Category: Stillman and birn

Day 332  – Those Darn Squirrels

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On our day trip to Columbia SC  Tuesday we stopped by City Art which is carries all the supplies for both Charels Reid and Mary White then we went to Nonnahs and last Mast General on Main Street ended we found this super SQUIRREL PROOF bird feeder. 

  Mast General Store an old fashioned general store on Main St. The original is in Valle Crucis near Boone NC. 

The squirrels are gluttons for bird seed gobbling voraciously. This bird feeder is actually squirrel proof. They are now entertaining us trying to figure out how to get into it. The top locks on and the bar across the front licks the seed up when the weight of the squirrels sets it. LOVE it. They don’t. They are actually hanging out on the porch rails staring at it with occasional attach forays and leave soon after. Very entertaining to watch their consternation over the shut off food supply. And of course they sit there staring making them easy subjects to draw. 

Colors used. Inked with my Noodler creaper Ahab loaded with platinum carbon black my go to ink. Greys cerulean and burnt sienna or Inathridone and Burnt umber for darker greys on squirrels. All done wet on wet. Bird feeder is vermilion and cad red medium. Same greys were used on the roof. Background is cerulean toothbrush  splattered with Inathridone blue. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx 

Day 331 -Tom Cat

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and painting greys.  

 

Tom spent a long time on the sofa grooming today. You have to wonder why cats do that. He’s always immaculate. 

He’s drawn and lettered with my Noodler Creaper Ahab. I painted Tom with a wash of orange and then laid in Quin burnt sienna for the stripes and to warm up the orange. The Quin burnt sienna was added when he was wet and when he was dry.  He’s really almost red in some light. A dark auburn. Darks are done with burnt umber and Inathridone blue. 

Greys. Watercolor makes lovely greys. Combine any blue with any brown or yellow ochre and you can get a wide variety of interesting greys. 

  Here are a few I made that way. 

Sometimes you end up with too much brown in the grey. Better to end up with too much blue!! You can darken the grey by using less water. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 330 – urban sketching?

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is sketching a friend at breakfast at a local restaurant considered urban sketching?! 

 

  Lowered the left eyebrow. It was too high. Still a bit too high but better. 

Doesn’t look a bit like Marsha. She kept moving. So I am blaming her for the poor likeness.  

I did have a good time dripping and splattering the painting and that’s what counts right?! 

   

Really like the hair.  It was washed with burnt sienna and the darkened with tiny bits of cobalt, burnt umber, mineral Violet and Inathridone blue after the initial wash dried. Fun stuff. 

 Colors used: Quin coral and ochre for skin, vermilion, mineral purple and cobalt,  Inathridone blue for blouse,  mineral purple and burnt sienna for shadows. Hair is burnt sienna, cobalt, burnt umber and Inathridone blue. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 326 Flying High

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Went out to lunch yesterday with my sister in law Jan at the Peachtree DeKalb Airport where they were preparing for their Spring Open House. We watched the planes come

And go during lunch. Then I decided to draw a few.  All their antique WW2 planes lined up asking to be drawn. 

These were drawn on site with a Noodler Creaper Ahab in my Stillman and Birt Alpha painted with watercolor and touches of white get pen. 


The Grumann Avenger Torpedo Bomber was the first one I drew. A nice Navy blue. How could u resist it shining in the sun, saying draw me?! 

Sometimes crosshatching the background fixes mistakes but NOT this one. I think A bad line would have been better. Planes are hard to draw because there are so many angles going every which way. Typical perspective rules apply but don’t seem too. Easy to get off track. 

I tried to stay on track by looking at the angles of the real wings compared with the angles I drew on the page starting with the fusillade then adding wings and tails. As it is I forgot to add the tail gun. So many small details it’s easy to miss a few. 

When I got home I looked up the plants to try to figure out which ones they were. The Grumann Avenger was the plane Pres George Bush flew in WW2. 

The navy blue is a mix of ultramarine and black a color I rarely use. It was hard to get a deep deep blue without the black. 

 
Next was the infamous WW 2 Mitsubishi Zero famed for dogfights in and kamikaze missions in the Pacofoc campaign. We thought surely it was not a zero but it had that big red circle on it. We knew what that meant. I looked it up and yes it was. This was fairly easy to draw. Profile views are easter even in a plane. Even the military green was easy. A bright green mixed with yellow ochre. Piece of cake.   Success at last. I added a touch of Quin burnt sienna to the cad red of the circle. 

  
Not sure what kind of plane this is. A WW2 Army Spotter plane I was told. Of course now the tail says USAF. Hmm I noticed that as I was drawing. 

I used the same greens on this plane as the zero. The gold is Quin gold. Yellow ochre was just being when I tried it. Grey is ultramarine and Quin burnt sienna. 

More planes tomorrow and a comparison of paint. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret XXX

Day 323 Dr Sketchys Part 1

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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

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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!!

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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 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 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.  😳 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