First I colored the Fishies Under the Sea Drawing with blues and greens.

I’m particularly happy with how the waves turned out.

Next I used only green markers on the more simple waves-only drawing.

I love these two greens together. I was also really happy with how the light green “sky” turned out. Because the marker is starting to run dry, it’s “juicier” when I first start drawing, which lets me slowly build up color when it doesn’t have as much ink flowing, so I was able to achieve a nice gradient.

As I added color to the “lightning bug” pattern, I intended to fill in the whole thing, but I really liked how it looked after just coloring in a few of the shapes, so I left it that way.

I also drew a few new patterns, and I colored the next one in before scanning in the outline, which wasn’t that exciting.

I am really liking multi-color palettes lately, including this one. I managed to avoid using yellow. I think it’s a little more interesting when you leave at least one color out when using many colors.

I’m still not sure of the direction where I’m taking the drawings. James and Rachel picked out a few drawings of mine that they liked, but it wasn’t clear to me how to make a cohesive group of four images, so I’ve been fleshing out some drawings, and coming up with new ideas.

I worked a little more on the “Heart Flowers” drawing.

I think the little bees are so cute!

I think the stems of the flowers need to be a little longer in proportion to the grass, but I like where it’s heading. The clouds are similar to some of the cloud drawings I’ve been working on (see below), which might work or might not depending on what happens with the other drawings.

From the original clouds drawing, I made the composition more like a landscape, which matches the heart flowers drawing a little better. I used the rain texture from another raincloud drawing.

It seems a little overworked to me, so I next tried a more simplified approach.

I think the rain could be “lightened up” a bit, but I really love the clouds.

With the landscape idea in mind, I tried to figure out another image to draw. The ocean came to mind, and I drew some waves that were inspired by the cloud texture.

The waves on the bottom didn’t leave much room for anything, except for maybe some clouds, which didn’t seem too exciting to me. I thought it would be cute to work in some little fish, so I drew another set of waves, this time toward the top of the paper.

I got in the swing of things after drawing so much, and I came up with a new pattern.

I think it’s really cute, and reminds me of lightning bugs, which would fit in with the nature-theme of the nursery, so maybe there’s a way to work them in? Who knows! Things are still a little scattered, but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually, and I’m having fun doing it!

Some of the original drawings are more “finished” than others, but I’m going to use them all as jumping off points, so I’ll alter them a bit to work cohesively has a group, more or less.

The two favorites are “Hearts” and “Citrus”.

The third will either be “Peach Flowers” or “Pebble Flowers”.

I’m leaning toward “Pebble Flowers” but we’ll see how it evolves.

The last one will probably be based on the “Clouds” sketch.

I’m thinking about incorporating some rain from a previous “Little Rain Cloud” drawing that I did a while back.

This should be a really fun project, and I’m looking forward to pulling it all together. Although I’ve been making an effort to complete “finished” work lately, these will probably be the first of my drawings to actually get framed, which is pretty exciting.

I prepared the background of the panel with a warm yellow color, then I used watercolor to create the composition, adding the line work in when everything was dry.

The panel definitely felt different than paper under my brush. The flat hardness of the board was the first sensation, and then I became aware of the subtleties of the textured surface. It’s not as absorbent as paper, but there is absorbency. The color layers pretty well, but I decided against doing a 4th layer on some areas since the paint seemed to be building up on the surface.

Oddly enough, the surface was still absorbent enough to suck the ink right up. I’m not sure if it’s because parts of the painting might not have been 100% bone dry, but the lines spread and bled a lot more than it usually does on paper. This was the most disappointing part of the process because I thought the thick black lines were ruining the whole painting. I was definitely going for a more delicate line, but if I overlook that initial intention, I think the piece holds up pretty well. In the future, I’ll either have to use a thinner tip than I normally would, or make sure the painting is as dry as it can be.

I’m looking forward to painting up the remaining 3 panels. I could well imagine that the next ones will get better and better, technically speaking, as I get more used to working with the clay surface.

My art has a way of communicating with me. When something is complete, I definitely know it. When it’s missing something, that becomes equally obvious to me. Sometimes I think I’m done with a piece, but then over the following days it still tugs at me. Eventually I’ll realize what a piece needs to be finally finished.

I did this first drawing, and after coloring in a light gray brown and blue, I really thought it was complete.

It wasn’t.

