Jonquil and Plein Air Trees

 Jonquil 

8" x 10" pastel on brown sketch paper

Last Wednesday was my clinic visit and the elevator in my building still hasn't been fixed. So I called in to Paratransit and set my pickup time an hour late to have time for sketching. The stairs wiped me out, but the shot invigorated me and the weather was good. So I went out into the garden. The previous visit a whole bed of jonquils blazed bright lemon yellow in the back plus a few scattered around in other beds. This time there were three plants left. 

Two were in extremely awkward places that I had to step off the path and weave between beds of flowers just to get photos. That was difficult and strenuous. I lost a couple of pocket contents just getting photos of those and the micro lilacs from the strangest lilac bush I've ever seen - litle spikes maybe 3" long and tiny 1/8" florets in deep blue-violet. Wonderful scent though and I got a series of photos of those. I wore myself out on plant photography and then discovered even the easiest jonquil to reach still meant sitting on hte grass looking down at it, or lay down and get a photo at its level. I got down for the photo.

Then went out back by the patient drop-off and pickup spot, got some good azalea photos and sketched my jonquil from the best photo. I was not happy with the sketch, thought it was awful, covered the pad and put it away. Read a little just resting. Then got the sketch urge again and decided to do the big palm tree beyond the parking lot that I've never gotten a good photo of close enough for detail, plus the deciduous tree that overlapped it. The bases were actually blocked by some shorter bushes and plantings, but once I'd sketched them they floated. I picked up some green and added a harmonic line a little like those in Chinese paintings to make the sketches look better.

Trees study from life

Winsor & Newton Watercolour Markers on Bockingford paper

Why I don't like this sketch is that the extra color I picked up blurred and created unwanted blossoms and bare patches at random in the foliage of both. It's not totally a success. But not totally a failure either. It is what it is - a tree study from life. I remember the trees better for sketching this. Where it's not literal I did get the basic shapes and identities and the feel of them.

I could probably have reworked and layered this, but that would change it a lot and it might come out overworked if I did. So I treated it as a study and after I finished the jonquil this afternoon, decided to post both. It can stand as what it is. Not every sketch has to be an inspired, perfect painting!

As for the pastel jonquil, I finished without looking back at the photo. I had enough sketch to go by and just strengthened it. Not my best but lots better than it looked unfinished. Again, a study, a sketch, not a fine painting on sanded paper. This is what that brown Bee Recycled Rough Sketch paper is for!

I started it with Cretacolor Pastels Carre' (hard pastels 36 colors) and finished with 60 Rembrandt half sticks, soft pastels at the "medium" range of softness. Good enough to go on the sketch wall!

Forget perfectionism, just have fun!

Tulips in Pastel

Tulips in Pastel

8 1/2" x 11"

Quick study of two tulips from a photo reference by DAK723 on WetCanvas.com - it's one of the featured photos from the December Spotlight challenge. I used the student grade Mungyo half sticks set of 64 on the Target drawing book that came in my Christmas box. Not the most high end supplies but as a test of these student pastels it was great.

They have a good texture and I can have fun with them on ordinary drawing paper. This isn't even pastel paper, just normal vellum surface but it held about three or four layers, that's not bad. I could easily work up from this to something better of course.

Monochrome Blue Skyscape

Monochrome Blue Skyscape

Winsor & Newton Watercolour Marker, Prussian Blue Hue

Stillman & Birn Zeta journal 7" square

The other half of this month's new art supplies arrived and so I could not resist at least getting in a test sketch. These markers are everything I hoped they'd be - artist grade watercolor in a marker form for quick sketching and underpainting. Watersoluble, they can be pulled out into midtones and light values with a wet brush or in this case a waterbrush for fast pen and wash studies.

So I goofed around with a familiar subject, imaginary clouds and ways of rendering them in pen. It worked. The loose lines and soft washes worked together and the Prussian Blue Hue has such a great long value range that I'll have no trouble getting darks either in watercolor painting or pen-wash or underpainting pastel field sketches.

