Category: Traditional Art (page 6 of 8)

Paintings, drawings, and sketches done with traditional art materials.

Pole Building Sketch

Pole Building

You know it’s a good day when you have time to do a sketch. After lunch I took a folding chair and sat in the shade of the Empress tree and sketched the pole building. I wanted to try a new piece of kit. I’m using a collapsible measuring cup as a water container. It works great. It’s just the right size for travel and folds flat. You can use a binder clip on the handle to hold it to your work space. I did a bit of modification on the handle. I cut it a bit shorter and I flattened it by softening it with a heat gun and pressing it between two blocks of wood.

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I first took a reference photo with my iPod Touch. I then traced the building in Sketch Club with the pen tool in a separate layer and saved the sketch to the Camera Roll. I referred to the tracing while I sketched the building in my 3.5 X 5.5 inch Moleskine watercolor notebook. It helped me see the angles, proportions, and perspective.

Next I used a small, flat, chiseled brush to wet the sky and lay in a wash of blue. I then dry brushed in the green foreground and light green yellow trees. Then I added brown and brushed in the darks in the trees, windows, and shadows. I added some white back in with a white charcoal pencil around the windows and the white verticles. I used a brown gel pen to define some edges and finally I added some black with my Mars 500 pen with Noodler’s Bulletproof Black.

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Draw the ordinary.

Jim

Oregon Garden Sketch

Oregon Garden Sketch

We all went to the Oregon Garden in Silverton today for Father’s Day and had a nice walk. I stopped in the children’s garden to make this sketch while Jacob and Josh were over looking at the electric train.

Here’s the reference photo I took.

Oregon Garden Photo

Jim

Bush Pasture Park

Bush Pasture park

I went for a walk in Bush Pasture park today. I wanted to try using my iPod Touch to make a value sketch before starting a watercolor. I sat on a concrete bench and did the value sketch first. Then I took a reference photo and used the PhotoFX app to generate a charcoal sketch version to see the photo in black and white (like a value sketch). Finally I sketched in my Moleskine with a Pilot FriXion 0.5 erasable pen. Then while checking the value sketch on the iPod, I used watercolor to sketch in the colors and values. Here’s a slideshow of the four together.

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By doing the value sketch first it helped me to see the areas of light and shade. I need to make my darks darker and remember not to use Burnt Umber in the dark greens (Payne’s Gray works better – doesn’t look so muddy).

Jim

Minto Island Walk

Today was another beautiful day. I went for a walk  in Minto Island park out South River Road. I stopped after about a half hour to sketch a stand of trees.

Minto Island Trees Watercolor

Minto Island Trees Watercolor

On the walk back, I stopped on a bridge. As I stood there a kayaker passed under the bridge heading north. I sketched him in quickly and then completed the rest of the sketch.

Minto Island Kayak Watercolor

Minto Island Kayak Watercolor

Here’s the full spread of my 5 X 8 inch Moleskine watercolor notebook.

Minto Island Watercolor Notebook

Minto Island Watercolor Notebook

I did both sketches standing up in the shade. I painted the trees resting the notebook on my bag which was hanging around my neck in front of me. For the second one I placed the notebook on the top rail of the bridge. After I finished each sketch (which took about 10 to 15 minutes each), I took a reference photo with my iPod Touch.

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Jim

Schreiner’s Iris Garden


We had beautiful weather yesterday. We visited the iris garden north of us which was in full bloom. I brought my small sketchbook and decided to try several small sketches instead of one larger one. These were quick color impressions.

Jim

Watercolors

Here is a gallery.

New Travel Watercolor Palette

Yesterday I made a new travel watercolor palette out of a small Altoids can. I managed to squeeze in 12 colors.  Here it is surrounded by my previous palettes. It’s about four times smaller than anything available commercially. 

Image

The one on the left is made by Daler-Rowney in England. The ones above are my previous homemade palettes (6 colors each) made out of containers that had saffron in them. I used InstaMorph plastic to fashion the dividers. The one on the right is a Koi watercolor set made by Sakura of Japan.

The hardest part was sculpting the dividers and the mixing area in the lid with the InstaMorph plastic. It becomes pliable when you heat it in hot water (150 degrees F), but it only remains soft for about 3 to 5 minutes. After that it cools down enough to get hard again. So, you have to keep dunking it in hot water to soften it up again. The problem is it slumps when it gets soft so you have to reshape everything again. Here’s a closer look.

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The colors I used (from top to bottom, left to right) are: ivory black, Payne’s gray, burnt umber, burnt sienna, Prussian blue, cobalt blue, alizarin crimson, cadmium red, cadmium yellow, lemon yellow, sap green, and a violet that I mixed up from a 50/50 mix of cobalt blue and alizarin crimson.

