Painting Realistic Watercolors

I recently took yet another excellent Craftsy class - Anna Mason's Realistic Watercolors Step by Step. Anna is a self taught artist who specializes in painting realistic flowers and fruit in watercolor. Her method is very different than what I've done in the past and I love the amount of control you get with it.

Anna starts by drawing a light pencil sketch with a 0.5mm mechanical pencil with HB lead. She measures out the piece to get accurate proportions - which is time consuming, but effective. She them uses very light washes - and special spotter brushes that are much smaller than I'm used to working with and available in a set from my favorite brush company, Rosemary & Co. - and paints the lightest lights first. Next, she paints the darkest darks and then uses "tonal juggling" to get the mid-tones correct in relation to one another and to the lights and darks in the painting overall.

I loved the class and am trying out these techniques on my own macro photos and on portraits as well. Here is my rose from the class. I'm pretty happy with it!

I've also added the rose to my Redbubble products and it makes a great floral pattern!

Have you tried Anna's methods? Or other Craftsy classes?

Tours of Sketchbook No. 25

I just finished sketchbook no. 25! Here is a quick tour followed by a longer view.

A slower tour.

Lake Tahoe Sketches

It's an annual tradition for my family to spend Thanksgiving week at The Ridge in South Lake Tahoe. We usually hunker down and knit, watch tv, play board games, and just spend time together within two suites within the same building. This year, I spent a lot of time drawing and painting rather than knitting, with a little embroidery thrown in for good measure.

We were lucky enough to get a room on the 8th floor of The Plaza building with a light view of the lake. Instead of braving the snow and cold, I decided to sketch the view almost every day. Here are my sketches of our view of Lake Tahoe.

New Craftsy Classes

Craftsy has been having a Black Friday sale - all of its classes are $17.99 or less through this Monday. I took the plunge and signed up for 2 more classes because I couldn't resist (again!). On Friday, I bought Matt Rota's Portraits in Watercolor class and watched through all the lessons over a couple of days while being holed up in Lake Tahoe with my family.

Matt's course is excellent. Very, very thorough. He starts with materials and goes on to explain how to do different watercolor washes. I learned so much. For example, he showed us how hot press watercolor paper allows for the watercolors to stay wet longer than cold press which allows for easier mixing of colors and washes. He also explained how different washes and techniques allow for hard or soft edges and when you might want to use either in your paintings.

He then shows us how to do a tonal study of a portrait using a single watercolor in different strengths to understand the light, middle, and darkest darks of your painting. I've been struggling to understand values so this was very helpful. Here is our reference photo and my tonal study.

Then, we moved onto working on the portrait for the class starting with a light underpainting in either raw or burnt sienna using accurate measurements with your paintbrush or by eyeing how he features line up with other features. Matt explained how using a warm color for the underpainting allows you to cool it down later and for the underpainting to disappear under the final painting. He also recommended doing an underpainting instead of using graphite to avoid fussing and erasing. I liked that!

Then, we went onto adding color. First, we made a background wash of ultramarine and sepia, if I remember correctly, and painted it in wet on wet to get a soft edge on at least one side of the portrait. After that, we mixed two washes of a warm red and a warm yellow - then wet the entire face and painted in the soft washes which will tint the highlights in the final painting.

Going on, Matt explained how cool washes will make those areas of the portrait recede in space while warm washes will bring those areas forward in space. This was so helpful! As well as the rest of the lessons which walked us through each step to get us to the final painting. I really appreciated this as so many instructors skip steps and just expect you to be able to fill in all the gaps on your own. Here is my final portrait. I'm pretty satisfied with it.

The second class I bought during the Black Friday sale was Painting Realistic Watercolors with Mario Robinson. I watched the lessons this morning, but haven't had a chance to work through any of it yet. I'll post after I do so.

Hope you had a great Thanksgivng break! I'll post the artwork I made while in Tahoe soon!

A Virtual Community of Artist Friends

One of the many challenges of changing careers late in life is finding like minded friends in your chosen careers. Through law school, past jobs, and trade associations, I know many lawyers and colleagues in the international trade field. And I have many friends who play competitive tennis with me - but who are not, generally, artistic.

Becoming an artist has been largely a matter of solitary practice and online learning for me, though I have been participating in a local drop in life drawing session on a semi-regular basis. As I enjoy urban sketching, I have participated in a few urban sketching meet up events, but it is difficult making time for these events.

