Life Sketches in Brush Pen

Sketches from life in Tombow brush pen

I used up one of my Tombow brush pens sketching the boot. Liked how it came out as the fading dried out ink gave me some soft middle values. The cat sketch I did on the 18th looks a little grumpy and isn't one of my best, but the later one on the 25th wasn't bad. Other stuff includes a plastic pear mostly from above, my lighter, Swiss army knife and salt shaker.

This sketchbook is nearly full! That's a good feeling, need to keep going with it.

Not much for a week but I spent most of it writing on my really lousy Nanowrimo novel. Up to 36,828 words on it and will be caught up for real in a day or so when I get back to it. Not much drawing till end of month unless I do one pastel painting - or get the novel done and still have energy to sketch!

Day 1 of 30 in 30 - Pear from Life

Pear from Life

6" x 9" Pastel on Paper

I just started Leslie Saeta's 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge. Almost missed the first day of the challenge because I got distracted by offline stuff including home care visit, then stayed up a bit late. 

Sometimes tired can make you loosen up! I chose the paper color and ignored local color, started with that blue violet line intending line to predominate and kept going building color intuitively. I let it build on itself and stopped when it needed no more.

Fatigue can turn off all the rational fussy detail-worried mind and let creativity flow deep and wordless!

Pastels are 24 Cretacolor Pastels Carre' and paper is Light Green Canson Mi-Tientes, smooth side. I might mat it to 6" x 8" because of the bit at the top that was under the clip of my drawing clipboard.

Bright Pear Reflecting

Bright Pear Reflecting

Pastel on paper, 5" x 7"

A few days ago, I got a lovely set of 15 Caran d'Ache Soft Pastels, a wonderful assortment for a Colourist with bright saturated colors in warm and cool, plus my favorite three earths - yellow ochre, reddish earth and dark brown, black and white. It's a perfect small range. I also finally after literally decades of wanting to do so, bought the full range of Canson Mi Tientes colors in full sheets.

The first time I wanted ot stock that paper in all its colors at home, I was a teenager and it cost too much. For all those years and decades, I bought a sheet or two at a time. Or a dozen sheets a week sometimes when I did portraits in New Orleans, often trying out a new color or two.

I've spent far more on other supplies, watercolors, great brushes, pastels and colored pencils sets. The whole stack cost me less than $80... so my putting it off was rather silly. Now it feels as if I have the whole art store at hand. 

The color I used today is "Oyster." It's also in the basic pad which has been a lot of how I got my Mi-Tientes over the years, convenient size at 9" x 12" and easy to cut those sheets in half for smaller works. I'll be cutting down the big sheets the way I did in New Orleans on a good day, then store them sealed in a plastic tub to avoid attracting bugs. That big a paper stock can easily be bug damaged or water damaged. I may do the same to the big watercolor paper sheets in there and lightly pencil brand on them. Especially the tinted Bockingford sheets.

Last, this evening when I was done, I tried out my new Pentel Pocket Brush pen. It's surprisingly great! I read about it on Gurney's Journey and had to have one. As mentioned, it takes a little learning curve to control the very fine tip, but is wonderfully responsive. Some sloppy sketches before this and then this Ari gesture since he looked up at me squinting with his eyes nearly shut, just, face turned up and ears interested.

Ari Cat from life

8 1/2" x 4" Pentel Pocket Brush Pen on paper

Love the responsiveness of the pen and the very fine lines it can get. Practice will improve these but I'm very happy with this cat gesture!

Why I Like Painting Pears cartoon

Once in a while I get a silly idea. This is one of those times. I'm still down with a cold, still not up to serious art, but a comment by my daughter about her cat's plumpness just gave me the idea. So naturally I had to draw it up!

The best cartoons come from a moment's silly thought. The best cartoonist I've ever known said "You don't have to be able to draw well to do cartoons. You just have to be able to draw consistently and get really funny ideas."

So here's one for a laugh. 30 Cats in 30 Days turned into a retrospective. I posted seven older cat pieces on Facebook yesterday and later today I'll do six more - subtracting any serious cat art or real Ari sketches I do. Tomorrow I'll finish with seven more cats and at least share 30 cat s in 30 days.