I don’t know why nobody sells a small travel palette like this that you can fill with your favorite paints. Every artist I show it to wants one.

Jim

Minto Island Park

Minto-island

First day of summer. 80 degrees. I went for a walk in Minto Island park which is only 5 minutes from downtown Salem. Most people come here to walk their dogs. I sat down for a bite to eat at a picnic table and did this sketch.

When I was done I took this reference photo.

Minto-island-photo

Strathmore Visual Journal 5.5 X 8 inches, pencil, Lucas watercolors.

Jim

Iris Garden

Iris-garden-1600

It was a beautiful day today. I drove over to the Schreiner’s Iris Gardens in Keizer. I walked around and took a few pictures. Then I sat down and did this sketch in watercolor. I painted areas of color first and then I drew some outlines in pencil.

Iris-garden-cuIris-garden-photo

This is what was in front of me and also a general view of the gardens.

Strathmore 5.5 x 8 inch Visual Journal, Lucas watercolors – Cobalt Blue, Lemon Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Sap Green, and Payne’s Gray, and pencil.

Jim

Parlor Car

Parlorcar-1600

Painted this on the moving train on my way back from my California trip. I was sitting in the parlor car. I did a very loose sketch in pen first. Then I added watercolor.

Here’s the pen sketch and a reference photo I took with my iPad.

Parlorcar-penParlorcar-photo-1000

Moleskine watercolor journal, Noodler’s Ink flex nib pen with Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink, Lucas watercolors.

On the Train

Photo_0
I painted this while on the train going down to visit my Dad and brother. I had a small compartment. This is the seat across from me. 

It was hard to draw and paint on a moving train. Lettering is even harder. This will remind me of the bumpy ride on Amtrak.

Moleskine watercolor journal, Noodler’s Ink Flex pen with Noodler’s Bulletproof Black ink, Lucas watercolors – Prussian Blue, Payne’s Grey, Cadmium Red medium, Lemon Yellow, and Burnt Sienna.

Jim

The Woods

Palette-knife-1400

Experimented today painting watercolor with a palette knife. I tried a variety of methods and marks. I used the flat back of the knife to spread paint into a wet surface and smear it around. I also tried making very narrow marks with the edge of the knife working up and down. Then I put paint on the edge of the knife and moved from left to right dragging a swath of paint. I also used the edge to drag wet color up and out to paint grass.

Strathmore Watercolor series 400, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, palette knife, Lucas tube paints – Burnt Umber, Ultramarine Blue, Viridian, Payne’s Grey, Lemon Yellow.

Willamette Heritage Center

Willamette-heritage

Today is Tuesday and admission is free at the Willamette Heritage Center at the Mill across the street from Willamette University. This is a great place to sketch and paint. I sat on a bench overlooking the mill stream. This is the back of the entrance building.

I took a reference photo with my iPad (but I didn’t use it while I painted). Here it is for comparison.

Willamette-heritage-photo

Moleskine watercolor 5.5 x 8 inch journal, pencil sketch first, then watercolor (Lucas tube paints – Cobalt Blue, Lemon Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Payne’s Grey), and finally Micron 02 pen. About an hour and a half, 2:30 to 4 in the afternoon.

Two Sketches

Photo

The iPad 3’s back camera works well to photograph artwork and to take reference photos. I’m using the Pic Collage app on my iPad to put the images together.

I did each sketch in just a couple of minutes on cheap inkjet paper. Jim

Backyard Spring

Backyard-sketch-1400

We had a beautiful 80 degree day – the first in 2012. I painted this sitting on our back porch. It was late in the day and the light was changing fast.

I drew the scene in pencil first. I attempted to get the relative sizes and placement right by using the central post as a  unit of measure. I used my pencil at arm’s length to measure the post’s height and then I used that unit to measure everything else. The last post in the row is one unit to the left and is 1/2 the height. The fir tree is one unit to the right, etc. I also tried to get the perspective right. I drew in the vanishing point lines and then the posts.

I then added the watercolor starting with light green and light brown. I worked my way up the values. Finally, the last thing I did was to use a Pentel Presto correction pen to add the white dots. Total time was around 1 1/2 hours.

The next day we had similar lighting so I took a reference photo.

Backyard-sketch-photo

Here’s the two page layout of notes and painting from my journal.

Backyard-sketch-journal

Moleskine watercolor journal, pencil, Lucas watercolors – Light Yellow, Cobalt Blue, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna, Payne’s Grey, Pentel Presto correction pen.