Category: Noodler Creaper Ahab

Day 982 Last Nite!

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After several disastrous sketches I knew I could handle our beautiful Asian model when I did this watercolor in ten minutes or so. 

All sketches are 11×14 in a Super Aquabee tablet. Love that paper. Painted with my whisky painter box loaded with WN and Daniel  Smith Quin coral and an old Cotman palette loaded with every quinacridone I own plus thalo blue and green black and white gouache. Painted with a pentel waterbrush. 


These are all two minute sketches. Some of these will probably be altered. And most are pretty awful. As in EEEKKK I Don’t feel good and I can’t draw a thing tonite. This one was the worst. 


Better.  I decided to give up my go to Dr Sketchys pen the Pentel Brush pen and use a Noodler Konrad. Life improved.  I always think it’s interesting how a change of pen can improve your drawing skills when they aren’t going well. 

Next We had a challenge to turn her into a fox. Evidently her stage name is Foxy. As some of you know I like to draw chickens. Follow them around at Key West to draw them or sit and watch them and sketch them. Never thought chickens could be so much fun but they are. 

Really like the sketchiness of her body and legs in this one. 

Ttyl another busy day. Haircut picking up paintings and back to aiken for a reception for a friends show.  

Margaret xoxoxo

Day 955 Urban Landscape Knoxville

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Yesterday we had at lunch Kathe Drew and I had a  big discussion on gridding our paintings or not. Drews currently working on a huge painting of downtown Augusta. The view is five floors up and he’s frustrated trying to get all the buildings in to the scene. 

I told him about drawing this view of downtown Knoxville last May. I was five stories up too at 7 am drawing away. It took about half an hour to draw this. 

Most people looking at it would think that yes that’s exactly what Knoxville looks like but it’s not quite. 

No matter how hard I try to plot the drawing of a cityscape like this I usually run out of room by the time I work right or left to the edges. 

I end up leaving out buildings. I told Drew that as long as you get the important buildings in the skyline is recognizable. What would the Knoxville skyline look like without the Workds Fair golden globe or the the big basketball from the basketball hall of fame.

 Some buildings are musts in the skyline. Other  nobody will ever notice they are missing. Nobody has yet to say where’s xyz. 

These are actually what I was looking like. 

I didn’t even paint it so it looked like this. 

I added nice dawn colors. Layering buildings with a base coating of Quin gold letting it dry and then painting it the colors of the buildings. It gives a nice early morning glow to the sketch. 

Anyway that’s it for today. Ttyl

Margaret xoxoxox 

Day 952 Odds and Ends 

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A little urbansketching at an ACA rally Saturday in Aiken. These rallies are great opportunities for drawing people. 

Drawn on 300# arches cold press with a Noodler Konrad loaded with carbon Platinum Black Ink. Ted Nuttalls transparent colors. 

Yeah she’s done. Well at least I think so. Kinda yellow but at least her body’s no longer distorted. 

Here she was before I worked on her today.  

I shortened her shoulder, added some her butt on the left,thinned down her right thigh and moved the right arm. 


And I finished the hand on this one today so Sarah is done. Yeah.  I ran out of time before I finished her left hand. 

And that’s all folks. Time to head to French class. Ttyl

Margaret xoxoxo

Day 945 Fat Mans!

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A long time Augusta institution. At Christmas everybody went to Fat Mans Forest to oh and ah over the animated Christmas decorations or to find the perfect tree or ornament or ride the Christmas train. Or do all of the above everybody on town went. But the owner Mr Usry died. The kids wanted to sell the land and move it which never happened.  Thus Fatmans Forest passed into history. Fat Mans was also the go to place for Halloween decorations and a house of horrors. 

However the younger Usrys Fat Mans Cafe is still going strong turning out “soul good” food at their Enterprise Mill location. Excellent squash casserole. Vintage Oolie on Broad bought out the costume part of the business. 

I could not resist drawing their catering trucks as the gleamed in the noon day sun after our luncheon Thursday. 

Painted in an S&B alpha with Ted Nuttalls transparent colors. Drawn w a Lamy EF pen with Lexington gray ink. 
Ttyl! Time to Parker vous Francais! 

Margaret xoxoxo

#fatmans #EnterpriseMill

Day 940 – LateNight Entertainment Al Beyer!

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Our beloved prof Al Beyer was the program at the Aiken Art Guild last night and he was his usual humorous self peppering his talk with quip after quip such as “If you get a bad painting it’s your failt but if you get a good one (at lifemodeling) it’s all the model!! And that is true well sometimes. 

This huge seemingly abstract is the way Al works. It will be a photorealistic water landscape painting when he’s done or as he calls it the most boring painting ever since it will be almost all water with his. A bit of tree bank across the top. 

We told him we liked it as it is. An abstract. 

He blocks off the painting into multiple blocks the size of a standard piece of paper. Every nite with a printed paper from his tiled photograph he paints one section in oil with a small brush which takes him about 2-3 hours per square. 