But this teaches me something - doing the same subject as daily art doesn't work as well for me as just "Daily Art" in general. Also finishing one intens daily art challenge followed immediately by another can be too much. Your mileage may vary, probably will since I'm still wrestling the Fourth Bad Cold Of The Worst Winter In A Decade. Yuck. I didn't think I could get this sick for this long in a good climate ,but maybe it can happen anywhere. There seem to be some obnoxious ones going around this year, other people seem to be down with colds a lot more often too and all are in very different parts of the country.

Day 27 Heavy Metal Pear

Heavy Metal Pear 6" square

Henri Roche' pastels on Uart 400 sanded paper

No photo reference for this, only the weird shaped little green pear that already got featured in Three Fruits sitting on a black surface that I jazzed up with colors because I could. It wound up having an abstract look and a strong triad color harmony, odd because I never do triad color harmony but this time I like it. The pear really shines. I meant it to look matte rather than shiny, using metallic pastels was a way to give it a particular look that worked well. 

Of course being metallic it also reflects whatever's in front of it. This time I was wearing black so I didn't get that pinkish look on the silver like on Silver Fish. Red or orange shirts do strange things with metallic colors! Or even white, it's a lot of fun for me to wear that orange shirt and come close to a white on white composition in cold daylight where all the shadows are a clear violet cast blue. Ideas for another time.

I'm happy with today's painting and happier still that the 30 in 30 Challenge has helped me get back into daily painting. I might be using watercolour markers for half of them but I'm also sketching more too and sometimes the daily painting isn't the only thing I do in a day. Much thanks to Leslie Saeta for the challenge!

I'll be trying to keep on with daily art during February, weather permitting.

Pear from Life

Pear from Life

Pastel on paper, 9" x 12"

Another quick study, this time because my food program included a brown pear with my lunch. I love painting pears, so that set the day's painting on track! I sketched it in charcoal to establish lights and darks first:

Charcoal undersketch

This wasn't that hard to work out. I saw a lot of slight value and color variations and worked at getting them accurate in the final painting. A middle stage I didn't photograph had bright golden yellow on the sunlit strip and slightly yellowish green on the shadow area across the entire area. Then I began playing with different colors over it to get a shimmering mixed brown that uses every hue in the spectrum. Background was actually dark behind it and the surface bright white, but I jazzed them up with color to make the pear look better.

Charcoal Pear, bird sketch, wall crack

Charcoal Pear 

Yeah, just a quick sketch of a pear from life. The same one I did in my Art Lesson actually, though I should eat it soon. I may play with it some more or not. I have two more of them and quite a lot of plums! They're in season!

Also started another Pastel Spotlight painting with the charcoal sketch, fixative and then painted the background loosely with Rembrandt half sticks.

Bluebird WIP

7" x 10" pastel and charcoal on Artagain paper

Lot of fun. I'm going to enjoy doing this little guy. He's from a photo reference by Dave Slaughter on WetCanvas.com, posted to the Sept. Pastel Spotlight as part of the "Blue" theme.

And earlier, I did a sketch I meant to do for a long time. There's a crack on my wall, painted over, might actually be cracked paint from previous layers that looks like a caricature face. I meant to start doing drawings of the caricature faces and creatures I see in cracks in walls or smudges of dirt and all. So here's the start - just the original contour. 

Pen sketches in pocket Moleskine

Right side = Crack in Wall

What made that stand out is that I really did get it accurately without tracing. What I do with it later will be a whimsical figure, maybe a composition of a number of whimsical faces and figures flowing together. The wood grain of the bathroom door has an egret pointing its beak straight up in the air. I might get him sketched tomorrow in dark and light - it's where some varnish dripped on the wood grain, I think.

Last, I went back to the charcoal and pastel on Bogus paper again. Marked off two 5" x 7" areas and then glanced around for something to sketch. Of course someone I love volunteered to model, immediately!

Ari Cat Sleeping

5" x 7" charcoal and pastel on Bogus paper

Late at night, one more sketch. It's been a productive day! Much more than usual. Should do this more often!