Summer Solstice

It is the first day of summer, and the day of the most daylight here in the Northern Hemisphere. After today the days will start getting shorter, meaning a bit less daylight every day until the winter solstice in December. For all my readers in the Northern Hemisphere happy summer, hope you have a good one.

Above is the pen and ink drawing I was working on last week finished. I thought you might like to see some in process images. Well, not totally in process as the pen and ink work was done when I did the first scan shown below. I was always intending to add watercolor to this so I left some areas without fills, like the area around the mouse and in the sky.

I stippled the tree instead of using other fancier fills. I think the stipple effect is less distracting, and while I wanted the tree, I didn't want it to grab attention away from the mouse and mushrooms. The next image is more in-process, showing the masked drawing with the sky painted in.

The outside edges were masked with Drafting tape (less sticky than masking tape) and the sort of cream colored areas are where I applied fisket. By masking the mushrooms and tree edges I was able to use a larger brush to apply the blue paint. I much prefer the sky painted with a large brush, fewer brush strokes show, and color is more evenly applied, so even though it takes time to mask I think I will continue to do so. The blue is a mixed color done with my tubes of watercolor. My Illustration Instructor would get very annoyed with us if we used a color straight out of the tube, so even though he will probably never see this drawing I still remember and abide by the restriction. Though I can't exactly mix a color with the watercolor pencils, I do layer washes of different colors over each other so the resulting color isn't exactly the original pencil color.

I think the tree color works, I was trying an experiment with this drawing. First I applied a light yellow wash to the tree, then I covered that with a purple violet wash, then added in some green, and some brown, and some grey. I used the watercolor pencil directly on the trunk to add the grey. Hopefully I have successfully covered the yellow though I think it adds some depth to the trunk color.

One last comment, in real life the mushrooms grouped together would all be the same as they would be growing out of the same underground network of fungi hyphae so I took some artistic license to make my mushrooms different. But I wanted the red to add color, though I didn't want 3 red mushrooms. All I can say is that it is my drawing and I can do what I want with it.

Below is my figure drawing from last night.

Not sure I did the model justice as she is a lovely young woman. I seem to be working with a looser more sketchy style. There are parts of this drawing that I like and others that I would like to rework. There is almost always something I would change if I were doing a do-over. I guess that is what drawing is all about.

We have a beautiful June, first day of summer, day here in MA. Blue sky's and while it will be warm (in the low 80's) it won't be oppressively hot. I hope to get out later to enjoy the weather while we have it, one thing I know from living in NE, that the weather is changeable so I need to enjoy the nice weather while we have it.

That is it for today. I have been busy photographing flowers and may share some of my photo's in the blog post later this week. Till then I have uploaded a bunch to my Facebook fan page and to my flickr account. Links to both are on the blog page. As always comments are appreciated. Oh if you have a title suggestion for my Mushrooms and Mouse drawing I would love to  hear it.