Saturday, March 30, 2013

Fitting in some drawing practice


"Our pet" ground squirrel, Suzy, was being hounded by a Falcon, so she decided to move her babies to a safer place. Dennis heard squeaking and went out to investigate. A little later, the falcon was sitting next to her trail, so he went down to escort Suzy up the path. After that, I decided to sit and keep an eye out for her safety, passing the time by practicing my drawing. I picked up a camelia that had dropped from the bush next to my bench.
    Suzy ended up moving seven (!) precious packages--we don't know if she had already moved some before we, and the falcon, took notice.
    Later, I added a little color to the image. I need to take more of these sketch breaks!





Sunday, March 17, 2013

A Rose and a Haiku for Altered Book Exchange

I'm using this project as a place to try new materials and techniques. This page was coated with Daniel Smith Watercolor Ground.
I didn't have a lot of time, since the gathering for the exchange is tomorrow--it's been a crazy month (what's new?)--so I transfered the outlines from a reference photo.  Then, I watercolored and added additional contrast with watercolor pencil.  I think I was happier before I added the pencil--I'll go back and blend some of the pencil marks a little more.

The ground wasn't working well with the pointed pen, so, I switched to a fiber-tipped LePen while inscribing my haiku.

Contour Tomatoes on the Vine

 
This is my first entry in Margarets Celebration of a Garden-themed altered book. It's also the first time I've used a watercolor ground--the pages of the book were slick.  For this experiment, I coated the pages with Golden gesso (probably not necessary), the added several coats of Golden Absorbent Ground. I allowed a lot of drying time between each coat, which slowed this project down considerably, but it was well worth it. Upon painting, I found that the ground bleeds somewhat when juicy watercolor is applied, but so did the Daniel Smith brand.
 This spread has three continuous line contours based on the same bunch of tomatoes, using three different tools: red colored pencil, black tombow marker, and a pencil.   The tomatoes were gone by the time I painted the shadows on the last bunch, so I faked it and it shows--that's the problem with using a prop that my husband wants to eat!  This is in the Color-Texture-Pattern section of Margaret's book, so I wrote a haiku to follow the color aspect:
Luscious tomatoes
bright color in the garden
even the green worms!

 

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Acrylic Painting in Large Nujabi Journal



Here's another spread that I started in the fantastic Working with Layers workshop with Randall Hasson this past weekend, hosted by the Society for Calligraphy. (I would study with Randy again and again--he teaches new techniques every time!).This was my first time for painting images with acrylic.  A great learning experience--this paint is thinned with matt medium and glazing liquid. In the future, I'll also add considerable water--I prefer a more transparent look.
   Not only was I influenced by Randy, but I had been doing lots of contour drawing since last month's Illustrated Journals workshop with Brenda Swenson.  I had also just seen a picture that the oh-so-talented Sharon Zeugin had posted on Facebook, incorporating three contour drawings on one page. That inspired me to use my own contour drawings with the acrylic background.  The first drawing uses sepia-toned watercolor pencil.  The second, Tombo water-soluable pen.  The third is drawn in pencil, then painted.  I'll be doing another of these this week in a friend's journal, using more juicy paint.