Sketching at the Ottawa County Fair Part Two

After a wonderful three hours sketching at the Ottawa County Fair on Thursday afternoon, July 28 (see those sketches here), I returned for another three hours on Friday morning.

The sky looked ominous.

But no rain came.

I met with my sketching friend, Julie, and we went straight to the goat show in the pavilion.  There, I not only drew a lot of goats, but I got to learn about showing goats from a proud grandmother of some competitors.  Notes about what I learned from her add to the fun of the sketches, I think.

From there we went from bunnies to birds to cows and eventually, when I realized I only had two journal cards left, I went back to the rescue donkeys, Bowie and Red.  They had been my first sketches when I arrived the day before, and I wanted them to be my last sketches of the event.

All in all, it was a terrific experience!  I learned that I have the stamina to sketch for over three hours straight.  I loved working with the journal cards.  It was definitely worth it to carry water, even though it is heavy.  The tiny amounts of paint in the Richeson child's palette (filled with my own selection of 8 Daniel Smith paints) lasted through about seven hours of sketching, no problem, with plenty left.  So it is the perfect lightweight palette for an event like this.

Below are the 15 cards I did on day two, in order.

If you ever have a chance to sketch out at a local county fair, I really recommend it!

Sketching at the County Fair Part One

Last week I attended the Ottawa County Fair to scribble.  I attended both Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.

I prepared "journal cards," something I learned from Roz Stendahl's blog post on "unbound journals."

I bought one 22 x 30 sheet of Strathmore 500 Gemini cold press watercolor paper because it is super stiff.  I tore it down to 16 pieces roughly 5 x 7.  I pre-painted them all with abstract shapes using Daniel Smith Quinacridone Gold and Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet.  I wasn't sure how this would look in the end, but Roz suggested it would eliminate fear of the white page and help the resulting sketches look more like a set.

I prepared my tiny Jack Richeson's child's palette with 8 colors--two red, two blue, two yellow, burnt sienna and a green--all Daniel Smith colors.

I included two permanent fineliners, wrist band (for brush wiping), waterbrush, paper towel, hat, water, pencil... and I was ready to go!  Very excited to meet my sketching friend, Julie, for an afternoon of discovery and drawing!

I didn't really know anything about the fairgrounds so I just wandered into the first barn.  There I found Red and Bowie, two abused donkeys who had been rescued and were there to get used to people.  Seemed a good option for a first subject.  They stood very still, until Red decided that perhaps a journal card might make a lovely snack.

It was super hot, and my sketching friend was about to arrive, so I sat in the shade near an outdoor duck and goose enclosure.

After Julie arrived, we investigated each barn, stopping to draw, and to plan for our return trip the next day.

Julie became great friends with a calf.

So, I sketched for just about three hours.  My goal was to produce sixteen sketches in that time, focusing on speed with accuracy in balance.  The sketches, four of which I completed after I got home, are below in the order I did them.  You can see what a delightful result came from that pre-painting I did!!

Be sure to check out the Part Two post for the rest of my sketches.

Heroic Weed

The next assignment in my July watercolor class is to work on something heroic.

Not "heroice" as in Ripley versus the alien, or Batman versus the Joker, or Ellen Degeneres bringing love and laughter to the planet, but "heroic" as in a small thing painted way larger than life.

I chose this weed, which popped up in my garden last week, and which I was about to pull, but didn't, because I loved its amazing magenta and orange color.  It seemed the perfect subject.

The flower itself was about the size of a U.S. quarter.  I painted it on 18x 24 paper.

This was a challenge!  My goodness, flower details are hard.  I have always admired botanical art, though I've never wanted to do it, and now I know why.

I am very pleased with the shape modeling I got in the white petals.  And, as weird as they look, the inner parts of the flower are pretty close!. 

I had a great deal of fun letting the watercolor flow more loosely in the background.  That flow was a nice contrast to the controlled work I did with the flower and the leaf.  I used the natural flow and uncontrolled patterns in the watery background to pick out other elements of the composition, which I didn't have planned.

After I peeled the masking tape, I set the piece on my mantel for a few days to live with it.  

What might I have done differently, I asked myself, to make it more pleasing?