So, one way I have formed my own community of artists who provide me with inspiration and support is to follow artists on Instagram. There are so many wonderful artists on Instagram who post a wide range of art on a daily basis! Here are some of my favorites:

My Teachers (largely online):

@vinganapathy - Vin Ganapathy

@wagonized - France Van Stone

@lapinbarcelona - Lapin

@freekhand - Miguel Herranz

@suhitasketch - Suhita Shirodkar

@paulheaston - Paul Heaston

@lizsteelart - Liz Steel

Urban Sketchers:

@jaykay2012

@paulwang_sg - Paul Wang

@parkablogs - Teoh Yi Chie

Other inspirational artists:

@valeriemafrica - Valerie Mafrica

@dilleenart - Dilleen Marsh

I know I'm forgetting a lot of artists. I'll add to this list as I remember them! How do you build a community of supportive artists? I'd love any other tips!

New Portable Watercolor Palette

Inspired by Stephanie Bower's brilliant homemade palette that she showcased in her Craftsy classes: Perspective for Sketchers & The Essentials for Sketching Architecture, I decided to make one of my own.

To make it, you need a piece of corrugated plastic (I got it from my art supply store, but Stephanie says you can get it from hardware stores as well); a prescription pill bottle, and a binder clip to hold your palette. Just cut two circles in a piece of corrugated plastic cut to size (mine is 8" x 7.75"). Add tape to protect your thumb against the cut edges of the plastic. Put down some scrap watercolor paper to test your colors, clip on your palette, add water to your pill bottle, and hold some paper towel or tissue in your hand underneath the palette and you're ready to go!

I can't wait to try this out in the field!

Do you have your own portable palette solution? I'd love to hear about it!

UPDATE: I added a couple of holes to the palette to hold some paint brushes.

Colmpleted Sketchbook #23

Here is a sketchbook I made from a sheet of Arches 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper folded into an accordion sketchbook with 5.5" x 7.5" pages. The sketches were done between 10.20.16 and 10.31.16.

Here is a speedy look through the sketchbook with a slower one to follow.

Inktober Completed!!!

I am happy to say that I finished participating in Inktober 2016 today! I interpreted the restrictions of Inktober loosely and couldn't refrain from using watercolor on several entries, but I do feel like I got a lot of good practice in hatching and using ink washes as well as just committing to drawing in ink (which I normally do though).

Here are all of my drawings for the month.

Did you participate in Inktober this year? If so, what did you think of it? If not, will you join next year? I'd love to hear your comments!

Inktober Sketching

Inktober continues and I've been pretty good with keeping up and using the prompts for each day. Here are my latest Inktober sketches.

Day 25 - Box (actually, Box is supposed to be day 26!)

Tours of my competed Sketchbook 22

I recently completed this handmade accordion fold sketchbook (consisting of a single 22" x 30" Fabriano Artistico 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper - folded into 5.5" x 7.5" pages). Here is a quick tour followed by a more leisurely one. Thanks for viewing! I would love to hear your comments.

More Inktober Sketches

I've been really good about doing an ink drawing for each day of Inktober so far! In fact, I've used the Inktober prompts more than I thought I would. Here they are, if you haven't seen them yet.

I thought it would be hard enough to just get an ink drawing done each day, but I am finding that using the prompts has helped me to stay inspired. Usually, I just search Sktchy and my Sktchy queue for photos that correspond to the prompts. I also love seeing how other artists are interpreting the prompts!

Here are my latest Inktober entries:

Have you been participating in Inktober this year? If so, are you using the prompts? I can't seem to limit myself to just using ink, but I have tried to for the most part. Sometimes, I can't keep myself from adding watercolor though. And, I've decided to not stress it and just keep trying to participate in Inktober!

Steep Ravine Sketchbook Tours

I combined the pages from our trip to Steep Ravine in September with the ones from our quick trip this week and bound the sketchbook with a slab stitch. Here is a quick tour:

Here is a more leisurely tour.

The 50 Day Project Continues (#21 - 41)

I've been neglecting to post updates to my 50 day project of 50 figures in 50 days lately. Here are my entries from nos. 21 - 41. I'm almost done!

Quick trip to the coast

We love staying at Steep Ravine - a coastal area near Stinson Beach that is part of California's Mount Tamalpais State Park. Steep Ravine is so wonderful that you need to book either the campsites or the cabins six months prior to your stay and at exactly 8am PT on the first of the month.

We were lucky enough to reserve a cabin for Monday to Wednesday this week and pulled the kids out of school for the trip. Even though we left Tuesday night so the girls could go to school all day on Wednesday, I still got a lot of sketching in. Here are my finished sketches from the trip.

Chloe and Todd built this wooden shelter on the beach

The beach with sun rays peaking out from the clouds

Our view of the cabins in front of cabin #5

Jade reading in her bed in the main cabin room

A hermit crab with a beautiful iridescent shell

Inktober

October is Inktober month! What is Inktober?

Every October, artists all over the world take on the InkTober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month.

Jared Parker created Inktober in 2009 as a challenge to improve his inking skills and develop positive drawing habits.

