#254 Pencils and paint

More portraits 😁 It seems that I can’t go a day without a portrait now. Each time I go into my art room to think about starting a “proper painting” another portrait calls out to me. This next one is another watercolour pencil sketch with a waterbrush touched here and there. This process is a bit hit and miss, sketching, adding water with the brush, and going over that with pencil. If I need extra depth or colour I draw directly into the wet area and sometimes dip the pencil into water. Most of my watercolour pencils are Faber Castell with a few Staedtler and Caran D’Arche as well. This is a sketch of Joanne from Sktchyapp.

Another portrait of Jane from Sktchyapp painted in gouache with Pentel ink brushpen over.
A quick sketch from real life. I decided it’s about time I tried another selfie, standing in front of the mirror using a brown Pitt artist pen in a crappy sketchbook. I added the watercolour with a waterbrush and watercolour pencils. You can see the different pencil lines, the lighter ones are used dry and the darker are into wet areas.

And finally something different. We had a gorgeous autumn day last week so we went for a picnic at a nearby National Park. I did a little value sketch followed by a quick little gouache. I quite like the scene and hope to get around to doing a “proper painting” of this in the future.

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#218 Junk Journal

This week’s post I’m showing you a silly sketch, one I did a while ago, while watching Marc Taro’s tutorial on Craftsy on people in action. It was just on the back of an envelope, messing around with a brush and colour. Then I decided to do an ink sketch (supposedly of Marc) before adding paint. While I do a lot of this messing around stuff I often feel a little sorry that they are only on scraps of paper and even though they are pretty bad I always learn something from them.

So I decided to keep a book just for this purpose. Trying out different techniques, medium,   notes , quotes, whatever. Like how fast I could paint an ice-cream with different brushes and colours, or sketch using felt markers, and watercolour pencil – straight from Lynne Chapman’s latest book on Sketching People. Excellent book I might add.

This junk journal has now become my favourite one. I don’t care what goes into it or what it looks like and I have a record of all my mistakes and discoveries. I should remember to date each page too.In the meantime I also continue with my little daily journal. I used watercolour and ink, with felt marker for the lettering in the next few sketches.This one is the one I did after my little practise with watercolour pencils in my junk journal. I actually prefer the paper in my junk journal even though it is lightweight cartridge. This paper isn’t as receptive to watercolour pencils.Watercolour and ink again, with a felt marker for the lettering.Watercolour and ink with a little gesso brushed over to fade out some areas. This was painted from a photo posted by Fish for the Wetcanvas for the 2 hour weekend challenge.The additional challenge for the weekend was to use some art supplies that you don’t normally use. I did an initial ink brush sketch, then used an old cheap set of oil pastels that I have never really done anything with, so I gave them a go on recycled brown paper in photo album that I found in a stationary store.To finish off the week a late night painting of a pretty crimson finch. The painting started life as a watercolour but it didn’t want to play nicely for me so it morphed into a gouache. You have to love gouache for that. It has rescued many of my failed paintings.

My posts have been getting rather long these days, but that will probably change shortly. My little journal has only about a week’s pages left. I have enjoyed doing a daily painting or sketch and it has been a great learning experience, but have struggled at times for inspiration. And to find something that will be achievable both with the paper quality and size, but I will continue to paint and post but the quantity may slow down.

189 That Pink Hat and Cyclamen

I think I have a problem. I suffer from ADD – Artistic Distraction Disorder. Each time I go into my painting room to clean up the mess from my last painting I get sidetracked and do something completely different instead. Or I have in mind to do a particular sketch and a different one grabs my attention. My problem is that I want to do it all and do it now.

At least I finished this sketch off today. It looked a bit bare at the bottom of the page so I added a quote from Charles Reid, an artist I admired right from the start of my watercolour journey.

And one I’m still working on with watercolour pencils. I rarely use them on their own, usually only as an addition over watercolours. But this makes for a tight drawing, not really what I wanted so I might play a bit with gouache as well.

Reference  photo by Oty for the Wet canvas 2 hour challenge.