I went back out to the garden and did snap a photo or two of the bloom, in case I want to try to paint it again later.  That magenta center, those orange and green bits (I should learn my flower parts' scientific names again--I knew them in elementary school)... what a keen looking flower.

Glad I looked closely at that "weed" before I pulled it!

Watery Portrait of Nikolaas

Hard at work in my July-long watercolor class.

My three goals for this class:

1. Go Big
2. Don't lose my sketchbook style
3. Let the watercolor do more of the work for me

I've been looking at the books by Jean Haines for some guidance on how I might let the watercolor do more work for me.  I highly recommend her World of Watercolor, and other books, for looking at amazing use of color and letting the water do its thing.

Of course, she makes it look much easier than I found it to be.

Still, I gave it a whirl, working with my dog, Nikolaas, a Dutch Shepherd.

When I started I chose only a few colors, none realistic.  I started with the outline of the ears and then placed the eye and the nose. Then I worked with a whole lot of water and the colors I had chose, to shape his head and try to catch some of the modeling of the light on his head.

I intended to only do one eye; I wanted the other half of his face to fade into shadow.

I think, perhaps because of the quality of the paper I worked on (decent, but not great), I had a lot of trouble getting the water to simply flow.  I just wouldn't.  It soaked in too fast, and so the colors didn't move and mingle as I'd hoped they would.  

So, I am definitely going to try this approach again.  When I do, I'm going to start with the eye and probably the nose, then try to flow out from there.  I'm also going to do it on Arches cold press, which I think will flow better.

I don't think I'd hang this on the wall, or anything, but I am so pleased with the experiment and the results!  I love the use of the unrealistic colors, which do capture him some.  I'm pleased with the eye and the nose and the depiction of light.  I'm also pleased with the contour--yes, his ears are really that big! 

Fun experiment.  I learned a lot and can't wait to try it again.

Here Be Dragon(fruit)s!

In my quest for interesting fruits or vegetables to paint, I searched the vast expanse of the local grocer's produce section for something interesting.  I think it might be the first time I've ever stood and looked at produce without thinking at all about what I might like to eat or serve, but simply to consider it all in terms of what I might like to paint.

No surprise, really, but looking with a painter's eye sure makes you see things differently!

Anyhow, the minute I spotted the dragonfruit, I snagged one.

I have eaten these before and enjoyed them.  But I've never painted one.  So I looked forward to this.

And it seemed it would work as a subject for my three goals for my watercolor course:

1. Go Big
2. Don't lose my sketchbook style
3. Let the watercolor do more of the work for me

I planned to capture this fist-sized fruit on an 18 x 24 piece of Strathmore 400 watercolor paper.

It took hours.  Mostly because, in order to capture that deep deep glowing, almost pulsating red, I had to paint about 7 layers of various red glazes on all that paper, then wait for it to dry!   My goodness, it takes a lot of patience to paint in watercolor!  Clearly, if I'm going to pursue this, I need to figure out the second hobby that I can pursue in the periods between layers of a watercolor painting!  Or have three or four paintings going at once...  advice welcome if any of you have have experience with this sort of thing.

Anyhow, here is a look at my class workspace, and the dragonfruit portrait in progress.

During this process I realized that working out of my little palette would not cut it for these larger paintings.  Starting tomorrow, I'll be bringing my tubes and something to mix in.  I completely emptied my red wells in my work today.

Below is the final dragonfruit portrait.  

About those drips.  Cool huh?  Kind of takes the portrait and makes it meta.  Is it a dragonfruit?  Or a painting of a dragonfruit?  I love the way they change the entire composition.  I think they add a liveliness to the painting that it didn't have with just the fruit.

Should I claim I planned that?  Or should I admit that the first giant drip occurred when I went to the bathroom, so I couldn't even begin to catch it in progress and clean it up?   I could claim the truth, which is after I wailed (but only for about 10 seconds), I realized, hey, that looks kind of good.  I should add a few more drips...

I celebrated that I didn't let the drips derail me.  And that I actually used them to get something much cooler than anything I could have thought of on my own.  

I think that might be part of my learning to "let the watercolor work for me."  I have to let the water have more freedom on the paper.  Sometimes that means I'll ruin a piece, because I'm still learning what I'm doing.  But sometimes it means I learn something I never would have thought of on my own.