I'll be reviewing the Travel Set in my Art Supplies Review blog soon, watch for more details about the product and how it handles. I may do some more tests but as an example sketch, this really worked! I did something I've wanted to do in pen-wash for the longest time - got the sky gradient in, even if exaggerated!

Pen and Watercolor Flowers, Life Sketches

Pen & Watercolor Flowers

Stillman & Birn 7" square Zeta journal

I had still more time after working on the pastel landscape and changed mediums to get some distance from its problems. So I opened up my photo collection in my Kindle and found lots of flowers from the SFGH memory garden. Picked out three that I have no idea what they are. "Daisyish" is not a proper species name or common name, it's just the lower left one is in that category. Then there's "red and yellow long trumpetish ones" and "weird shaped one with the two big petals like butterfly wings and a nozzle." Such scientific nomenclature. Anyone who knows what any of them are, comment and tell me!

Then after I went out, I sketched several San Francisco residents just hanging out in the Tenderloin and some beautiful old houses visible from the fifth floor family health center Gold Team clinic. The nurse took a look at it and recognized which buildings they were, so I'm very happy I got the likeness! No pigeons have commented to tell me if I got their likeness though.

San Francisco Residents and Housing

Pigma Micron Pen, Moleskine Pocket Sketchbook (plain)

No, that's not a silhouette, one of the pigeons was black and the other two were different shades of gray or blue/gray. I've seen many different colors of pigeons and even the birds in my city have diversity. Everyone flocks together. There was a pretty shine on the sun side of the black one that I may actually develop later in pastels from memory - he was pretty as a grackle, very iridescent neck, blue sky highlights on his sun side and rich darkness on the shadow side. I watched him walk around quite a bit before I finally got settled and had the sketchbook out. 

So today's been very productive, much more sketching and drawing and painting than usual. I'm feeling good but very tired.

Clouds Coming In, Underpainting

Clouds Coming In...

Underpainting

hard pastel on paper

Today I mostly planned this painting, from a photo in the WetCanvas Reference Image Library. I wanted to do another strong cloudscape, but the photo has other interesting features like that reflecting water. So I'm not sure where this is going, but I'll find out when I get there. To some extent I'm about to abandon the photo in favor of letting the painting find its way.

I used red earths under all the foliage and brush because the greens are richer with a ruddy underpainting, but used blue under the sky and water to make that vivid. I might lighten the sky some when I go back with softer pastels to create the entire scene. I might also simplify it some, though it seems to lead toward the center on the land with those pools of water. It's a little complex for something that small but I'll see what it becomes when I go back to it tomorrow. If I don't like something I can always paint it out.

Pastels are opaque and hard pastels erase easily, right back to bare paper. I'll see how this goes.

Foxglove Sketch

Foxglove Sketch

9" x 12"

pastel on brown Mi-Tientes smooth side

my own photo 

I took quite a few photos last Wednesday at the San Francisco General Hospital's Memory Garden, a place I frequent for photos and painting outdoors every two weeks. I have a regular nurse appointment to get an injection, but set my pickup time an hour late to have time to stroll the garden, sketch and get photos. This last time I did both, sketches and photos. The foxgloves are fascinating to me. Not quite like snapdragons but very similar, spikes of trumpet shaped flowers with curling interesting lips. This is just a preliminary sketch, I intend to develop them in a lot more detail, maybe in pastels again and maybe in pen-watercolor.

Pastels used are Cretacolor Pastels Carre' - that roll makes them so handy now!

Charcoal sketches

Charcoal life sketches for Scavenger Hunt #376 on WetCanvas.com. A new list started today, I've got ten days for 26 items. Most of which are tough ones for me. I shouldn't really say tough so much as things I'm less interested in drawing. Everything on the list was "stuff you use for..." things. Vague enough I could find substitutes although the thing is, the things themselves would be depressing to draw. They don't draw me out into the wilderness or the microcosm of a flower or small natural objects like stones.

