Ink Work

I love hot press watercolor paper. I have probably said this before, but because of the work I have been doing in the past few days I want to say it again. I know it is expensive, well relatively. But it is so smooth, takes ink so well, you can get it wet and not warp the paper excessively. For what I have been working on it is the perfect paper.  The only drawback other than cost is that you almost need to have access to a real art supply store to find it. Most watercolor papers sold at stores like A.C. Moore or Michaels are cold press paper and have a rough surface. Hot Press paper is almost as smooth as Bristol board, but the surface is a bit softer. Because of the smooth surface work extremely well on it.

The above bookmark is done on Hot Press watercolor paper. I used my technical pens to draw the black bits and on this piece I used my watercolor pencils to add color. The watercolor pencils were first used on the paper dry as I would use a regular colored pencil, then I added water by using a wet brush. I did go over the blue areas while they were damp with the watercolor pencil to add more color. Even so it doesn't show up as being very blue in the scan. The lettering I did by hand between ruled lines. I did use Microsoft Word to print out the word "Bookmark" using various fonts, picking the font I liked best to actually use.

The piece above is also on Hot Press water color paper. It is kind of a Zentangle, though not quite. It started life as a Zentangle but somewhere along the way I morphed it into something else, or at least I consider it something else. The black was done using my technical pens and in this case the color was added by using Inktense pencils and a brush dipped in water. I call it Mystic City. It is fairly small only four inches square. I think I will be doing some more works at this size, it is large enough to allow some details, but still small enough to be fairly quick to do. 

That is it for today. We have a new FFFC challenge this one is to use Trompe L'oeil techniques on an art quilt. I haven't yet had a chance to check out all the links that have been provided, but will hopefully get to that tomorrow then I can start to think about what I would like to do. I didn't work on the last challenge, too busy with the holidays, but this one sounds like fun.

My last comment is about the weather. I don't know what it has been like where you are, but here in MA we are suffering a surfeit of snow. We have had weekly snow storms for the past 3 weeks, each storm seems to be bringing us at least 10 inches of snow, this is not to mention the small storms that drop only an inch or two that seem to happen between the major storms. Combine this with cold temps and no melting are resulting in huge snow piles with narrow streets. The part that concerns me is that it is still only January. This is not typical weather for us here in Southeastern MA. I am crossing my fingers that we get a week long thaw soon. 

I was out today visiting one of my local parks making some photographs, they aren't wonderful, as there wasn't much sun,  but I will post one here with additonal ones on my Facebook Page. This isn't my personal page but a Fan page, you don't need to be a friend to view it. There is a link to the Fan page at the bottom of the blog. The above photo was taken at Houghton Pond and shows the pile of snow at the trail head that goes around the pond.  Per usual comments are always welcome.

January 25 Drawings

Above is last nights drawing from the weekly Studio Session. The photograph isn't the best, no sun here in MA today. I will take another photograph when we do get some sun as I like this drawing and want a better image of it.

We had quite a crowd last night which considering how cold it was (single digits) outside I found surprising. But inside it was warm, which I am sure the model was grateful for. With this drawing I concentrated on finishing the face and body of the model then filled in some details esp. around her head but left some other areas more sketchy. The side of the couch which I have been detailing I left only in outline this week, the cloth drapes at the far end of the couch I just sketched in. I have been told many times by my instructors that what makes Art individual is what an artist leaves out of a drawing or painting. So I have decided that drawing all the details of what I see (well I don't actually do that though I have been putting in more than I think I need) isn't that important.

While in Chicago over the holidays my Sister and I visited the Chicago Art Institute and after checking out the Fiber Exhibit in the new American wing we viewed the Gray Collection. I didn't realize at the time that the show would only be up until Jan 2. If I had I might have steered us there first and it was I really only looked at about half of the drawings in the exhibit. I "saw" the rest, but by then my brain was on overload and I wasn't really absorbing what I was seeing.  Oh well at least we did catch the exhibit while it was on view.

The drawings the Gray's collected are amazing and reflect seven centuries of art, from Picasso to several Renaissance artists. The one thing many of these drawings had in common was the purity of line used by the artists. I am not that good, I am not yet at the point where I can draw one line and have it delineate the shape and form of a human body. Picasso was amazingly good at reducing his drawings to a few lines.

