Category: Tips

Day 290 – A Special! 

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Only ten more days to go til I have posted 300 days in a row.  Who would have thought I would get this far. Not me!
You all know I like to draw my lunch breakfast dinner desert.  I like to draw food especially if it’s colorful.

 The inner bean special
 So today I drew my lunch.  The inner bean special which I highly recommend. A boarshead turkey blt topped with their homemade ranch dressing on oatmeal bread with a spring green salad and balsamic dressing.  Yum I even liked the purple onion and ranch dressing – two things I normally don’t eat. 

Drawn in my stillman and Birn Zeta with my Noodler Creaper Ahab with Carbon platinum black Ink. The Noodler flex nib pens are such fun because you can get such a great variety of line with them. They are inexpensive and my favorite pen. 

About the painting. 

Colors used. Every color on my pallette except viridian and phthalo green. 

The sand which was done by brushing it first with a mix of pale yellow ochre and raw Sienna with a tiny bit of indigo. I let it dry and sponged it with a darker version of the same mix at least twice.  The edge of the bread is burnt sienna burnt umber and ultramarine blue.  

First I washed the salad with a pale green made with sap green and a bit of cobalt. I let that dry and mixed the same colors making  a darker green. Last I added cobalt and ultramarine for the dark shadows. 

The red in the salad is vermilion. The darker red are done by adding cobalt to the mix. 

The walnuts are the same colors as the bread starting light and going darker with each wash adding ultramarine and burnt umber at the last to make the lights pop. 

Salad dressing is vermilion with bits of cobalt. 

Tea is burnt sienna cobalt and a bit of vermilion to make the purples. 

Napkin –  burnt sienna and cerulean. One of my favorite greys. 

The darkest greys and blacks are made with indigo and burnt umber sometimes with a dash of vermilion. 

Vermilion also makes a great purple onion. 

I did most of the shadowing with  burnt umber and ultramarine blue.  

  

TIP:  Shadows are important. The dark shadows serve to make the lights pop.  


 Can you see where I went back in and added the darker colors in this painting. I think it looks a lot better now.  What do you think? 

Thanks for looking! 

 Day 288 -The Walker Sisters Cabin

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about 2 miles up a mountain and across a stream sits the Walker Sisters Cabin along with several out buildings. The five sisters held a lifetime lease and lived in this two room cabin till their deaths.  Their father built the cabin when Abe Lincoln was still practicing law. 

 The hike up there is lovely with wildflowers on the side of the road but I can’t imagine what it would be like to live so far from civilization. I guess they didn’t go to the store very often! 

 Four of the five Walker Sisters. From a 1946 Saturday Evening Post article http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/time-stood-still-in-the-smokies-SEP.pdf

 Painting the picture 

Done in my Stillman and Birn Zeta. Drawn with A Noodler Conrad pen and lexington grey ink in the rainy drizzle. 

I started with a wash of Sky aka cerulean and trees – spring green and viridian. I let that dry and added the trees in the background with indigo and a grey made by adding burnt sienna to the indigo. Different strengths  of these two colors make the trees recede into the woods. 

The cabin was painted with the same colors. Yellow ochre was added on the chimney burnt umber washed over the greys of the cabin. 

The dogwood was painted with white gouache. Next time I think I will use some masking on a sponge to do this. I like the look better. 

 My son crossing the log bridge to the Walker Sisters Cabin 
(Painting the picture continued)

 The grass was added with the same spring green and viridian as the background just not as diluted.  Some negative painting with the darker green was done to make the grass spikes. 

 
A red salamander that was on the foundation rocks of the cabin. 

  A fern on the path to the cabin. Both of these pictures were taken by setting the end of the iPhone6 down on ground level and clicking away.  

  

Wild orchis
  
A trillium 
  

Day 287 – Mingus Mill 

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just before the Oconaluftee Visitors Center in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park .  

This statement is wrong : I thought it still was a working mill but the wheel seems to be missing.  Did some reading on the Mingus Mill on Wikipedia. There was never a waterwheel but it has some kind of small metal turbine wheel that drives the mill stones. It is still a working mill. It underwent a second restoration in 1968. 

 You can buy ground corn meal and a t shirt.  The money all goes to support the park. It is the only park that doesn’t charge admission so it needs additional funding to help with such programs as fighting the woolie aedelgid which is decimating the Eastern Hemlock. Dead hemlocks parade thru the Appalachians killed by this bug and the park service is engaged in a deadly battle with them treating 5000 infested hemlocks this year alone. 

  

Watercolor in my Stillman and Birn Zeta.  

But back to Mingus Mill, a very interesting old building that sits back in the woods. It was restored in 1937. The steps are old mill wheels. The mill race is still gushing with water. 

  
You have to cross a small stream to visit the mill. Very picturesque setting. 

  Bishops Cap

There are some lovely wildflowers there. 

  
Canadian violets with a wild orchis or orchid near the mill. 

The mill painting is painted with the same colors as yesterday’s painting.
Paint the background first. Sky and leaves.  Streak in the background trees with soft greys and Blues after it dries. The foreground tree limbs are darker to make the background recede. 

Thanks for looking. 

Day 286 Another Accordion Book 

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 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 

  

Earthfare

 

 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!!