Sketches 3-7-12

I've gotten back into the habit of sketching since I don't have as much time to work on other drawings while I'm at college (I can't very well haul around all my supplies from 9-5 everyday!). I've been experimenting with all sorts of new media and tools, andI feel like I've really branched out a bit but at the same time, returned to my roots where I used to just sketch from imagination and draw all sorts of critters.

I have 3 sketchbooks going right now: a Pentalic Nature Sketch, Aquabee Super Deluxe, and the good 'ol Artist's Hand Book I've been working on for a couple years now. I'm using the Pentalic as a watercolor sketchbook, the Aquabee as an all purpose one, and the Hand Book for a bit of everything as well.

Mostly, I've been playing with Derwent Graphitint pencils. They're excellent sketching pencils and make a lively alternative to a plain graphite pencil thanks to the calm, subd color... it's not full-blast like watercolor pencils or colored pencils, and it handles exactly like graphite. When you apply water, it turns into something very much like watercolor. Some of the colors are not very lightfast whatsoever, but they're too pretty to not use. I actually bought a pencil in one of the colors, Juniper, specifically because it's a really beautiful purple color and I wanted to do monochrome sketches with it... its lightfastness rating is a 1, meaning it'll fade in under a year if exposed to regular light.

A flying squid. Used an ocean blue and chestnut Graphitint pencil.

Another flying squid in ocean blue Graphitint.

A cuttlefish in steel blue Graphitint with an ocean blue background.

A grackle, drawn with a watersoluble sketching pencil.

Blue jay, in those two blue Graphitints.

One of the mocking birds I've watched grow up by my house this year. This one was drawn with colors from the Graphitint 12 pencil set, used dry.  The colors seem to be very well suited to nature.

A tufted titmouse, the first thing I drew with the Graphitint set.

3 mushrooms from imagination.

A wasp and a carpenter bee, drawn in the Aquabee sketchbook, no less. Top was with a Derwent onyx pencil, bottom was with one of my old Sanford Ebony pencils. They don't make 'em like those anymore... I've heard the quality is very poor these days. I'm glad that mom got me a few boxes of them years ago.

As you may notice, some of these are on small cards. I bought a few packs of pre-cut Artist trading cards and have been using them for small sketches. Friends seem to love having these little cards as collectables or for bookmarks and whatnot.

Orange and Blue

I wanted to try the PanPastels out so I figured I'd try painting one of the other sky scenes to go along with the black and white one. Still haven't done much full-color painting of any kind, so this gave me a good chance to try that out as well.

I started on a white sheet of Pastelmat (which was intimidating, since I'm used to working on colored paper) and used the landscape set to rough in the background areas... pretty much everything got either a blue or magenta underpainting. Afterwards, I started working with both the landscape and dark shades set and adding in the shadows behind the clouds using the dark colors, then I roughed in the clouds with a couple shades of yellow pans. When I was satisfied with their overall shape, I switched over to the rest of my soft pastels and started adding in the upper layers: I was really glad to have the big 80-set of Senneliers here, since they provided most of the colors for the clouds. I used a Great American blue (called Neptune, love the color names for them) to add in the really intense blue color to the large areas of the sky... it almost exactly matched the actual color of the sky that day.

9x12" on Pastelmat.

Darkness and Light

I love this time of year. The weather's been cold but not freezing and there's a certain way the light falls when the sun comes out that results in some fantastic sky patterns. I've never really done any landscapes, much less skyscapes, so I figured I'd go all in and try something dramatic.

This is a view of the sky from my house when it was this brilliant orange and purple color last week.
Totally freehanded this one, no tools/measurements or anything... I don't know how well I could do that for a portrait but it was no problem with scenery.

The foreground scenery was drawn with a soft charcoal stick and the sky was done with a black PanPastel and one of those round sponges as well as the flat, rectangular sponge. I really like PanPastels so far.

9x12" on Strathmore 500 charcoal paper. I'm not sure whether to call this one a drawing or painting.

Figured I should give the Panpastel drawing set a go, this was done with the set of 10. I've never used these pastels or this style before, and I had no idea how the colors were supposed to be used together, of rolled with it and was amazed by the way they started magically coming together as I added the different colors in. I had no idea what the blue pastel was for so I just kind of started throwing it in wherever it felt right and I'm pretty pleased with the end result. It looks sort of like an oil painting, and honestly they handle and mix very similarly to oil paint except they're already dry and smooth.

Apparently the technique is called "colorism" when you use cool colors in the shadow areas and warm colors for the light areas. Too bad somebody else invented it first, because I'm digging this technique after having done so many tonal black & white works, it's really different and fun and refreshing.

9.5x13" on orangeish Fabriano Tiziano paper. About 2 hours.

Watercolor Demo

I wanted to make a blue painting so I figured why not record it as a live demo as well?

YouTube link.


8x10" on an Arches HP watercolor board. About 1.5 hours.

Acquisitions!

I only had one textbook to buy this semester, so I invested some of my money in things I'd been wanting to try for a while.

The brown box is a Mt. Vision flesh tones set of 25 pastels. They're the biggest pastels I've ever seen, I didn't expect to get this amount for the price, so I'm really pleased with them even though I haven't even tried them yet.
I got the Panpastel sets mostly for painting cats and to try my hand at landscapes, and the Pastelmat seems to be highly praised everywhere, so I'm excited to experience it.

I bought the Da Vinci Venetian red tube a while back but never really used it because the tinting power was too strong to lighten with the big tube of student grade white I had. I used this as an excuse to branch out and get a selection of Gamblin paints as well as a big white tube and try out artist grade oils. I  used to enjoy oil painting when I was first learning art, but I haven't tried it in several years. The Gamblin paints came with a set of 4 small paints as a bonus, so it'll be interesting to try out some extra colors. I didn't actually realize it until I set them out and looked at them, but I believe I have a pretty nice palette selection here.

I intend to write a few reviews for these products after I've played with them. I've invested enough cash into them that I have no excuse not to use them (I have a tendency to buy stuff and tuck it away for months) and hopefully they'll pay for themselves in short order.

Me as Everything (pt.1)

Spiral



Lion


The Machine Spirit

A while back, I figured I'd try something different from regular self-portraits and start incorporating other elements into them. So the result is these weird amalgamations of me and various other things. They're kind of creepy.

The Machine Spirit & Lion are both 9x12" ink and watercolor paintings on Arches cold-pressed watercolor paper. The nautilus one is an 8x10" on an Arches hot-pressed board. Can't remember what all colors I used, usually it's a mix of Maimeri and Winsor & Newton. Mostly burnt sienna, cobalt blue, sepia, and thio violet.

I can't say enough good things about the Arches boards, they're the same great paper but mounted on an archival board that doesn't warp when wet, so it's more convenient than plain paper albeit more expensive per sheet.