When I was a boy my older brother, Bob, showed me how to use an opaque projector. We used it to copy cartoon characters out of comic books. Today we have digital projectors, but they are much more expensive. For years I've been keeping an eye on pico projectors (very small, portable projectors that use LEDs or lasers for lights), but up until now they have been too expensive and too dim.

Recently I discovered the 3M Streaming projector. It costs less then $200 and is relatively bright at 60 lumens. I'm putting it through its paces. Here's my set up.

I put the projector on a tripod and aimed it straight down to project on a table in front of me. I set the projector to project the image up side down so it would look right side up to me. I put the free Roku app on my iPod Touch and used it to send photos wirelessly to the projector. It worked great and was bright enough to work with the room lights on.

I took a photo of a dollhouse that my wife, Kris, built for our daughter. I used The Sketch Club app on my iPod Touch to distort the vertical perspective of the house.

I then projected each photo and traced it with pencil.

Finally I added watercolor and pen and ink.

This worked so well that I want to use it for painting on location. The projector is very small and only weighs 11 ounces and its internal battery lasts for 2 hours.

Jim

Trying out a new Stillman & Birn Epsilon series 5.5 x 8.5 inch sketchbook. It has smooth, heavy paper that takes light watercolor well with a minimum of buckling. These are backyard sketches. The top one was done with gel pens and a little watercolor. The bottom one was with erasable pen and watercolor pencils.

Here's what it looked like from my point of view.

The more I do this the more relaxed I'm getting about the process. I don't mind taking risks with new techniques. I really like the rich colors I got with the watercolor pencils. For the most part I used a wet brush to draw color from the tips of the pencils and then applied the brush to the page. At the very end, however, I drew directly with the pencils (blue, yellow, and a little red) into the still wet page. This really made the colors pop.

Jim

This is the J.S. Cooper Block at the corner of Main & C streets in Independence, Oregon. Independence was established in the late 1840's on the west bank of the Willamette River in Polk County a few miles south of Salem, Oregon. The river was instrumental in the development of the town and the ferries' arrivals were heralded by ringing the bell in the tower of this Queen Anne style building. It was built in 1895 by J.S. Cooper, a banker who later turned to hop growing, and still later became a state legislator.

This was harder to do and took longer than I expected. I want to sketch architecture and I thought I'd start by sketching a reference photo that I took last Fall.

I wanted to test several new things before trying to sketch on location. First, I wanted to try a new larger paper (Arches hot press 140 lb. 9 x 12 inches watercolor block). I also wanted to try blocking out the sketch first using a Pilot FriXion erasable pen and then do the finish drawing with a Faber-Castell Pitt S dark sepia pen which is waterproof. I made the mistake of doing too much detail and correction with the erasable pen. I could have saved time by just blocking in the major shapes and perspective lines with the erasable. As it was I ended up drawing all the details twice and the finished drawing looks like I traced it. I actually prefer the initial sketch done with the erasable. It has more spontaneity and life.

Anyway, I ended up doing the entire drawing again with the brown pen over the black erasable pen. I then added the darks (mostly in the windows) using a Faber-Castell Pitt brush warm gray pen. I used a hair dryer to completely erase all the black erasable ink. The drawing took several hours over two days.

I liked the pen and ink drawing. I wasn't sure I wanted to add color. So, I did a quick color version on the iPad using Procreate just to test it out.

I still wasn't sure. So, I held off for two days to think about. This morning I woke up and felt ready to add the watercolor. I used three brushes, all round, numbers 4, 8, and 10. I painted the building first, then the trees and foreground and finally the sky. I sweated the sky because I didn't want it to overpower the building. I used a spray bottle and brush to wet the area, dropped in some cobalt blue and mopped out the clouds with an old sock.

What I learned:

• Bigger is better. I like detail and its easier to draw detail when you work larger. It does take longer however.
• I like the hot press smooth paper. This is the first time I've used it.
• The Pilot FriXion is an amazing pen. The ink completely disappears when you heat it with a hair dryer. Next time I will use it just for construction lines. I won't try to draw the whole subject with it.
• It's very difficult to get perspective and proportions right. I need to practice. I didn't draw the initial angles right and the building ended up being too short.
• I used rubber cement as masking fluid to maintain the pure whites in the signs and window trim. It worked, but I don't think it's worth the effort. It would be faster and easier to just paint around the whites.
• I need to vary my greens. It's easy to forget to leave the lightest greens alone. You can't get them back with watercolor. You can only make them darker. Also, I need to explore other pigment combinations. Cobalt blue and lemon yellow just aren't enough.
• Watercolor takes patience. I worked in stages from light to dark letting each pass dry completely before adding darker tones. This keeps the colors fresh.

Jim

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