Sketching with Watercolors

The bonus lesson from lesson 1 was sketching with watercolors.  I used watercolor pencil to quickly draw the overall shape of the leaves and then used paint and brush to fill in and add shading.  I flicked some paint onto the finished drawing and tried to make a pattern line on the bottom.  I need to work on lettering with a brush, as my i's dots ran into the bottom part. Overall I like how it turned out.  This is my fist watercolor sketch.  I used Strathmore 400 Series Watercolor paper in 140 lb. wt.

Watercolor Washes

Learning to work with watercolors in a free online workshop offered by Strathmore and taught by Cathy Johnson.  This is the first lesson, working various washes.  My washes in burnt sienna came out nice, but the ones in blue streaked.  I think my paint wasn't mixed fully.  The mixed wash is interesting.  I tried a mixed wash at the bottom left corner of two graded washes one in blue and a reverse in yellow.  I need to next figure what I want to paint in the bonus lesson, before going on to lesson 2.

Drawing Outdoors

I like trees, and this tree I have seen for years and wanted to draw it. I was afraid that I might have waited too long with the recent storms.   The structure on this tree is amazing. I almost expect a elf or other mythical creature to come froth.  It stands along a walking path on the Ford Motor Company's World Headquarters.  Just less than 500 feet from the expressway.  The path has many different species of trees and I hope to draw many of them.  I wanted to draw this tree before its foliage came out so to better show off its structure.  The two lower branches dip to  less than a foot off the ground.  Drawn with PIGMA Sakura Micron 05 sepia pen.  It was windy and getting colder so I didn't take much time to draw as I would have liked.  Next time I plan on bring a chair.

Pine Cones

This spring has been early and unseasonably warm.  Which is OK by me.  While cleaning up yard debris I came across some pine cones and decided to draw them in my journal.  I didn't think it would be so challenging as it was.  The white pine cones different angles and openness I found difficult to capture and it took me several attempts and days for me to draw.  The red pine compactness made it much easier to draw.  I found myself trying to draw a pine cone and focusing too much on thinking instead of drawing what I was seeing. Spring coming this early is going to make drawing outdoors nicer.

Drawing in Public Places

I want my Journal to include drawings of people.  Since I haven't draw people before this last year, I thought going to CJ"s Brewery for dinner would be a good place to sit in a back booth alone and draw customers.  I found myself being very self conscious and worry that others would get angry if they found out I was drawing them.  I want to be able to quickly get the form of the person and the surrounding area without taking too much time or looking obvious.  I hope to get better at this so I can record our vacation/adventures by drawing them instead of taking pictures. I added green watercolor to my pencil drawing in honor of St. Patty's Day.

Brush and Ink

This is my first brush and ink drawing.  I found it hard to get the ink to come out gray.  I would blot and add water to the brush, but the ink kept coming out black.  I did eventually get a gray while cleaning the brush out.  I am not sure if it is the ink I used or just me.  I like pen and ink, but I felt nervous using a brush to apply it.  The results I knew wouldn't be exactly the same as the original because Picasso did his self portrait with pen and ink with watercolor wash.  My picture has him looking more up too.

Feeling the Blues

Boy!  This was a hard picture to post.  I tried two times to take a picture using my phones camera only to have my photo editor display error messages because it couldn't see the blue image.  I finely took a picture with our digital camera and finally got it to post a picture.  I decided to experiment with Derwent's Graphitint pencil in steel blue and mixed it with their watercolor pencil in blue gray. I lightly bushed the images with water to pull the color out and make nice shadows. I think I will like to use the watercolor pencils for sketching on trips because it would be easy to fix mistakes and I could add more later if needed.

Solar Flare

I decided to play around with my watercolor pencils and draw a color chart with a picture.  There has been much in the news lately of the recent solar storms.  The sun goes through an eleven year cycle and has been quite for quite some time.  Now it is entering a very active time, and because of the recent development in electronic devices, the experts weren't sure what would happen.  They prepared everyone for the worst.  They said we would be able to see the norther lights...  Still waiting.
I haven't seen the northern lights in quite awhile so I was hoping to see them.  Oh well, maybe later this year.

Graphite in HB!

I was given this flower doll/statue by my sister-in-law about 20 years ago.  I wanted to work on my shading skills using one pencil.  It was fun drawing her face.  One day I may draw the rest of her.  It took me 3 days to finish her as I only had limited time to work on her each day.  I have called her Flower Guardian as she watches over my plants and flowers.

Lips in Ink

Its been awhile since I drew anything in ink.  I decided to play around with a sepia pen in my art journal and while holding onto a mirror draw my lips in different poses.  I had difficult holding the mirror and drawing so eventually set the mirror on a box of oatmeal.  I need to remember that with ink less is more.  the first one looks like I have hair around my mouth.