It becomes a matter of looking down at my life and seeing again how different it is, how circumscribed by chronic disease and deformity. I don't exercise, that's all pain and no gain, usually winds up with sports injury knocking down my function even farther and long recovery in which I don't have the capacity to do the things I actually can do. I don't cook. I don't clean - but I got my pastel rag in for that because I do clean off my pastels and my hands after painting.

I don't look down. When I paint I want to look at color and beauty. Painting my art supplies is invigorating, always makes me want to use them. But reminders of all the Activities of Daily Living that I can't do for myself brings up that endless bitter frustration. Most people can knock that stuff out in a short time and get on with what else they'd rather be doing.

I don't like being reminded of those limits when painting and drawing are the things I can do well, that get my mind off the pain. It's probably why I don't do contemporary fiction either.

Today was a pain day anyway, thus no serious painting, just Hunt sketches. I love the charcoal/white combination for fast powerful rendering though! This page is decent enough to go on the sketch wall - and I got Ari into it, that always makes me smile. I wonder if I can get him in more than once...

Five more Scavenger Hunt 376 items, and I did get my cat in one more time as "Soft" along with one of his toys as exercise equipment. He does bang around the room with it so fast and wild that you'd swear the thing came to life! Bat and chase at high speed! Plus a bottle of olive oil, a water bottle from a watercolor kit since I don't actually have anything resembling a makeup bag and a pill case as something to store things in. Well on my way with this one but I seriously doubt I'll get them all unless I come up with more good substitutions. Yes, I keep food on top of my dresser because that's where the microwave is. I don't have a kitchen in this room or any counter space, so the dresser top becomes that.

Pencil gesture of my cat Ari

Ari Cat Gesture

6B clutch pencil on Moleskine pocket accordion fold journal

Sorry I forgot to post this yesterday, got very tired and distracted by home care visit. Saturdays tend to be intense, especially if I'm attending a Johannes Vloothuis class online. I don't usually paint along with him, just take notes and pay attention to what he's doing. It drums his principles of design and painting in deep and then I reinterpret them in my style. I'm much fonder of saturated color and especially greens than he is.

Today I'm going to ink this cat gesture, still observing the real cat. I haven't used washes in this journal not wanting them to soak through to the back. I plan to do the entire journal in pen work - so this ephemeral pencil drawing is recorded for now. Check this entry later for an added image, or I'll do a new one later.

Now he's inked, but I'll start a new entry if I do something more elaborate than inking my cat sketch.

Inking this sketch has given me the urge to go back to the Zeta and do another pen-watercolor page of some kind. I love how those turn out.

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!

Preliminary Sketches

Today was another sick day, but at least I kept my hand in doing some preliminary sketching in Pitt Artist Pens. I used a small 4" x 6" ProArt sketchbook with lots of thin pages and worked on designing an oil pastels painting I plan to do tomorrow or the next day. Above is the final color thumbnail for it along with a romping gray kitten from a photo challenge on WetCanvas.com.



This one is the penultimate color thumbnail, a bit larger. I wasn't completely satisfied with this layout but it was a color version of the previous gray scale one.



Notice the white gel pen scribble extending the light value mass of the aspen trees over some of the pines. I realized when I did this one that I'd made the dark and light tree clumps about the same size and both extending to the middle. One had to dominate, so I wanted the bright yellow aspens to dominate.



This page has a life sketch of Ari, my long hair Siamese cat. Also some saplings with ranches flicked in with a Pitt Artist Pen, practicing graceful twig and sapling forms. If you have a day when you don't have the time or energy to paint, it's good to visit your sketchbook and at least give a few minutes to the idea of painting. Planning can always improve your rendering skills and of course seriously improve the paintings you do from the plans.

I may not stick to these preliminary layouts. For all I know, I'll come up with an even better one when I'm sketching on the painting itself. But they're a start - and if I hadn't done them I might have come out with a poorly designed composition no matter how well I paint the trees.

I don't know if I'll have space to put the kitten in too. He might have to wait for a larger painting or one with fewer other subjects to distract from him. But he's cute and cat sketching always improves my day!