Current Tools - and New Travel Palette

I've been using a new palette lately and now like it enough to show and tell a bit about it :)


I'm always looking for a way to make my palette lighter, smaller and more flexible plus I enjoy playing with different set-ups of colors. After my Alaska adventure my friend mentioned an interesting artist and avid outdoor sketcher - Maria Coryell-Martin whose work is entwined with Alaska. I looked through her we-site and blog and really liked her palette shown on one of the photos and thought that I should write and ask a few question.


A few days later I realized that it would be very useful to have watercolor pans attached with magnets as I'd like to try changing colors and their position in my watercolor kit. I googled magnetic watercolor pans and... I was back at Maria's web-site!

Impatient me probably was looking at pictures, reading every other line in the best case - but now I noticed that she is selling these palettes :)

Below are some photos of my new set-up in action. In short - it's working great for me!



What I like most?
First - it's tiny! (photo above compares size of this credit card holder with my trusty Cotman Sketcher's Pocket Box.

Second - it clips very nicely to my sketchbook (this is 8.5 x 11 Alpha series Stillman&Birn - love them!). The cover of the kit and kit itself are so thin that I can close a book if I need to move or rush somewhere and have no time to pack.


Third - I can move my colors and add/exchange on the go. I like that pans are rather shallow so I can add fresh colors often.


Last but not least - pans are large enough for my flat brush to get in. I am showing flat Niji waterbrush on the photo below because many of you are familiar with it's size but I've been using my 1" with this kit happily!


And palette came with a nice little towel - which soaks up incredible amounts of water.

Sometimes things don't work out...

For years, I avoided keeping a journal of my drawings and paintings because I feared the "failed page". Then I heard you could rip out pages that are totally embarrassing, and plunged in!
I painted these orchids at a local nursery and what a disaster! The yellow orchid was very pale and the purple orchid colors just looked muddy. 

When I got home, I set about "reclaiming" the page, since it's the backside of another journal page and I no longer feel I have to hide my mistakes.
First, I drew an ink border on the page - instant balance! Then I intensified the colors on the yellow orchid. Since the purple orchid was already muddy, I didn't want to wade back in with color, but I wrote orchid facts all over the petals with a white gel pen. I especially like the texture the writing created on the orchid leaves….quite life-like.
I still don't like this page, but it's less awful now, and I learned a bit about how to save things.

Family Treasures

In a nostalgic mood, I've been scanning old family photos for my older sister, and remembered I still have her baby shoes...and my little once-fuzzy bunny slippers, ratty though they are, now.

Her shoes are soft black leather, stitched and mended, and incredibly cute...you can tell from the shoe buttons that she's older than I am, and I'm no baby!

Recently, on our trip to California--and BEFORE the TSA changed the rules again this week!--I'd forgotten my dad's pocketknife was in my purse, and it was nearly confiscated.  Happily, I was able to get out of line, mail it to myself, and get back in line before our flight...but it took three weeks for the knife to come back home.

So in the meantime, J. offered me his grandfather Ruckman's knife--the tiny green one--and when I was nervous about losing it, bought me a new Swiss Army knife from L.L.Bean.  I am now pocketknife rich, and "Rule 9" is satisfied! 

I would have hated to lose dad's knife...

I love this way of paying respects to family treasures.  I don't own many, but I've sketched my grandfather's magnifying glass before, and Joseph's bronzed baby shoes.  I need to do my teething ring, too.  It makes us look more carefully at our lives and our history...

And in case you missed it, DO check out Alissa Duke's recent post on her family history project!

I recently sketched something that wasn't really a family treasure, but something it was difficult to get rid of, anyway.  But I'm on a Discardia kick, and simplifying my life...sketching it let me pass it on while still "having" it.

So what's meaningful to you?  What would you like to preserve in this way?

Correcting Lettering Mistakes

A lot of times I'll wait until I get home before adding lettering to a journal page. Mainly because of time and comfort. But on this particular day, I felt quite comfy perched on my camp stool and the 8.5 x 11 journal page in my Stillman and Birn Alpha hardbound journal was such a dream to work on.

However, on the way home, I began to wonder if this really was Harbour Town's Liberty Oak. There were two very large oaks in the heart of Harbour Town.  The magnificence of this tree, with it's sprawling low lying branches surely struck me as the one to bear this name...... Not!

Long ago, a skilled calligrapher taught me how to correct mistakes... Tip: correct your mistake before you lift any unwanted lettering.  Huh? Yes, write over the lettering on the page, then white out or lift off what you don't want.

That way the stroke of the corrected lettering will be smooth and you won't have to contend with the often bumpy texture left by white out or white ink.  I used a Signo Uniball broad tip white pen, available from JetPens.com.

I decided to turn Liberty Oak into Live Oak.  The RTY of Liberty would be taken out.  A good size space would be left between the two words.  I decided to put the tree's Latin name between Live and Oak.... a quirky fix, but it worked for me :)

Since this is a journal page and not a piece of calligraphic art, I was willing to live with a bumpy surface to write the smaller replacement text on.

Family history project Alissa Duke

A few years ago I began a family history project to document some of the objects that some members of my family have, by drawing them from photographs or life. I was honoured  to have this project and drawings included in  Artists Journal Workshop .

I have not spent a lot of time on this project recently, as family history research takes time (and I work full time as a researcher during the day). Last weekend I spent time drawing an envelope that I have. This is an empty envelope addressed to my Great Uncle at an address that he lived at for a short time when first moving from England to Brisbane, Australia in 1928. Even though it is empty, the addressed envelope tells the small part of a larger story, following the addresses they lived in before buying their house in 1943.

I feel a connection to anything when I sit down or stand up to draw it for a short or long time , as I  study its detail and really look at it. So, drawing objects from my own family history has an extra layer of richness for
me.

I had been doing some family history research (both documentary and oral) and hope to document some of these articles with the stories surrounding them and the person that owned them.Click to see my  Family History project drawings The drawings are all scattered through my Moleskine sketchbooks, and usually left as stand alone drawings at the moment. I am not sure that I would have drawn the objects the same if they were in a special book for family history. One day... I shall scan and put these all together into a book. The research is a lifelong project.

I draw with watercolour pencils in a Moleskine Watercolour sketchbook everyday ! Some pages I call sketching and others I call drawings - this is one is a drawing. I love the way the watercolour pencils can create texture as well as fine details. I enjoy trying to achieve the right colour (although my scans do not show this)

last journal pages

last journal pages, a photo by vickylw on Flickr.

Lots of people know I begin each of my artist's journals with some kind of illustration of my palette. Lately, I have used the last page as a place to collect memorable quotes or thoughts. These are usually gathered over a period of time, so they are generally scattered in a hap-hazard fashion.

I've also seen a journal artist using the last page or two as a calendar, drawing in the calendar themselves with a splash of color or tiny motifs. Maybe I might try that in the future, if the journal has lots of pages.

Winter Robins

I love seeing these guys in the winter!

Still around, late January...and look at the jonquils!