I have quite a bit of traveling planned this Summer...from NYC to Copenhagen to Venice to Berlin and a few more spots. Very much looking forward to all the different colors, cities, and cultures in the coming weeks.
My favorite time of year is almost here. The cool breezy air, the colors and smells. The sounds of the last crickets, the mood of the sky. I could go on and on. This was A fun piece to work on. What will the next challenge bring?
I thought I would play with crayons this morning. The bird with the cute hairdo is a Livingstone’s turaco from the family Musophagidae. Found in the subtropical lowlands of southeastern Africa. This bird’s plumage is the color of spring. Crayola crayons on toned tan sketch paper.
A foggy morning opens up to a burnt landscape. I wanted to paint a couple of different environments in one painting but still aim to be refined. I used fall colors and smaller lines.
I've been so impressed with the ball point pen art that I have seen on this site, that I decided to give it a try. This is a Betta fish (Siamese fighting fish) done in red, blue, and purple ball point pens. Obviously, I have much to learn....but it was great fun and I have ordered some more colors since I plan on experimenting more. I've enclosed a photo of the work in progress and the various reference photos I used. The colors are more true to the final scan than in the flash photo of my drawing table.
More ballpoint pen experiments. This was trying to "blend" colors, using ball point pens in a similar way to colored pencils. I found Layering evenly to be pretty difficult, esp with the pens blotching and very very limited burnishing. The interesting thing is that the paper doesn't seem to get "tired" the way it does with pencils. This is just cheap printer card stock.
This started as a line drawing based on a photo of peonies in the garden. It’s drawn with three different pens: Micron 005, Micron 03 and Faber Castell Pitt superfine (0.3) on 11x14 Strathmore Bristol Vellum. The paper isn’t terribly tolerant of wet media, so I played around with tinting it in Photoshop because I wasn't sure how it would go. But I liked it in color enough to chance painting the drawing with the nice and bright Dr Ph Martin Hydrus watercolors. It's photographed it on my drafting table with my glasses for scale. The lamp has a daylight bulb, so I think the color (at least where the light is more prominent) is fairly true.
This started as a pen line drawing (with Skura Pigma micron pen) which I then painted with Dr PH Martin's Hydrus watercolors. They are fun and very bright. This is on Strathmore 300 11x17 Bristol paper.
Happy Thanksgiving! This is "Sunday Wonderland," colored with Holbein watercolors on 6x8 paper. May your Thanksgiving be as bright & happy as pictured here! (And may you ride a horse-thing, too.)
It’s been raining all day so I felt like taking a party wagon to the beach and catching some good vibes! This is based on a 1960 Volkswagen Transporter.
I've been using this dot-grid notebook (which I originally I got with the intention of using as a planner - Thanks, 'Rona) to make random watercolor pages with my doodles. I can do this in a few minutes here and there to break up some monotony and build up a book full of just them.
Definitely doodling---This is my first mandela and it ranged from great fun to great frustration. It ended up a little "waby swaby," but I suppose that's in keeping. It's 12 inches across with 32 points. Drawn with a micron pen, then colored in markers (in whatever colors I happened to have) and has colored pencil shadows. I scanned it into PhotoShop and played with altering colors. Made a green one for my green-crazy friend and a subdued desaturated one for myself. It's quite printable on my oversized color laser printer---so ill be a fun "social distancing" poster gift for my friends. Each one with a personal color range.
Sakura Pigma Micron pen and DR PH Martin Radiant Concentrated Watercolors. One side was painted, then embellished with ink, scanned into Photoshop, copied, flipped and pasted to make the two sides. (Fairly large image, so I included a couple of details.) Silly but fun to do. A little "acid" and a few hours of gazing is all you need for a profound experience. Ask me how I know.
I have been watching a lot of sci-fiction lately. Like so many others my age or younger, the weight of global warming sits on my shoulders constantly. I imagined the final trek through a wormhole as someone sees their new solar system for the first time. I enjoy the bright colors and such but wish I conveyed a more bittersweet emotion.
I had to improvise a bit. I found myself rummaging for colored pencils so I drew my outfit today with the ones I had. Notice that I am painting because I’m out of pencils. My oversized sweatshirt is really a periwinkle blue.
These horses were so much fun to draw. I used a Uni Posca marker with Daniel Smith watercolors. I was going to a craft fair and wanted to try out making stickers with Sticker Mule. It is a super easy process. The sticker is 1 inch in diameter.