I normally draw in ink without using pencil first, but I decided to participate in Inktober this year to work on my hatching skills and drawing without always adding watercolor.

There are prompts for each Inktober day, but I don't always use them.

Here are my first few Inktober attempts.

A Sktchy portrait of one of my greatest supporters, Carl Forrest! I used an ink wash here.

Practicing my hatching skills with a drawing of my dog, Coco

A Sktchy portrait and more practice with hatching

Are you participating in Inktober? The "rules" are simple:

1) Make a drawing in ink (you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want).

2) Post it online

3) Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2016

4) Repeat

Latest Sketchbook tours

Here's a slower tour of my most recently completed sketchbook no. 15 with artwork from 08.23.16 to 10.02.16.

And a quick tour.

Learning from Cathy Johnson

After taking Cathy Johnson's Sketchbook Skool Seeing klass, I picked up a couple of Cathy Johnson's books from the library: Creating Nature in Watercolor an Artist's Guide and Watercolor Pencil Magic. I loved both of these books so much, I purchased Cathy Johnson's Artist's Sketchbook - Exercises and Techniques for Sketching on the Spot from Amazon.

I can't recommend these books more. Cathy is so inspirational and shows that there are an infinite subjects to sketch! Here are some of my recent sketches inspired by Cathy's teachings.

Trailing lantana from my yard and fountain grass from a Broadway Plaza

A recently purchased air plant in watercolor and ink

#11 - 20 of the 50 Day Project

I am really enjoying my latest project. Drawing people from a distance is surprisingly difficult. I'm finding that I need to be very purposeful with every mark as so few marks are used to convey a person from a distance. Here are my latest entries for my 50 day project of 50 figures in 50 days.

What do you think are the challenges of portraying figures as opposed to portraits or other subjects?

Trying Out a Limited Palette

I would really like to improve my watercolor mixing. To that end, i took Kateri Ewing's Craftsy class: Improve Your Paintings with Luminous Watercolor Mixing. I liked this class and learned a lot about my paints, pigments, and how to avoid muddy colors. Kateri focuses on a traditional split primary palette with single pigment paints and making watercolor charts.

The number of potential mixes you can make with a split primary palette is great (and mind boggling when you keep adding to your watercolor mixing charts with each new color) and adding convenience colors has helped me sketch quickly (one of my goals) but has led to some over reliance on these convenience greens, browns and earth colors.

So, I thought I would try an even more limited palette suggested by Jane Blundell, who has a fabulous blog that features tons of helpful information on watercolor paint brands, colors, comparisons, and palettes.

Jane suggests a lovely limited palette of just 6 Daniel Smith colors for people just starting in watercolor and she also provides 6 additional colors to add in with some other interesting options to make your palette your own. The six basic colors in her limited palette are: Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Gold, Carmine, Phthalo Green (BS), and Burnt Sienna. Here is my version of her excellent watercolor mixing illustration:

I painted this Sktchy portrait using just these 6 colors.

But, today, I decided to add in the additional 6 colors Jane recommends - adding in Buff Titanium (great for skin tones and buildings, etc.), Cerulean Blue Chrm. (essential for skies), Phthalo Blue (RS), Transparent Pyrrol Orange, Goethite - Brown Ochre, and Raw Umber. All by Daniel Smith.

But, since I plan to go out sketching this evening with some friends at the Lafayette Art & Wine Festival, I decided to resist going back to my 24 half pans in my usual metal tin and, instead, transferred my half pans to an Altoid tin in which I can fit 3 more colors - Quinacridone Rose, Monte Amiata Natural Sienna, and Jane's Gray (a premix of 50/50 Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna).

I will try this palette out tonight and let you know how it works out for me! In he meantime, here is my figure in action for today 17/50 that I painted with this 15 color palette.

I found the Phthalo Green is really helpful for mixing with Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Gold, Burnt Sienna, Monte Amiata, and Goethite to make a huge range of greens that I used in this piece.

What are your experiences with using a limited palette?

New 50 Day Project

I loved participating in #the100dayproject of drawing/painting 100 portraits in 100 days. I always had a reason to draw each day and a subject using the Sktchy app. I also felt that I needed a lot of practice in drawing faces and people, so doing 100 portraits really helped with that!

Lately, I've been wanting to improve my urban sketching - especially with regard to adding people to my sketches. So, I thought I would participate in another drawing project/challenge - but with a bit shorter duration. So, I decided to create my own #the50dayproject and draw/paint 50 figures in action in 59 days - but using mainly the Sktchy app and its inspiration photos as references. Though, I will keep trying to practice drawing figures from life as well. Here are my first attempts for the project I started on September 1st.

Have you tried any art challenges that you've enjoyed or can recommend?