Day 323 Dr Sketchys Part 1

May 28, 2015Leave a comment

Great nite! Mickey Lay was a great model! Always our favorite sketching activity. It’s worldwide so see if there’s one near you.

2 Minute pose Head is a little small Done w brush pen in a strathmore mixed media sketchbook. I have one just for Dr Sketchys. Thank goodness the drawing went better than the ones I did at Good Books. Perhaps those earlier drawings loosened me up?!

We started with several two minutes poses.

The poses were very interesting. He did a lot of muscle poses. Seemed to have trouble getting the whole body on the paper.

Another two minute muscle pose

The first five minute pose. Hard to hold the spear up in the air for 5 minutes but Mickey did well. Hard pose to hold.

Two five minute costume poses. Finally managed to get his legs on the page. Hallelujah. These were embellished with Pentel brush markers and Tombow markers. The Tombows cover a lot of area quickly and are fun to wet down with a water brush giving a watercolor effect.

Thanks for reading. More dr Sketchys tomorrow!!

Margaret xxx

Day 322 – Good Books

May 27, 20155 Comments

shopping for Franklin and Froggy books at our Gucci Goodwill. Found a stack. Sat down to draw the customers in the Good Eats Cafe there.

Some days you can’t draw at all. Viewing it as a warm up for Dr Sketchys tonite. Hope I do better then.

These are the best of the trash that I drew. Could not get in the rhythm today.

I brought in a sketchbook with only two pages left DUH! So I drew over some screwed up pages of Rhineharts Oyster Bar.

Browsers and worker bees at Good Books.

Rhineharts roof. Guess I could have drawn on the napkins!?

Sorry about the quality of the photos. Weird shadows from the lights in Good Books.

Maybe color would improve these?! Or a brush pen!?

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

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

May 25, 20153 Comments

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

May 20, 2015Leave a comment

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. 😳 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

May 16, 20154 Comments

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 307 – Reportage Accordion Style

May 12, 20154 Comments

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 304 Homeward bound

May 8, 2015Leave a comment

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

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 286 Another Accordion Book

April 19, 2015April 20, 20152 Comments

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

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!!

Day 282 – Running out of ink!

April 14, 20153 Comments

and some more food sketching.

Brownie and chocolate chip ice cream desert at the Wild Plum Tea Room. I think I might be obsessed with food but it was delicious served on a sweet pink and white rose china plate including a doily.

I used my kuretake brush pen and a pitt pen plus caran d’ache.

Need to add something to the title. Maybe a plum because I didn’t space the lettering out enough.

A warning about the kuretake brush pen. I love it. I got a converter for it too but it runs out very quickly when doing a large sketch like this one with all the black line work. I think I refilled it three times in the process. My Pentel brush pen which I left back at home would still be full of ink. I guess it’s a small price to pay for being able to use platinum carbon black ink in a brush pen but it’s annoying to refill so frequently.

The other day I went out sketching and ran out of ink. It was especially great for sketching trees but I ran out before I could finish.

Now I have to drive back up the mountain and finish this. To make the scenario perfect I left my Pentel brush pen at home 234 miles away. Not fun to refill the pen with a bottle of ink in the car. Sigh!

Thanks for looking!!