I kept looking at it over the next days. I really liked it, but it gave me an empty feeling whenever I looked at it. It needed something more. Another blue.

The addition of the lighter blue did it for me. In my eyes it went from “good” to “yes!”. I love it when art says “yes!”.

Here’s another that I initially thought was done:

It isn’t.

I’ve been sitting with it for a few days, and I’m definitely being drawn to add something more. In this case, I’m pretty sure I’m going to add some line work for texture.

I’ll post the results when it’s done.

All the following scribbles are on grid paper because that’s what I had handy.

First scribble:

The new colors in this one are “pale jade” and “lime peel”. It’s a simple drawing of flowers, but I like the color combination.

Second scribble:

I used my new chartpak ad marker in “pink” for the background. It’s the first chartpak marker that I’ve tried. The fumes are intense, but the coverage is really nice, and they seem to have a nice variety of colors available. I also got a really nice dark purple that I hope to try out soon. I used my new “magenta” prisma color marker as well as a couple of old green ones (”dark green” and “parrot green”). In the end I wish I’d left off the green. I might have to do another version with just the pinks.

Third scribble:

I didn’t end up using any of my new colors in this one. The background is “goldenrod” and the other color is “spanish orange”. As I was drawing this one, I paused every so often to look at it skeptically. It’s a little odd, but I like how it turned out.

I’ve been working on some larger drawings that I hope to post about soon. It’s fun to have new colors to play with!

This felt like a particularly long week, so I left early on Friday and decided to head up to my mom’s house for the weekend. We are currently in the middle of some major snow fall. Already we have about a foot of snow, and it’s supposed to keep snowing all day!

On the drive up I decided that I wanted to do some art this weekend, but wasn’t sure what. When I saw my mom’s new orchid sitting on the dining room table, I was inspired to pick up where I had left off with the technique of drawing from shadows. try out a couple of new techniques. I’ve done shadow drawings before, and had a few next steps in mind when I left off that I never got a chance to try out.

These shadow drawings are made possible by my mom’s dining room light which casts multi-faceted shadows. There might be science behind the shadows it casts, but I like to think it’s magic.

The drawings shown below are smaller (11×14) than the last ones (18×24) since I just wanted to experiment a bit. Maybe I’ll do a big one tomorrow. I had to scan them because I don’t have my card reader for my camera, so the images below are only part of the entire piece.

First I traced the shadows with pen, then did watercolor, then added the line texture with my pen:

For the next piece I traced the shadows with watercolor first, then outlined the watercolor and enhanced the shapes with lines, but no line texture in this one:

I like the first one from a distance because although the line texture blends together, it still looks quite flat and sharp, contrasting the soft and subtle texture of the watercolor. The second one is best appreciated up-close since the lines and shapes and the watercolor texture are so neat, but you don’t see it as much from a few feet away.

The small sketches I’ve been doing lately weren’t all that great, and they left me wondering if I’d lost my knack. Now I think I’ve got it back.

Oh dear, that rhymed.

The next night I decided that I’d like to add some subtle watercolor texture to the background to make the drawn shapes stand out. As I worked, I realized that the idea in my head wasn’t coming to fruition, so I just went where the paint wanted to take me.

When I was finished and happy with the painting, I surveyed the overall result and realized that the drawing and the painting didn’t harmonize at all. Far from subtle, the background texture had become the dominant part of the composition, and the drawing only muddled its impact. In another moment of “acting before thinking” I cut out the drawn parts with my xacto knife.

In retrospect, I should have photographed more in progress shots, but as it is, I only have the two “end products” to show.

the painting with holes:

plus a detail of the painting:

and of course the cut out drawings, arranged in a pattern:

I like the cutouts quite a lot, but I’m not sure exactly what to do with the painting with holes in it. I feel like I should take it another step or two, but I’m not sure in which direction. Perhaps I’ll wait for inspiration to strike, since it seems letting something sit for a day or two leads to good things.

I started out making a sampler of patterns with the frisket. Then I painted over the whole composition with long strokes.

You can see that the paint pools over the frisket, where it is not able to reach the paper.

When the paint was dry, I had fun peeling off the frisket to reveal the crisp white areas underneath.

(The colors appear different because the first one was a photograph, and the second a scan; the true color is closer to that of the scan.)

While I was making the sampler, I had the idea for another painting.

