only a year late. 😳 But he will be here home fromJakarta to nap under it in a week or so!!! Exciting!! I would post a whole pic of it but it’s upstairs and I am downstairs and TahrEd!! 

 
A wild storm rolling in from Georgia out my back deck. Now a deluge and lightening aka dogs NOT happy! 

Thanks for reading.  

Margaret XXX

Day 319 – Grace and Frankie again!

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i drew this while I was watching Grace and Frankie. Frankie’s hat made her hard to resist. I love a lady in a hat. Remember you can always pause the TV and have the actors pose for you. 

 

Here it is for now.  This is in my big 8.5×11 sketchbook.  

 Actually drawn in pencil. I rarely do that in my sketchbooks.  
 

 First face washes. 

 Adding some cad red light for her clothes. Nfrankie wears the most interesting clothing 
   
Hair. Now that was almost a disaster. Too solid.   

Added brown to little worms of color and dots coming off it. Better. Her face is still too delineated n thinking about that. What to do? 

  
The wispy hair is my fav part of this spread.   
Jane Fonda. Much smaller than Lillie Tomlin so quickly done.  

Almost done. 

   
Done for the moment. 
Thanks for reading!

Margaret XXX

Day 318 just a quick post

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because I am busy painting. More about that tomorrow.  

Cropping can be a good thing. This was a practice sketch. A warm up for painting this sketch.   I did not like the way the drawing went.  


I liked this sketch much better than the one in the first picture.  

  
This is the whole spread uncut. The sketch of Livia on the left is pretty bad. A warm up for the next sketch.  But the good thing about a bad sketch or painting is that it liberates you to slap paint around and have fun.  Loved making the drips and applying the sheer colors. Think it helped with this painting.  I did the drippy baby painting first.  Do you see a connection? Sometimes the most interesting painting gets done on a painting that you no longer care about the way it turns out.  The fun stuff in this bad sketch are the dots of the hair and bow on her head the washes and drips from the dress and the luminous center of the spread. Really like that luminous glow and. I used all of that in the lady in the white dress. 

  Anyway that’s my theory and I am sticking to it. Try it. Let me know what you think!

Thanks for reading. 
Margaret XXX

Day 314 – More Grandkids Paintings

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Love the background on this spread. Scroll down to see how it was started. This is a practice painting for the next one. I think she needs a neck or her heads too big. Or maybe her head just looks pasted on becaus it has no shadows around the baby’s  chin. I think that’s the problem.  What do you think?!

Pleased with the way Henry turned out on the right. 

Definitely more work required.  Liking the drips and splatters which I actually purposefully made. Stay tuned I will show u how but not tonite.  Too late posting.  Sorry. 

 TIP:  This is how I started the background in the first double spread.  A wash of several soft colors Quin red Quin gold yellow yellow ochre burnt sienna  cerulean and mineral Violet. 

Then u tone it down by painting more washes of a variety of colors over it which is how the background in the first one was done. Just don’t go dark with your washes.  You can do that later! 

 Here she is so far. More work required. No drips and no splatters yet. The soft pink skin is made from Quin coral and yellow ochre.  Hope the dress is not too dark. 

Decided to make this a journal page of our weekend together. 

 

Henry’s head reshaped from yesterday’s post.  Now I think he needs more back on his head but at least it’s not shaped like a football helmet. 

  I added some drips and some dark darks behind his head and under his arms to this one.

 Don’t know why I didn’t do any drips and splatters. Have a few paintings from spring fling that I did drip and splatter. Wondering if that is because  the kids paintings  are more important to me than the others? I think so.

 Do you find it freeing not to care if you mess up a painting? Sometimes the most fun happens with watercolor then. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret XXX

Day 312 – sketching the grandkids

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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 307 Reportage?! Part 2

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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 304 Homeward bound

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such a great class we were all loathe to leave.  

 Our parting shot – a sign to remember us by. I lettered it. 

  Fealing painted it. 

  
Quick peek in the candy store aka Cheap Joes warehouse. 

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 296 – A few Barred Rocks

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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 295 – Get Your Inner Jackson Pollock On!!

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  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.