Back to sketching

A couple that were pencil and ink until today when I had time to add color.

A Few from Japan

I had the good fortune to travel to Japan in April as a chaperone for 31 high school students. As you might imagine, it was a busy trip, so my opportunities to sketch were few. Here are the works I completed:

On the plane:

From the common area at the hostel in Sapporo:

And lastly, at Nanae high school:

This last one took a bit, but we had quite a bit of that while students spent the afternoon in classes. 

Blue Shutters #2

I took a second pass at the painting "blue shutters," by John Lovett. He has great tutorials and this is one of them. 

Ready for Scandal

Enough said. 

Happy with the wine glass on this one.

Remake of the Dream House

In an attempt to lighten both the sky and the greenery, I started over with a second drawing of the "dream house." I think I need to mix different colts and use more water for the sky and clouds. Though I have cerulean, cerulean chromium, and manganese blue sitting in my home palette, I am trying to develop skills with the limited palette. I have found the sky to be most challenging. 

I lightened up the greens by using a completely different style. With those, I think I just need to use white space better. 

Another issue may simply be the paper... The Stillman & Bitn journal is great for some things, but it doesn't do damp washed like the Arches cold press. That makes it tough to keep soft clouds. Maybe I'll try one more.

Working in the limited palette again.

Expanded the palette a bit for this one: Phthalo blue GS, Quin rose, Quin gold, cobalt blue, monte Amiata natural sienna, DR burnt sienna and a touch of indigo.

Clouds came out nice and puffy. Layering the Phthalo blue over the cobalt helped deepen the contrast and pull the piece together. 

Don't like the shrubbery. Too dull. Ni!

Painting from my photos

Recently I have been stuck, wanting to paint, but having difficulty finding a subject that interests me. After spending some time in iPhoto I printed several scenes to use. I painted the first, a bunch of grapes from a vineyard in Chile, about a week ago. Below are two versions of a second. 

I've been trying to stick with the limited palette. This one has Phthalo blue GS, Quin gold, Quin rose, hansa yellow medium, and a bit of burnt sienna. One was very quick with what people seem to call "juicy" paint, and I used Noodler's black in my Lamy Safari pen to finish it off. The other took much longer. The second also added cerulean blue for the sky. On this one, I tried to use negative painting around the edges. I think it helped. I have to remember to use enough water when filling in the background. Even in small spaces, to be sure there's enough texture in the background. Otherwise it ends up looking flat.