Category: Strathmore 500

Day 351 – Tomato Pie Time!!

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  Nothing says summer like an heirloom tomato pie! I made two tomato pies today and since this recipe is frequently requested I decided to draw it.  

I am going to take u thru it as the recipe evolved.  


The pie fresh out of the oven.   Lots of yellows, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber, cad red light, green apatite and dark neutrals. 

 
The ink sketch. I usually pencil in a recipe to be sure I don’t run out of room for anything. Then I ink it. 

  

I laid in a yellow wash first. And dropped  bits of yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber, cad red light, green apatite and dark neutrals while the pie was still wet. 

  
Line green background added and more dark neutral around for the pies edge inside the crust. 

  
I added the cad red line because as usual I smeared the bottom edge into the white.  Maybe one day I will learn to keep my band out of the paint. MaYbE!!  I can only hope. I also added more dark neutral around the edge of the pie inside the crust fluting and wiped some of the purple under the leaves off.  Too purple.  

 
Listening to a thomas Schaller video yesterday. He said you could tell when a painting is done when u start telling yourself I need to do one more thing.  I Reinked the letters after I thought I was done not sure I like them. 

I also sponged on a little dark neutral to make the surface shadows and it’s done. 

 
  I found this recipe from a book called ‘Pon Top Edisto when I was looking for my copy. It’s a great cookbook. Some people add onions. A little or a lot. Cooked or not. Thought garlic might be a tasty addition.  And grits would be oh so tasty or fresh corn on the cob.   
Thanks for reading 

Margaret xxx

Day 343 -Urban Sketching

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  Couldn’t resist drawing at the beauty salon today while I waited. Actually fun to draw except I didn’t quite finish before it was my turn. I filled the gap with the sign on the left. 

My favorite part is the toes of the girl in the chair. Drawing the reflections in the mirror was interesting. A lot of complicated shapes what were not in my sight line like the shelves full of towels. 

You probably know feb colors I used by now BUT if u don’t. Blacks burnt umber and inanthradone blue. You could use ultramarine instead. Wall color yellow ochre and cerulean. Shadows mineral Violet and cerulean. 

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 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.  ðŸ˜³ 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 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 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.