I will have to try to remember this the next time I ruin a piece.  It all balances out.  

This Beet's It All

I did a lot of sketching in my watercolor class today, including my first attempts at working on 18 x 24 paper.

I felt intimidated.  So much space.

My teacher, a compassionate man, told me that maybe I would feel more comfortable stepping up.  Using a 9 x 12 sketchbook (one of my largest), but doing something "heroic"--like one vegetable (or fruit), larger than life.

Ok.  I finished class with one golden beet, large.  And an experiment in black gouache (which I've never tried before).

I am pleased with this piece, especially in terms of my three goals for this class:

1. Go Big
2. Don't lose my sketchbook style
3. Let the watercolor do more of the work for me

Check (sort of), check, and check!

I started by painting the negative space around the beet with thick black gouache.  I wanted it to be opaque and matte and unvaried in tone.  I thought a lot about the composition before I started, and chose to leave the greens mostly out of it.  I liked the basic diagonal direction of the object, with the large circle in the lower left.

When I got to the beet itself, I used layer after layer of color to build form and (I hoped) a sense of the glowing color of the golden beet.  Juxtaposing these transparent colors to the opaque matte black helped them stand out and glow just a bit more!   I am pleased that this seems to catch the lumpy odd shape of this particular veggie.

You know, I don't really like to eat beets, so I never buy them.  As a result, I've never really looked at one.  Have you?  Because dang, they are gorgeous.  I kind of feel like I could paint purple and golden beets many many times before I'd get tired of the colors in the root, not to mention the amazing greens.

I'm inspired to go to the grocery before my next class and grab something else I never eat that would be fun to draw....  so I'm off to troll the fruits and vegetables, looking not for something good to eat, but for something good to paint!

The Big Beet--The Going Big Project Part 1

First up in my July watercolor studio class:  fruits and vegetables.  Our choice.

Farmers' Market is going great guns here in Michigan right now, so I trolled all the available goodies and decided on some beets of various colors.  I liked the roots, the greens, the deep colors.

I go into this painting class knowing that I have trouble getting deep colors, with the level of contrast that I like.  So these seemed like a good subject.

I reminded myself of my three goals:

1. Go Big
2. Don't lose my sketchbook style
3. Let the watercolor do more of the work for me

First thing, to warm up, I sketched a golden beet in my sketchbook.  I'm working in a Strathmore mixed media 500 book right now.

I'm pleased with how this sketch turned out, with a sense of the roundness of the root and the layers of the various leaves coming off of it. 

I also discovered the Daniel Smith quinacridone gold is one of my new favorite colors!  You see it here throughout, but most clearly in the top of the beet.

Next, for fun, I tried the same beet again, on a super rough watercolor paper from India.

Exact same colors and brushes.  Very interesting how the color settles in the pockets of the paper and creates a more mottled effect.  Plus, scanning the paper throws all kinds of weird shadows (that's why it looks gray speckled in the scan above).  

Finally, I felt warmed up enough to tackled the beets!  ALL THE BEETS!!!  PLUS GREENS!!!!

ON BIG PAPER!!!!!!!

So here is my Go Big version of the beets, on 18 x 24 Strathmore 400 watercolor paper.

And for fun, here's a final shot of the beets and all three of my versions, done in about three hours.

I moved pretty fast, as you can imagine, to get these done (along with chatting and drinking coffee with my colleagues) in three hours.

I think, however, that's part of my sketchbook style.  I like to move quickly most of the time.  Sometimes, yeah, I like to sit and really draw something measured and detailed.  But most of the time, I'm more interested in fast lines, with some level of accuracy, that capture and convey what I'm noticing.

And hey!  Look, ma!  No pen!  No pencil either, actually.  I went right onto the paper in all three of these directly with paint on my brush.  I'm not sure if I'm letting the watercolor do more of the work for me, yet.  I think it's more like now I'm drawing with paint instead of pen.  But I did remember to allow the washes to bleed and blend, particularly on the beets themselves.

Super fun.  Looking forward to drawing more beets soon.  And maybe some other fruits and vegetables!