Category: Urban sketching

Day 433 Savannah Sketches

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 River walk

 Got eight Sketches done on Sunday. Four in Savannah and four on Tybee. All of the Savannah sketches were done with my Lamy Fine point. 

  It was hard to resist those x’s ones the building. I think they hold the building together for earthquakes. I added the people as they strolled thru my view. If you want to give it a go feel free to use my photo. 

  
The Cotton exchange and the Freemasons Hall. Also on River front. 

  
The Sphinx fountain in front of the Cotton Exchange. How could you resist this guy?! 

  
Wesley Square. Love the guys.  John Wesley not so much. Better extend that live oak tree!! Oops. Actually I extended the drawing adding the men last and didn’t fix the tree. I had places to go and things to see and a timed parking place!! 😄

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 431 – Sketching Tybee

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We packed up and left the house about ten am. The kids were off to Atlanta and it was SkEtcH TIME!! 

  These will all be watercolored soon but in the meantime I am sharing the sketches. I did eight total yesterday. A lot of painting soon. 

   
 If you want to draw this feel free.  Shrimp boat photos are hard to come by.   
 I found the perfect spot on a fishing dock when you first come one the island across from Fort Pulaski. The fisherman had to check out what I was doing.  
 So I drew him after he checked out my sketches. Think I better straighten up that bucket. Oops!! 

I switched to Lamy fine with this one. My noodles Konrad ran out of ink and my ahab was leaking. Guess I am going to have to fix it. 😳 That said I really liked the sketchiness of the fine line the Lamy does. 

  
Not the best pelican I have ever drawn but he will look better when he’s got some color on him. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 431 – Two point perspective Trick(TIP)

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  is tough to say the least. And mine was confused on this painting. The bricks were off especially above his head. Oops!! 

   

 Al Beyer showed me a technique that is easy to do when you have two point perspective, i.e. perspective with two vanishing points. 

  The vanishing points are to the right and left of the painting on the horizon line which runs across the top of the OPEN letters. 

ALL parallel lines should converge at the vanishing point. The runs of bricks make up these parallel lines as do the top and bottom of the window and the bottom of the OPEN letters. 

So how to get them done correctly.  

 Get a piece of paper. Lay the straight  edge along the horizon line. Then fold the bottom edge up to follow  parallel line. I chose the window sill. 

  This is the order you fold the paper in.  

 Match 1 to the horizon line to get fold 2. Of course you can’t see 1 now!!  

Here it is on the painting. 

  Make fold 3 by matching up fold 2 with the horizon line. 

  Then make fold 4  by folding the paper in half between the bottom fold and the #2 fold. 

Ideally before you paint match the horizon line on your folded paper with the horizon line on the painting draw along the folds with a watercolor pencil to transfer the lines to your painting.

Flip the paper with the horizon line on the bottom edge  to get the top lines. 

Some thinking is required. And the whole thing reverses on the right side to complicate your life. 😳  

  
  

What you end up with looks like this. The lines were drawn with a brown watercolor pencil. The horizon line comes off of his shoulder.

 

Let me know if you have more questions. I will try to answer them. Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day430- Food Food Food!!! 

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We ate at Taj of India the other day. I actually liked the sexond sketxh best til I painted them. Guess which one I like best now?!!funny how things change. I had trouble with my pentel brush running on this paper so I never painted the cerulean around the name of the restaurant. I read somewhere recently that the Pentel brush pen will sometimes run on certain paper. Guess I hit the jackpot on this one. Strathmore mixed media paper. Usually it behaves but I do have two brush pens. I may have used the Kuretake with carbon platinum black on the second one. No runny problems on it. You have to love that carbon platinum black. NEVER runs. 

My favorite dish was mine. The chicken tiki Marsala. It was painted with cad red then Quin gold.  Last I added touches of green apatite to the bowl. Lots of wet on wet.  The same colors were used on the kuchumba just watery. Quin gold and Inathridone on the rice. I actually used most of the same colors on all the dishes just in different variety. 

  
Having never been to Taj of India before I was hoping for an exotic interior. But no. Gold walls with one lonely wall hanging and an alcove. However there was a birthday party  in progress having a good time. The odd waiter who had hair like a rasta was added for some variety. His hair and huge beard were red and black. Very odd. He was a really sweet guy and kept the water glasses full. Good idea since the food was spicy. Not a spicy food eater. 

Skin tone – Quin red and yellow ochre. Burnt sienna for shadows sometimes with a touch of cerulean. 

Greys and darks. Made with Cerulean and burnt umber or burnt umber and ultramarine blue. Test them for a great variety of greys blacks and Browns. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 428 Busy as a bee 

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  Day 1 at the dog park. I hated this one but now I think I like it because of all the people and all the dogs. 

The seat on the right was completely misdrawn. And I tried to correct it. I had run out of room for the people OPPS.  