Here he is with his helper Vanna aka Ilaina – one of  our Saturday models. 


Here’s a better picture of this huge painting. It’s made by layering multiple photos of Beijing in Photoshop. Interesting effect. 

Hmm my sketchbook seems to be among the missing. I drew theses ladies yesterday while my excellent steak salad got cold at Aiken Brewing Company on Laurens Street in Aiken. 

Hope I find it. It will be a great painting when I am done. Sigh. 

Ttyl 

Margaret xoxoxo

Day 939 Urban Sketching at Earthfare Cafe 

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Always a good place to draw. Add people as they drift into your picture. Next time we are drawing at Wet Paint party at Sacred Heart an incredible setting Saturday Feb 18 7-10 pm. Trying something new. This is my Woman’s March sketch on a small canvas. What do you think? It’s 14×16. 

This is the original sketch. 

Gotta run. Another busy day. Tomorrow I collapse and go to the Y for yoga. Relaxing. 

Ttyl Margaret xoxoxo

Day 938 Sometimes it doesn’t turn out like u expected  

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so it’s good to have a fall back. 

I have darkened this one down quite a bit. Trying to get the lights to glow.  Still not there. Better than it was. 

Here it was earlier. I drew this last week in downtown. It’s where AC and I ate late lunch. 

Remember this?! Like this one better. Maybe I need to write all over it.  Lol. Still have one more sketch from or Sunday unpainted. 


Off to our first meetup of urbansketchers of Augusta. Hope to see you at the Earthfare meeting room at 1. 

Ttyl 

Margaret xoxoxo whose having a way too busy weekend. 

Day 936 Today’s the day!

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So I will make this short. 


I keep thinking there’s a painting. At Costco. Maybe several. Not sure. I drew this at the pre Super Bowl snack frenzy. Vultures including me walked away well fed. WHOLE slices of pizza. I stood not far from them booked propped on my cart, drawing and nobody noticed me. NOT ONE person. So strange.

 The lady was handing out pizza bites. They had to pass right by me to get to the whole pizza slices. The mobs were huge. Sausage hot dogs Artichoke dip popcorn -lots of great snacks. 
Noodler Konrad Stillman and Birn Zeta Ted Nuttalls transparent palette. 


The check out line at Costco. Think this might be my next acrylic. What do u think. 

Ttyl 

Margaret xoxoxo

#costco

Day 934 Urban sketching and a cartoon 

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I drew this apartment building from the porch of the Partridge Inn last Wednesday. It was bathed in the late afternoon sun. I don’t know if I captured it but it’s my other favorite sketch from yesterday. 

Color Quin cold and Quin coral on the building w a violet in the shadows.  Hematite green bushes w ultramarine blue. Sky cerulean. 

Sketchbookskool homework.  Draw a cartoon. 

This is our beloved art professor Al saying his quips that keep us laffing and coming back for more of his teaching. I am starting year two. Some people in Advanced Painters have been there for twenty years. His New Yorkness is still there all these years later. 

Some more Al-isms. 
Looks like a gorilla painted this. 

Don’t mess it up to fix it. Never happens. 
You owe me some time. 
You need to leave room 140

There’s a world outside room 140

This is not a democracy. 

Steal from the best. 

“These two areas of your painting need to talk to each other”. 

 “Get working. Stop talking”. 

 “Don’t let me paint your painting for you. You decide”. 

  “Seven years he has been here and he has never done anything I’ve asked him to do”. (Like in a way he is sort of proud of the guy for that)

 “So do you think you have another painting in ya?”

 “Work on this for your next 20 paintings”.

Kawfee 
“You got it!” (I.e.do we understand?)

 “You are in danger of finishing this painting”. 

 ” It’s your painting; I don’t want to micromanage it”
“Be thinking about your next painting” ”
“Keep it fresh!

“Don’t get too.close.to me….or might be I don’t want to get too close to anyone, I might be coming down with something.”

“I am very tired.today” ” I have to go crack my back”.

Stop.talking….start painting…….and/or. “Get to work”!😕🎨
Have the same person paint this side.  
Watch those edges. 

Big brush strokes. 

Warms and cools make a happy painting 
Complimentary Pairs. 
Brush strokes 
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. 

Day 933 Urban Sketching

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Went sketching downtown with my sweet  friend AC Daniel. We ended up at the Soy Noodle house eating. Gotta keep your strength up. So far this is my fav sketch done that day. It looks terrible after I painted it but turned it into a journal page with the lettering.

Stillman and Birn Zeta Pentel Brush Pen and Lamy EF. My whisky painter travel palette and waterbrushes.

Wish I had taken a photo of it before the lettering. The brown was just dullllll.

Pleased to announce Augusta is having its first Urban Sketchers meeting. Hopefully Sunday February 12 at Earthfare Meeting Room at 1 pm. Click on the link to join our facebook page, to keep up to date, and to see our art!!!  Lots of sketching will be going on.
Ttyl

Margaret xoxoxo who had to work on her sketchbookskool homework.