Happy New Year 2017

I want to wish everyone a Happy, Healthy, 2017. May some of your wishes/dreams come true this coming year.

I spent about 2 weeks in Chicago visiting my sister and her family, which is why the blog hasn't been updated. I take the train from Boston to Chicago (and back home), for me it is a straight run, though we do stop in Albany, NY to link up with the train coming up from NYC. It takes about 22/23 hours but I have room for my feet/legs, I can sleep and get up and walk around so I find this method of travel not at all bad. It may take longer than flying but I don't have to go through security, I don't have to pay to have my bag checked, I get a discount for being a senior and the tickets are less to begin with. I also don't have to put my car in long term parking someplace, so that is another expense I don't have. All in all I am happier taking the train than flying. Flying is no fun any more, and I don't miss it.

Enough about my personal life. Over the holidays I tried to get back into the groove of making some art. My efforts are taking too long, I don't seem to have the concentration to just sit and work for hours on something, but I am doing some art.

Above is a bookmark, about 2 x 6 inches on cold press watercolor paper. I painted the background with watercolors before heading to Chicago and I took some reference photos with me to have something to work on. The bird is a tufted titmouse at a bird feeder. I photographed this little one with the new camera so the photo I was working from was sharp with lots of detail.

I used the copic multiliners to ink this little guy, and I am fairly pleased with the results. Esp. as it has been so long since I did any drawing other than doodles.

Also done over my Christmas holiday. My sister gave me some Hunts crow quill nibs for Christmas, well I did ask for them, and the above piece was me playing with the new nib and India Ink. Again this is done on cold press watercolor paper that had been pre-painted. Just various designs and textures. Still I think it is kind of fun and it was a good way to start getting my hand back into the groove of using dip pens before moving on to a more challenging piece.

A slight digression here, my sister had to order my nibs on-line, no brick and mortar art store seems to carry Hunt Nibs, they only seem to have Speedball or some Japanese Manga nibs. The Japanese nibs are good, better than the Speedball nibs but not quite as fine and I was looking for, hence the request for the Hunts nibs. I have also discovered that my local art supply store no longer carries a brand name India Ink, well, they have Speedball ink, but I don't consider Speedball inks to be artist quality. I am planning a trip into Boston soon and hope that Blicks still carries a good quality India Ink. The store owner was telling me that some stocks just are no longer available for purchase here in the US, like Hunts nibs. All I can say is bother, how are students supposed to learn if they can't purchase quality supplies. Thank heaven for the Internet, at least there are still a few suppliers that carry those products.

Another bookmark, again cold press watercolor paper pre-painted, this one was also done with my copic multiliners. Just felt like doing stars. It didn't turn out quite the way I envisioned it but it will have to do.

I also spent time working on a pencil drawing for my colored pencil series, and I also worked a bit on a couple of the colored pencil pieces I started last year. I do hope to finish the series this year, but we will see.

Thought I would share a few photographs. Above is the Chicago skyline from the Arboretum in Lincoln Park which is just outside the zoo. The photo is looking over the lawns toward the zoo and the city.

Above is Lake Michigan with a front moving in. It was actually a warm front, unlike the typical Chicago Christmas weather we had a lot of warmish days this year. Warmish is of course relative, but for Chicago in late December anything above freezing during the day is warm. After I left a cold front came through and put them back into the freezer.

We had about 8 inches of snow over this past weekend, the above photo was made in my local park, showing the frozen pond and snow covered trees. I just like the lighting in this photo.

If you want to see more photos from my Chicago trip visit my facebook page, link at the bottom of the page.

That is it for today, I won't say I have made a resolution to do more postings this year, but it is my intention. In the meantime comments are always welcome.

I can't believe it is December

 Oh where has the time gone, I can't believe it has been 6 months since I last updated the blog. Oops, sorry about that anyone who is still checking it out. Been busy but not with art, well, not with drawing. Photography after all is considered by some art and I have been busy talking walks and making photographs.

I have done just a little drawing, mostly just pen work. The above sparrow done in pen and ink was my attempting to get back to my drawing by doing the Inktober pen drawings a day. Then I got sick, and while I wasn't all that sick I was sick enough that I just didn't have the energy or motivation to follow through; next year, maybe.

 The above bottle drawing was done for the first of Inktober (October) but isn't really very good so I put the sparrow first as I was much happier with that one. The top image is the one that shows up in links, so I like the first image to be one of my better posts.