 
This group is my favorite part. Lots of dogs, lots of people. I sit in my car in the parking lot and try to catch the people and dogs before they move. I used a Noodler Creaper pen and de artrementis document brown ink. 

The bench was painted with Daniel smith green apatite which granulates and Inathradone with a touch of burnt umber.  All painted wet on wet. The bushes were painted like the background in Monday’s post though I didn’t take as long. 
 

 I did this one today. There was only one dog in the whole park!? And three people. Wonder where the other dogs were. 

  

These were drawn yesterday or the day before. The tall guy stood there right until I started to draw him and then he walked off. Same thing happened with the lady. Before that they had a BIG conversation.  

  

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 426 Costco

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Last week I sat in the corner at Costco’ s cafe area drawing the lunch crowd. There’s one table that has a 180 view and SCORE. I hid behind my purse. 

I really like the way the wall of boxes turned out in the background. And the way most of the people turned out. I actually painted out one guy whose drawing went astray.  Can you find him!? 

It was also hard getting all the bodies with legs as they came and went. 

Next time I will draw something easy like my polish sausage and the drink. 

  
This should be a fun place for urban sketching. Or at least getting pics of the roustabouts working. Check their webpage for when they visit near you. 

Thanks for reading.  Class tomorrow. Busy day!!

Margaret xxx

 

Day 422?? Painting 

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 Update. Painted for a couple more hours. 

 So far 

This painting had been fermenting in my brain all week. And really ever since I saw it. Love the grunge look of it. 

  
And always liked this photo of my middle son. I started over for two reasons. The first one was on 140# and he had no feet.  This is on a full sheet Crescent watercolor board.  Heavy stuff. 

 The feet thing did it for me. Lol. Do over. He needed feet. And I had trouble with his head. Still too big. As I said on my fb wall watercolor is a roll of the die.  Sometimes you win sometimes not. Like the new one better anyway. 

  
Here’s the sketch of it. All those grey lines worried me. Hard to have transparent color and those lines not show. I think they are going away. I HOPE. 

  The face was a hash of lines. 

Professor wants you to paint the drawing with a brush. 😳 I don’t know any WC people who do that but I was game to try. 

  
I did draw a little with a grey watercolor pencil because toooo many grey WC lines. I erased all the grey lines I could with my moo erasure from cheap joes. We love our moo erasures. 

  
Love the pants and the drip down the neck of the tshirt. The right arm is too wide but I think I can correct that with the background. 

Pray for me !👍😃

  
Last page. 

Thanks for reading. Back to painting. 

Margaret xxx

Day 421 – A Little Urban Sketching 

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at Fitch and Fifth in Surrey Center in Augusta Ga. A room full of people and I am waiting to eat. What else would I do?!

 Scenes like this really call my name to get out my Noodler Ahab or my brush pen and get busy drawing.  

I do usually paint these later because I don’t want to impose on whoever I am with too much. 

TIP: Oh. Almost forgot. The ledger strip down the side.  Whenever you see that I can promise you there is something I really didn’t like about the sketch.  In this case it was a waiter running a bill. Usually a figure on the side is nice but this one was not!! What to do?! Glue some ledger paper down and record our dinner. 
Ps it was delicious. My trout was perfect. I forgot their five stars. Oops. Will fix that!!! Or maybe not. Really like it just the way it is. 

 
And you thought the body was round?! Enjoy. One more page left!! 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 420 – Meet Me at the Rocket! 

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 Inscrutable Half Sheet 300 # Fabriano 

Why at the Rocket?! 
 The South Carolina State Fair Art Show in Columbia, SC is a BIG statewide event in South Carolina.  And everybody meets at The Rocket, an old missile named Columbia donated to the state.

The Best in Show Professional prize is $2000!! And there are thousands more in prize money!! The paintings are my entries. I will be happy if they sell because droves of people attend the fair daily. 

  
Tea  Time  11×15″ 300# Fabriano 

Artists from all over the state enter and the competition is fierce. There are so many entries that they fill up half a huge butler building. There are at least 1000 paintings in the show. Some are outstanding some are beginners and there is everything in between. The good the bad and the ugly. 
I intend to sketch there.  Anyone want to meet me at the Rocket?! Lots of animals of all kinds to sketch. Roz Stendahl of Roz Woundup blog (http://rozwoundup.typepad.com/roz_wound_up/) would be jealous!! She sketches at the Minnesota State Fair every year and organizes a huge sketch crawl.  

BYTW if you go don’t miss the huge sand sculpture that are two – three stories tall. They are pretty amazing.  Here are a couple of them. http://scfairgrounds.com/fair/special-attractions/sand-sculpture.php and http://www.wltx.com/story/news/local/2014/10/11/state-fair-sand-sculpture-still-a-work-in-progress/17118097/
  
Another page for your drawing pleasure. 

 Thanks for reading. 

Margaret ️xxx