New Painting Finished!

After giving my brother & sister-in-law a painting of Rudy (the painting I actually use in this blog banner!), they loved it and expressed a desire to have a painting off all their canine kids.  I just completed it this morning, photo'd, and mailed it off.  It's a surprise!  Shhh...!  I hope they like it!  It's a quarter sheet in size, slightly bigger than I normally paint in, but with four pups in the frame I needed to go bigger.

Still Sketchin' Daily

I am still sketching daily in my 75-Day Sketch Challenge. This is one page I feel good about, a sketch of an ametrine crystal I bought a couple years ago at the Tucson Gem Show. There is truly some fascinating colors in this rock, mostly an amethyst shade but with yellow and gold glowing from within.

This morning I spent quite a bit of time looking at handwritten font styles, as well as ways to portray dates in your journal. One of the biggest take-away's from my info-gathering this morning is to SLOW DOWN when writing letters in a journal. I used to have good penmanship and I remember clearly in elementary school working hard on it and trying to decide on my own personal style. I had a few weeks of drafting in middle school and that further motivated me to write neatly. But ever since the Computer Age dawned for me in the early-1980's, my penmanship and lettering has gotten progressively sloppy and hurried. I've felt vaguely ashamed about it, but would just shrug it off as a sign of the times. Now it seems an old artform is resurging into my awareness, the lost artform of hand lettering and neat penmanship. And another thing I discovered this morning? It's almost impossible to find information on just how to do this on the Web. It's all about digitized fonts, baby.

One thing I want to mention is that the palette you see contains Winsor and Newton Cotman paints that have been removed from the original lumbering plastic container into this nice streamlined Altoids tin (sprayed inside with black enamel gloss paint since I did not have white). I like it!

"No Excuses" Sketch Kit

I came across Laure Ferlita's blog which led me to her demonstration video on the "No Excuses Sketch Kit". This kit is so small, so compact, that there is absolutely no excuse why someone who wants to sketch on-the-go could complain of lack of materials on hand. Your watercolor palette is simply patches of pigment scribbled in from watercolor pencils onto a folded piece of watercolor paper. To use the pigment, simply apply the tip of a waterbrush to the patch and get some color and paint!

Years ago I found a Derwent 36-color watercolor pencil set for a good price ($20 I think) at Costco and picked it up--and consequently hardly ever used it. Now Laure has inspired me to make a good use of it! So I gave it a try, and did a little ACEO-sized painting (on Yupo paper) with it:

Now this is a kit I can actually put into my small purse! Thanks, Laure!

Start of a 75 Day Sketch Challenge

I've recently discovered Brenda Swenson's blog and I really love the pen and watercolor style she uses in her sketchbooks. And the color! I am so inspired by her work (as well as other's such as Cathy Johnson, Leslie Fehling, Elizabeth Smith, and Susan Cornelis), I now realize that I want to channel much of my painting energy into sketchbooks more than stand-alone paintings. One of the issues I've had about painting is the growing stack of paintings on my closet shelf--somehow I'd much rather have a growing stack of completed sketchbooks, especially from my travels (but also from other elements of my life)! The idea of the sketchbook really attracts me now and gives me a better "place" to put my painting practice.

But I need to learn to draw better. I have a confession...I often work by tracing a print-to-size photograph onto my watercolor paper (using a lightbox) and painting from there. I'd usually rather paint than draw, mostly because I don't think I draw all that well. But can't I change that with practice, practice, practice? I believe so!

So when I read about Brenda Swenson's 75 Day Sketch Challenge, I figured, why not? I intended to practice painting in my sketchbooks anyway, why not rise to a more structured challenge? Well, it's not that structured. There are really only two rules: 1) Do a sketch every day for 75 consecutive days, and 2) Do these sketches in ink, not pencil. Brenda's experience doing this has shown her that such an endeavor has made a huge difference for her artwork. I believe I too can improve this way, and hopefully get more confident about my drawing!

So there is no better time than the present--here is a photo of my first sketch, of the back of my home, in my Pentalic Nature Sketch Journal, using a Pigma Micron pen, Niji waterbrush, and watercolor paints:

It's got issues, but not bad for my first! I plan to continue the practice (but I won't burden this blog with daily updates) and hope to get better!