Wow...you will LOVE this video.

It's Voyage to Egypt by Viaggi Dell'Elefante and I SO wish I could understand his language...

There are a LOT of other videos (not all sketches), so if you go to YouTube, check them out! http://www.youtube.com/user/ViaggidellElefante

Sketching Early in the Morning

October 2011l: Early Morning, a photo by apple-pine on Flickr.

It's getting darker and darker with every morning - even by the window with a whole bunch of street light coming through blinds I can hardly see anything but shadows - but this rose smelled gorgeous, in the dark perhaps even more than during light hours :)
And it was fun to look at the resulting sketch when it was time to turn on the light and start my breakfast :)

Journal Box - Playing with Watercolor Ground

I've been wanting to try Daniel Smith's Watercolor Ground (DSWG) since it first came out.  My subject.... a cigar box :) 





It's all about repurposing, and now that the smell from the little devil's finally faded, I'm quite excited about the possibilities. Tip: if you have a cigar store in your town, check them out. They sell their boxes for very, very little... Our local store asked $1.00 for the cardboard boxes and $2.00 for the wood boxes!

I decided I liked the red cover on this box and chose to tape off the foil stamped illustration and used this area for application of the DSWG. 

Once applied, the DSWG has to cure for 24 to 72 hours before applying watercolor or acrylic.  It can also be thinned up to 10% with water.  You can see in my second image that the ground looks thin in some spots. My intuition was telling me to add a bit more to even out the first coat, but my adventurous side wanted to see if the uneven coating really mattered.  I had several cigar boxes that I applied the DSWG to.  My studio was filled with the essence of gesso..... it was a bit too strong from my nose.

 You can see in the upper and lower left corners where the ground was applied too thinly.  Could I make this work?

Well, yes and no. The lower left corner was a bit too thin and when you view the box in person you can tell.

Painting on the DSWG was similar to the feel of  painting on watercolor canvas. It was necessary to dry each application of paint with a hairdryer. Lifting paint is easy and I didn't see any wear on the surface.  Truth be told, my lifting was more like scrubbing.....

Almost done! I'll let this sit for a couple of days and no doubt tweak the image a bit more. The last step will be to spray it with Golden's MSA Archival Spray Varnish to seal the surface.

This will be home for my Garden Journal - a collection of single watercolor paper sheets... but more on that later :)

Water containers for journaling on the spot...

I've been experimenting with our friend Richard Sheppard's great idea of using palette cups for travel sketching.  (If you haven't seen his Flickr, it's here--have fun!)

Richard is the author of The Artist on the Road: Impressions of Greece and if you love travel journals AND bright fresh watercolors, you'll enjoy this one as much as I did!  It's in my permanent collection now...

You can see that the cups, either single metal ones or double plastic, here, will clip to several types of palettes...

An added advantage here is that the clip itself raises the mixing area so that it's much flatter, when laid on a firm, flat surface (you still need to watch spilling if you're holding this in your hand by the loop on the back though...)

It will fit on my old folding plastic palette, too...very versatile!  Of course these don't hold much water, even the double ones, so if you're painting larger than, say, 7" x 10" you're going to want a source of more.  I like the doubles because I have a source for mixing and a source for rinsing my brush...if I remember which one to dip into!

I used the single metal cup and my small palette when doing this double spread in my current journal, and it worked great!  (Too bad I didn't remember to shoot my painting setup!)

Here's Richard's own kit, beautifully done in his signature style:

Thanks for the inspiration, Richard!

October 2011: Enhancing my Watercolor Kit

October 2011: Enhancing my Watercolor Kit, a photo by apple-pine on Flickr.

I love this small watercolor set from Winsor & Newton. I get much done with it - somehow it's not intimidating me - or people around me. But I was spoiled by some additional colors I got to play with recently. Carry another box? Too much...

I recently learned about sugru - which is basically a play-dough for lasting inventions. It's as easy to use as play-dough, sticks to almost anything and when dry is waterproof, ready for cold or hot, flexible, strong - basically you can make your custom whatever from silicone. And you can remove it with a knife and some rubbing when you want to change things :) Their motto is "hack things better" %)

So - looked at my watercolor box and notices this wonderful place for brush that came with the set (original brush is long since drowned in some river and the space is too small for any brush I like ;) And I made some partitions :) That's it - now I have some colors I use rarely but enjoy having for a special mix or accent. I might play with the sizes of the wells at some point - but this is what I have today.

Experiencing Stillman and Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook

I heard about new sketchbook maker and all comments were quite good. The name kept popping up  and eventually I did a google search, found Stillman and Birn web-site and then found them on facebook too. I wrote and e-mail to the manufacturer trying to see if any local shops carry these books  and made a note to order one sooner or later online - but then received an e-mail that a wonderful gift is coming my way! It was Alpha Series sketchbook, hardbound, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 - it became my sketchbook #59 and I spent about 6 weeks with it in my bag. Long story short - it's a great sketchbook to work with - my main adjustment would be the size - it seems that I enjoy larger books lately :)

Cover withstood some vigorous activities, was subjected to kids running over it (by accident), heavy and not so heavy rain, kitchen table and sandbox adventures, sticker attack, not to mention normal wear and tear and now that I am about to deposit it on the shelve - it looks great - not a scratch.

Paper worked very well with dry - and water media - I worked with watercolors, acrylics, multiple inks and gouache and in all cases buckling was well within expected amount for this weight of the paper (100 lb).  I used markers, all kinds of pens, some collage as well. Paper was reasonably responsive to lifting and multiple applications though in some cases uneven in the way pigment settled in: I would do a single brushstroke wash, try to lift something and see that part of the edge is still editable where another part is not. It adds some personality to the page and can be incorporated nicely - you just need to be ready sometimes.

My problems were surprising: waterproof inks (and permanent watercolors for that matter) were not exactly waterproof unless I waited for ink to settle for a long time. And during first 1-1.5 minutes even the most waterproof and smudge-proof ink was smudging badly. It happened with Uniball pens, Pentel Pocket Brush pen, dip pen with Noodlers ink, pitt pens and brush-pens - the only pen that was working without a glitch was the cheap ballpoint I love so much :) So - some smudging and some not-so-waterproof adjustment was needed - and for someone drawing quickly it took me some time - but I had a lot of fun in the process:

(these are obviously not all 124 pages I filled - lots of private notes and experiments took place there - but you still can see some results ;)

New (silly!) plein air, video!

I learned a great deal, playing with this one! MOST important is that it's difficult to paint in the Jeep with my journal in my lap while holding the camera in the other hand! Talk about hand-held jiggly pictures!

The string that shows in the bottom of some frames is the camera strap...and sometimes I just wandered off the page entirely as I focused on painting, not filming. (I edited out the worst of those!)

I'm also exploring my video edition software with...interesting...results! (I see I forgot to delete "Director Name" on the end of the credits...that's ok, it's pretty undirected!)

Still...I hope you have fun with this!