I first painted a dot pattern with the frisket and let it dry. I thought it would look neat to have a crisp white circle in the center of a more amorphous red shape. After the dots were dry, I started painting the red shapes around the frisket circles. I had to do them in batches, making sure that wet circles didn’t intersect. It was a test of patience to wait for them to dry. I mostly succeeded in waiting long enough.

When the painting was done and dry, I peeled away the frisket circles.

I think the dots look a bit like red blood cells. I plan to add some ink drawing to the painting which might change that impression.

Most of my drawings and paintings tend to be on the smaller scale. I really branched out lately when working on 9×12 watercolor paper, and then took a leap and made some drawings on 11×14 bristol. I’ve been wanting to go even bigger, but have felt nervous about it, so I thought I’d take her up on the challenge.

Just after she left, I got sidetracked with a 5 day impromptu road trip to Boston, Niagra Falls, and NYC, but when I got back, one of the first errands I ran was to go to the art store and buy some good, but not too good, 18×24 paper.

A big blank sheet of paper is one of the most intimidating objects in the world if your goal is to actually draw something on it. I left it sitting on the dining room table for the rest of the day.

That very night my brother who lives in California showed up for a surprise visit. He opened up his computer at the dining room table to show me what he’s been working on lately. As we were sitting there waiting for the computer to cooperate, I noticed the shadows of nearby orchids cast onto my pad of paper. I opened the cover to see what they looked like on the white surface, and it was really pretty.

I casually mentioned that it would be fun to trace the outlines of the shadows. My brother suggested that I use watercolor and make it look like the actual shadows.

I was too tired to try out any of those ideas that night, but the next day I lowered the shades to see if I could get the same shadows in the daytime. They weren’t as distinct, and there weren’t as many of them, but it gave me something to work with.

I traced the outlines on a couple of sheets from my sketchbook, and then colored them in with watercolor. Next, on a big sheet of paper, I painted where the shadows were, also in color, but without outlining the forms first.

In the image above, the top painted flowers are a little obscured by the orchids, but those turned out a lot better than the bottom set of flowers which are big muddied blobs. Since this paper is so big, I have to rely on photographs to document my work, and unfortunately none of the detail shots came out. If I get a chance, I’ll take a better shot of the big watercolor painting to show what I mean.

My next attempt was to block out the shadows with frisket, then color in the background in some manner, to leave a crisp white area to be outlined after the fact.

As I was working on the composition, I decided to incorporate a grouping of leaves at the bottom of the page that I also blocked out with frisket. I was a little wary about how the paper would behave if I used a watercolor wash in the background, but I was using a bristol paper that said it was appropriate for “light washes,” so I decided to try it out. I applied a yellow watercolor wash over the entire background.

The paper wrinkled a bit, but it held up relatively well.

When the paint had dried, I removed the frisket from the leaves area. Unfortunately I might have been a little too excited to see the result, because the paper tore in one area as I removed the rubbery film. Of course I wasn’t going to let that stop me, so I applied a light wash of a green color to the leaves. This didn’t work as well.

For some reason, when I added the green wash, the other corners of the paper decided to curl in. The green watercolor kept pooling in the wrong areas, and as I fiddled with it, the color got a lot darker than I’d intended. It also just looked yucky compared to the rest of the painting. The texture was all wrong.

So I took drastic action after thinking about it for maybe a minute and cut away the leaves.

That threw off the whole composition, so now I’ll have to work with it some more to see if it can be saved, or if I’ll just chalk it up to a learning experience. In retrospect I probably should have waited until the green dried completely, and maybe tried adding some drawn detailing to the leaves. When I looked at the photo of the painting with the leaves still intact, it didn’t look so bad after all.

Oh well. By this time it was dark again, and as I was not satisfied with any of the days’ results, I decided to press on and work on the idea I’d originally had the night before. Without the interfering sunlight, all the shadows showed up, and I sat down to trace them. I wish I’d paused to take a shot of the drawing with only the lines, but I was on a roll, so I colored in the gray immediately.

This one makes me happy.

Not that the other works make me unhappy, but there was a lot of experimentation going on with unfamiliar techniques earlier in the day. I’m familiar with pen and marker, so it was nice to have a finished product that I was pleased with and not only experiments that are still evolving.

This happy accident of noticing the shadows on the paper might lead to some really interesting paintings and drawings, so I’ll explore working with shadows a bit more in the future.