Day two hundred and fifty-nine: My father’s comment about the sketch I made yesterday reminded me of an old family photo of my younger brother and me around the ages of two and five playing in an old row boat. It had been abandoned on the edge of a wild pond on my parent’s farm, and was great fun. Our kitten pal at the bow was named Tiger.
Tagged landscape, self portrait, water, watercolor
Day two hundred and fifty-eight: Today I was helping a curator from another museum who was studying 18th-century French etchings, and we both appreciated a charming landscape with an empty boat by Claude-Henri Watelet (1718-1786). Shortly after we were browsing a book of Rembrandt (1606-1669) etchings, and came across one of the same boat in the same landscape that Watelet had obviously been studying. Today’s sketch honors both etching masters with a detail of the boat and the tall tree stump. I put my name where both Watelet and Rembrandt did too.
On a side note for printy people, I am delighted to report that I have finally found a solution to my quest for a suitable medium in Corel Painter that will emulate the effect of drypoint burr on ink: a fine camel watercolor brush with high diffusion and low evaporation rate. Want a little plate tone? Create a layer behind your “etching” and use a broad flat wash to tint the areas you want to be darker. I’m thrilled with all that I have learned using watercolor the last several days!
Tagged landscape, Rembrandt, Watelet, water, watercolor
Day two hundred and fifty-seven: An extraordinarily long day left me with little time (or brain power) to sketch a composition, but I wanted to continue exploring watercolor. Playing with the layers of color necessary to emulate pine trees seemed like a good thing to practice. These firs were created by dabbing deep, dark greens over pale yellow-greens using various brushes. What’s most fun is watching the colored water diffuse and meld together. On a whim, I tried a close up of a blue spruce branch, but this could use some work to appear realistic.
Tagged nature, watercolor
Day two hundred and fifty-six: As I suspected, picking a concrete subject to paint with watercolor rather than scratching it out from my imagination certainly made today’s sketch more relaxing. I don’t know that it’s fundamentally any better than the landscape study I painted yesterday, but I like it despite its tourist picture qualities. This is a view looking out at the Pacific from my favorite beach on Earth, just South of the Corcovado National Park and a bit North of Carate Costa Rica. Imagine yourself in a hammock with scarlet macaws flying overhead, and no people in sight. Crashing waves, tide coming in… you get the idea: entirely delightful.
Tagged landscape, water, watercolor
Day two hundred and fifty-five: Continuing to explore watercolor, I opted to play around with the medium in an imaginary landscape. I’m still wresting with all the variables in the Corel program, and often forget which brush I used for certain effects. Yet, somehow I managed to tease my way into what looks something like grassy hills beneath a cloudy sky. It looks much like ones I made in the 6th or 7th grade, if my memory serves me. I think more growth might be stimulated if I tried painting something from life with watercolor (as I have many times with oil or oil pastel), so I’ll keep an eye out for good watercolor subjects to use in future sketches.
Tagged landscape, watercolor
Day two hundred and fifty-four: Lately, my Sundays have been filled with a lot of cooking, as I prepare several dishes — mostly vegetables — to eat for lunches and dinners throughout the workweek. Today I made my favorite roasted corn with lime and cilantro recipe, and also tried cooking a new mushroom pasta that called for sage and purple basil. While cleaning and chopping up these and other herbs, I started to ponder what my sketch might be, and repeatedly thought about making a simple line drawing of cilantro. When I finally sat down after a full day of cooking and cleaning dishes, I decided to quickly draw a few of my favorite herbs in as little time as possible. And from memory. This may be one of the simplest sketches of the year, but perfect for the busy “get ‘er done” kind of day I’ve had.
Tagged food, pencil
Day two hundred and fifty-three: Weekends are a great time to give my green-cheeked conure some extra attention. He loves being held in the palm of my hand, and to be given little scritches around his beak and eyes. While he enjoys little bird bliss, it gives me the opportunity to look closely at his glassy, black eye, surrounded by white skin and tiny, colorful feathers. The reflection is the bay window in my Philadelphia apartment.
Tagged animal, bird, oil, pastel
Day two hundred and fifty-two: Exhausted after a long day at work, followed by the exhibition opening of “Here and Now” at the art museum, and then dinner, I had to keep today’s sketch as simple as possible. All my tired mind could muster was an image I saw walking home of a lone man leaning against a building with a lit cigarette in his mouth. Night was falling over the hot, humid city, and all the forms were melting into shadow except one tiny dot of burning tobacco. I thought the scene captured a quiet, private moment on an otherwise bustling Friday night.
Day two hundred and fifty-one: More playing around with media today: this time a mix of black pen and dusky watercolor washes to create an imaginary mountain lake at nightfall. This study was inspired by my memory of landscape etchings by D. Y. Cameron.
Tagged cameron, landscape, pen and ink, watercolor
Day two hundred and fifty: When I was a kid, around fifth grade or so, watercolors were my favorite way to paint. When I started this blog, and began using the Corel Painter 11, it was one of the first “brush categories” I tested. And I hated it. The colors diffused all over in a big, unwieldy mess. I realized that the program would emulate a wide variety of effects depending on saturation of water and pigment, the brush size and type, and dozens of other variables. At the time, it was too much to digest, and so I turned primarily to pencil and oil. Today, a watercolor of fish by Adolf Dehn (1895-1968, born in Minnesota) suddenly inspired me to try the medium again. The little study you see here isn’t much like Dehn’s, except perhaps in tone, but it gave me a wonderful opportunity to play with the water and the paints, and just see what might happen.
Tagged animal, art on art, watercolor