Day 7

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Single Lily inspired by Georgia O'Keefe. Ink pen

Single Lily inspired by Georgia O’Keefe. Ink pen

Plans change. #AJChallenge Day 7, re-interpreation of Georgia O’Keefe’s Single Lily. I do love this painting by Georgia O’Keefe. However, I had my heart set on Emily Carr. But, it just didn’t work out, mostly because at the time I did this drawing the reference material for Carr just wasn’t available to me. This reference is from my wall calendar.

I didn’t miss Day 6 of the seed and pod challenge, just not super happy with the results, so no need to share that. Maybe I will revisit that day in February.

On to the turkish tea pot today! I feel fortunate that one of my friends sent me a photo to use as a reference. I didn’t want to have to google.

Stuck on shells

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Inktense and colored pencil

Inktense and colored pencil

Seems like shells are the subject matter of the moment. The great thing about them is that I have so many to choose from! Before my #sketchbookskool class  I was drawing a lot more from photos. I have discovered I really like drawing from life. Many of the shells I have are tiny, so I can just put them in my purse and pull them out to draw at any time.

For my next few drawings I am going to work on putting color down first and then working over in ink pen. Love, love, love working in ink. And, I am surprised at how much I like working without any guidelines.

Quick sketch: ink pen

Quick sketch: ink pen

Going slow.

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shell study: graphite

shell study: graphite

This week in #sketchbookskool is all about slowing down. It’s a really good way to end the class, Tommy Kane has been really enjoyable to learn from. I am not too keen on this homework assignment, but I get it. He wants us to take 3 to 6 hours to do a drawing, and the subject matter is “your kitchen”! Yikes. Again, I get it, he wants you to overcome that fear and challenge yourself to capture all those overwhelming details. I am working on figuring out how I can enjoy this, I think I am going to put some shells on the counter so that I have something I love to draw in the drawing. At the same time, I am going to work on a long detailed drawing of shells trying to incorporate the style of Georgia O’Keefe and Van Gogh. This should keep me pretty occupied.

Sketch above was a warm up for this assignment. A much more lengthy and detailed sketch…about 30 or 40 minutes, longer than I usually take. I did enjoy slowing down and really paying attention to all the variations in the shadow and in the shell.

Painting

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Black-eyed Susan

Black-eyed Susan

The thing I like most about encaustic painting is that you always have some sort of surprise. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t, sometimes you can fix it. I have discovered that casein paint works really nicely on birch panel and that they encaustic works really nice over the paint. Now the experiment is to see where the balance is between ground, underpainting and encaustic painting. I enjoy both of these mediums and I am going to keep trying to find the balance to see how they can work best together. Oh, and in the end, for some reason I decided to scratch into the wax surface,  liked the way that turned out! There is so much learning to do!

middle ground

middle ground

Here is the casein underpainting with the encaustic ground.

underpainting

underpainting

and here is just the casein underpainting

Sea Urchin

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seaurchinencaustic

Encaustic paint, photo on stone, with coral found on Pond Island in Maine

About 2″ x 3 1/2″

I wanted to see how a photograph would do on stone. I love working on the stone in encaustic. Unlike other substrates, the stone really absorbs the heat and stays hot for quite awhile. Because of that, you get a little more time with the paint. The wax stayed nice and hot…but not liquid while I placed the bits of coral around the image. I will try some more of these. The big problem, just like any substrate that you are adding photos to, is the air pocket issue. I like the idea of incorporating found objects.

Big Dog

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bigencaustic0813

My Big Dog

Photo manipulated in photoshop

Substrate: old book cover

Materials: encaustic paint, casein

Size: about 5″ x 7″

This is a photo of my dog “Big”. He was sitting in the snow waiting for something…probably a treat! Big provides lots of inspiration, as he is very photogenic. 

Iris

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irisonstone

Iris: Encaustic on Stone

Approximate size is 3″ x 4 1/2″

Materials: Casein, colored pencil, encaustic

This piece was inspired by a photograph that I took a couple years ago. I have very few Iris in my garden, I think I might be down to one that actually blooms! I love them though, in all their different blooming stages.