 This rather abstract drawing was me playing with some new to me colored pencils. Over the summer I purchased some of the Dick Blick line of pencils. They are OK, but not really artist quality, there just isn't enough pigment in the leads for them to make the grade. Still I had fun playing with the colors.

 I have a new camera, a Canon D70 and I am in love with it. The old Canon Rebel and I parted ways, and since I have become addicted to making photographs, I had to immediately replace it. The D70 is a much better camera and I am making some really lovely photographs. The above is a Titmouse about the land at a bird feeder. This was made at the feeders at Borderland State Park, Easton, MA.

 The above photo is a couple of Canada Geese in flight, they had just taken off from the panne at Daniel Webster in Marshfield, MA.

 Above is the Smith Farm house in Borderland State Park. The sky was overcast but opened up enough to give me this spot lighting of the house, background trees and meadow just around the house.

Last but not least I was busy putting together the 2017 calendars using photographs I have been making through the year, though mostly in the spring and summer. I am quite pleased with this years selections, hopefully I am not only making better photographs but doing a better job selecting the images I use. 

That is it for today, there are more photographs on my Facebook page if you are curious since I was posting photos there over the summer. Per usual comments are welcome.

Back to Watercolor with Pen and Ink

Today's blog update is actually revisiting work I did in May (or earlier) but never got posted to the blog. What can I say, my bad. With the return of warmer weather I am spending a lot of time out and about with my camera. Photographing flowers, butterflies, Odes and anything else I see that will hold still long enough. Leaving me not a lot of time or energy for my art or the blog. That said I am trying to get back to doing daily sketches. These are just very quick drawings usually with pen but sometimes as in my last update graphite. The sketches will probably be the art I will be posting for most of the summer now that I have these pen and ink works posted.

The above is about postcard sized. On cold press watercolor paper I first laid down a wash. No real pre-planning with these, I just pick a couple of colors and then work it from there, no rules except I like to keep the colors fairly light so that the ink work will show up. Once the paper is dry I look at the resulting wash and try to think what would look good on it. For the above piece I decided that abstract/geometric would probably be best, so hauling out my compass I drew various sized circles in pencil then got to work inking.

I used my technical pens for this, mostly the 0, and the 00 tips  So here it is, not sure if I like it or not, it was certainly more work than I expected when I started it.

These next two are ATC's or Artists Trading Cards, so the size is 3.5 x 2.5 inches. For these I used hot press watercolor paper and kept the watercolor washes very simple just a couple of colors.

The above is based on some of my photos of Jack in the Pulpits. I love those flowers and have tried to use them in my art in the past, with mixed results. This card I like, course the pink might seem a bit strange but I am not going for total realism here so for me it works.

With the background colors I selected for this card, I though water so drew a couple of fish, again revisiting previous art work, though these aren't really copies of what I have done before, just similar. I textured the background to make the fish stand out. I thought about adding some texture to the fish bodies, but decided that if I did that then the fish would just blend into the background instead of standing out. I decided to do minimal ink work on the fish bodies. I am not sure about the water plants, I thought I wanted something to add a bit more interest, but after I had done it, I was kind of sorry.

This past week I spent a day in Boston, mostly so I could make photographs, but I also made a side trips to the Boston MFA and to the Public Library. While there I made this quick sketch of a fellow patron. His thumb is a bit out of wack, proportion wise, to the rest of him, but I am not totally displeased with how this came out. Done in my small sketch book with a Copic .2 Multiliner pen.  

It is surprisingly difficult to get a good photo of a waterlily. Mostly because they are usually in the middle (or at least not near the edge) of ponds, and I don't have a boat. The one in the above photo was actually next to a rock near to shore, so I was able to photograph over the rock for the above photo. I cranked up the ISO so that the shadows would show up. Finally a water lily photo I am pleased with.

This is a photo of Copley Square taken from the steps of the Boston Public Library. I can't recall the name of the church in the square but it is rather well known. What I find interesting in this photo is the John Hancock building with it's reflective glass windows. On the side facing the viewer you can see reflected clouds, making it a bit hard to actually make out the building. Fun effect and very Boston. Though when I first moved to Boston back in the 1970's the building was covered with plywood because the windows kept pooping out of their frames, took a bit of engineering and a law suit to resolve the problems. But resolve them they did, I haven't heard of any glass falling for years.

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