Don't get me wrong I don't want to draw like Picasso, I want to draw like me. In fact I sometimes find his drawings too spare. An artists whose drawings I really admire is Jean A. D. Ingres. He is probably more well know as a painter but his family portraits done with pencil are amazing. You can see some of his family drawings HERE, and there are books of his drawings. At first glance you think he included a lot of detail in his drawings, but look again and you will realize that often only the faces and some of the clothes are really shaded and detailed. The rest is done with a few deliberate lines. A goal for me is to learn how to use more line and more general shading in some areas of my drawings. I have been developing my skills, now I feel I need to develop a style.

This next image is my 2nd Zentangle finished. It is actually a grouping of 4 squares all originally having the same "String" placed on the square only rotated or mirrored. After finishing the first square I began to find the strings too limiting so ended up drawing/filling in other areas and ignoring them. This has been a fun exercise and I am working on another, which is sort of taking on a life of its own. I am not sure how many more of these I will do. The results can be interesting but I think I find them a bit too unpredictable for my tastes. I am finding that with pen and ink work a certain amount of planing makes me more comfortable.

Enough for today. Please feel free to comment or ask questions. Hoping everyone is staying warm and dry.

Notebooks/Sketchbooks and Drawings

Above is my drawing from Monday night. It felt good to get back to the Studio sessions. My break turned out to be longer then I either expected or wished. Though I shouldn't have been surprised, I tend to pick up some bug over the Holidays, it is an unusual year that I don't. This years bug is still with me, though I am feeling much better. The drawing isn't too bad considering, but I then did spend the break doing a lot of drawings, not of the figure but still drawing.

With my Arthouse Sketchbook done and mailed it was time for me to turn my attention to the Sketchbook Challenge. When the Sketchbook challenge was announced last month each participating artists blogged about their sketchbooks answer questions about them,  how many at one time, and what tools they preferred and when they started. I decided to answer those questions for myself. Above are some photographs of the notebooks/sketchbooks/journals I have around the Apt. The open book in Photo #1 is the oldest book I still have, it was started in 1984 and dedicated to wild flower drawings. I didn't get all that far in that book, but have kept it and enjoy revisiting it. Photo #2 is one of my 3 Quilt Journals. In these I document my quilting. I started the first one in 1986. These have been maintained in an off and on fashion and am now working in my 3rd book. Photo #3 is the Notebook from my Intaglio class last spring, in it I documented all of my plates, with sketches, proofs, techniques used etc. I will use it again if I go back to printing. Photo #4 is the sketchbook I started when I went back to school and realized just how rusty my drawing skills were. I tried to draw something every day. On days I wasn't working on class work I tried to make a drawing in this sketchbook. The final photo shows one of 3 sketchbooks I have of various sizes that I used to develop ideas for projects or just sketch/doodle. I have now added a dedicated book for the Sketchbook Challenge.  Materials used vary, colored pencils for the flowers; Pen, pencil, fabric, photographs, and pieces of paper for the Quilt Journals; Pen, pencil, and inserted materials for the Intaglio journal; finally graphite pencils for the last two. Course I have had doodle sketchbooks since I was in High School, but those are long gone. 

The Sketchbook Challenge theme for January is Highly Prized. The above page is my brainstorming what I highly prize and some quick sketches of those things, highly prized items are nature, including animals, birds, trees, plants and my drawing tools. I pulled out my new Inktense pencils to see what color would do for/to some of the drawings. This page is purely experimental.

 My next page was done with one of my highly prized Rapidograph technical pens. These are technical pens that are sort of like Micron pens, except they are refillable which the Micron's aren't. They are expensive, but if you are into technical pens, I think they are well worth the money. That said I wouldn't stick one in my purse to casually haul it around with me, I would be afraid of loosing it so I do own and use Microns. The drawing above was done using one of my Rapidograph pens in a style called Zentangle. You can follow the link to the Zentangle web site, though I found this site more informative. I fear I am not into mumbo jumbo when it comes to talking about drawing techniques which the Zentangle site does (my opinion only). Nor did I want to wait for a kit or to take a seminar to attempt one, the Squidoo site explains the general concept and how to get started. 

I found the first Zentangle fun to do so decided to do a second, the above photo is the 2nd one in progress. it will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

Enough for today, this turned into a longer post then I intended. I am fairly sure that the next few posts will be much shorter. Thanks for hanging in, and per usual comments or questions are always welcome.