Major Blog Catch-up

I've been keeping up with the 75-Day Sketch Challenge and on Day 46 now!  I try to sketch from life, like this barrel cactus trio in our backyard, but sometimes I find it handier (and warmer) to sketch from my large reserve of photos (since I spent many years intensely interested in nature photography!).

I'm not usually a fan of drawing buildings, but I did our newly-constructed LA Fitness gym as a handy subject while I waited for my husband to do an extended workout:

On weekends I often join my husband and his friend rock climbing, and that is a wonderful opportunity for some plein air sketching:

I've really been on a fountain pen kick lately (more on that later), and one thing I've been exploring is pen & wash techniques with water-soluble ink:

And finally, yesterday's sketch is one from a photo I took at the local Butterfly Magic exhibit in February 2006.  I really enjoyed painting this butterfly and will likely do more from the photos I took that day:

So as I've said, I've been on a fountain pen kick lately.  I really love the ink & watercolor style, and since I draw in ink before adding watercolor washes I need a waterproof ink.  I have typically used the Pigma Micron 01 pens, and the Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens (S being my favorite), but I feel a desire to explore refillable fountain pens.  I am not completely new to the fountain pen realm, having bought a Sheaffer cartridge fountain pen and a Sheaffer No Nonsense pen (with 3 italic nibs) back in the 1980's.  I dug those old pens out, re-constituted the dried out ink in the cartridges, and played with those for a while.  I looked to see what other artists use, and I admit, I was primarily influenced by the wonderfully-talented Nina Johansson when I ordered a Lamy Safari EF from Goulet Pens and a big 4.5-oz bottle of Lexington Gray ink (that included a free Platinum Preppy eyedropper pen!).  But I have to admit, that pen did not work for me.  I first loaded the converter up with the Lexington Gray and I found the lines in both writing and drawing, on both regular and watercolor paper, to be too anemic and broken up.  The ink flow was just not there, and the gray went on too lightly for my taste.  So I flushed the Lexington Gray out of the Safari Converter and I refilled with some of the sample of Noodler's Bulletproof Black.  At first I thought this might be a happy match, because even though the pen was "dry", that seemed to be a good thing, because that ink may not bond to the paper (and thus be waterproof) if it's put on too thickly.  However, with further drawing experience with the Lamy Safari and the Noodler's Black ink, I found I was just fighting the pen too much.  I'd have to re-trace over lines I had just drawn because they were either too light or in most cases broken or with no ink flow at all.  It became frustrating--drawing is hard enough when you don't have to fight your tools!  I wanted to like this pen, but it's just not working for me and I'm sending it back to Goulet.

Edited on 1/30/12 to add that Goulet Pens received my return of the Lamy Safari EF pen wrote me an email to inform me that they have refunded me the full amount, and that actually the nib was defective, so it was no surprise that I did not like the pen.  This is good to know!  They did assure me that the Lamy Safari is a great pen and I ought to give it another try sometime.

It didn't help that I really liked how the free Platinum Preppy was working for me!  I filled that pen up with Lexington Gray ink and though a bit more scratchy than the Lamy, it writes a smooth line, never breaks up, so easily!  I don't have to fight this pen!  So it's hard to justify keeping the Lamy when the Preppy suits me just fine.

But I am not done...I recently made an order from JetPens for a Platinum Carbon Pen---Platinum Carbon ink is purported to be very black and very waterproof, and I want to give it a try.  Many caution that this ink can clog regular fountain pens if not maintained properly and used regularly, so I thought I'd try the pen that is designed to use this ink.  We'll see, the order is on it's way!  I also ordered two more Platinum Preppys and a Platinum converter because I want to be able to keep a Preppy in my purse (and not eyedropper'd -- too risky!).  

Well, gotta go play tennis, but I have more to catch-up on in a following post, including my experiences with Coptic Binding and further progress on my Retrospective Trip Journal...

Already on Day 30 of my 75-Day Sketch Challenge

I can hardly believe it but I'm already on Day 30 of my 75-Day Sketch Challenge!  I've been really enjoying it and already feeling more comfortable with the process.  Today I was wondering how charging my rubber stamp with watercolors would turn out, so I brushed on some carbazole violet on the stamp and stamped it into my sketchbook (I see I could use improvement in that process!).  So of course after that I had to set up a little still life of the stamp and brush to use as today's subject for the Sketch Challenge:

I find I like putting little color swatches in the bottom of my page so I can later know what colors were used in the creation of the sketch.

I have also been making progress on my Retrospective Trip Journal, slowing going through chronologically illustrating and writing about memories of trips Mark and I have taken since we've been together.  I am working in a 6x9" Strathmore Windpower Watercolor pad, and I've decided to customize the cover a little bit:

I cut a piece of nice 28lb paper and adhered it to the cover with spray adhesive, and wrote a little title in the corner of the cover, inspired by the children's book "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh".

Here are a couple more pages I have completed since my last post:

I of course need to work on drawing people!  I get so intimidated because I know I don't do that well!  I did use guidelines to draw the Mayan pyramid, using a ruler to sight against my photo on the computer screen.

New Project -- A Retrospective Trip Journal

When I recently became inspired to learn to draw better and create travel journals like the wonderful ones I've seen by other artists, I wistfully thought, "Gee, it's too bad I didn't keep a watercolor travel journal on all my past trips."  Then I thought, "Well, why not do it now?"  Why don't I use this wintertime of "hibernation" to look back onto all my past trips that Mark and I have taken together, and create a Retrospective Trip Journal.  It'd be a great way to get some sketching practice in (albeit from photos rather than life), I'd get to relive some great memories, and maybe have a nice trip journal to look through to relive those trips again and again.

So I made a list of all the trips Mark and I have taken since we've been together (since 1983!).  The list is long!  Too long to draw everything, actually, so I will keep it to the highlights for this journal.  Our first trip together was the summer of 1984 when we drove Mark's Chevy Monza (he had just rebuilt the engine) from Flagstaff, Arizona (where we were attending Northern Arizona University together), up through Colorado, to Yellowstone National Park.  Here what I completed a couple days ago of my retrospective journal of that trip:

After graduating from college in 1985 and getting real jobs, it was not until 1988 that we were able to afford the trip of our dreams, a trip to Jamaica!

So far it's been great fun to create these little journal pages as I reminisce on long-ago trips.  I plan to keep it up!

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!