Watercolor and Pen and Ink Experiments

The above is an outgrowth of some of the exercises I have been doing from the Bert Dodson book Keys to Drawing with Imagination. The exercises I did are below. The first was the butterflies in silhouette, then since it is spring I got the idea of doing the same with a tulip shape. I was looking for some contact between shapes and I thought the tulip shape might be easier to work.

Once I finished the silhouette mode of the tulips I went on to the 2nd part of the exercise, which was to draw the images in contact and then darken the background or do a reverse silhouette. Since I had been playing with some new watercolor (to me) paints I though why not put the tulips on some painted water color paper. Above is the finished drawing. The tulips with just a darkened background didn't have a focal point, so I picked one of the tulips and added some details. Sort of OK, but I am glad this was an exercise and something I was more invested in.  Paper here and in the 2 other works on this page is cold press 6 x 6 inch Fluid Watercolor Paper that I purchased in block form from Dick Blicks last summer.

Original exercises for silhouette mode with pen and ink. I actually think I like the butterflies better, but I couldn't get the contact areas to work smoothly so used the tulips for the reverse exercise.

I purchased some additional paints, and wanting to see how they would work with one of my other paints did another wash study. The colors are Hansa Yellow Medium and Quinacridone Rose along with turquoise. The yellow and the rose are my new colors. This is another wet in wet wash which I started with the Hansa yellow in the center, then added the rose and finally the turquoise.  When it dried I thought it would be fun to add some ink work, and decided to keep to the circular theme. I drew 3 overlapping circles (using a roll of tape as a template) and added ink using my technical pens. No particular look in mind up front, I just wanted  to use various fills/textures. When I finished the outer rings I added the inner circle. Circles were drawn with pencil and then inked.

Not wonderful but kind of fun. and I do like the colors, might have been better if I had overlapped the colors a bit more, but I didn't want to muddy them which can be a concern with watercolor.

 OK at this point I was on a roll so I painted a third sheet, using the yellow and the pink but adding some purple instead of the turquoise. There is also a bit more color overlap in the wash with this one.

For a reference I selected one of the WetCanvas pen and ink forums challenge images, and using acrylic black ink and a dip pen drew the flowers in over the wash.  I did pencil sketch the outlines of the flowers first, mainly for placement but details were all done with the pen. This one I rather like, and think I need to play around with this technique a bit more to see where it can take me. Maybe I will use one of my own flower photographs next time. Maybe by the time I finish a series of these I will be more experienced with wet in wet watercolor washes.

Wednesday I took the bus into Boston for a visit to the MFA (wanted to finish viewing the Megacities Asia sculptures) and then a walk through a different area of Boston for photographs. I ended up walking the Rose Kennedy Greenway from the North End to South Station, there are some additional photographs on my Facebook page if you are interested. Anyway I did my usual on the bus ride into Boston and made this sketch of a fellow passenger. I did do other sketches but I liked this one the best. Done in my small sketchbook with a Copic Fineliner pen the .1 tip.

The above photograph is from my walk yesterday. I finally found some spring daffodils that hadn't been badly damaged by our snow and cold weather of over a week ago. I just thought these were pretty and the photo came out well. Oddly enough daffodils can be a bit hard to photograph.

Also from my Boston trip yesterday, this is the Christian Science Mother church. I am photographing this through the stand of trees that they have planted on one side of Christian Science Plaza, I like the tunnel to the left along with the still bare branches and blue sky. The reflecting pool is still empty so the plaza wasn't the best location for photos yesterday, not to mention the cement mixers that were doing something toward the front of the church.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.