Inktober 2016

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#Inktober makes October way better. I have been down in the dumps lately which has made drawing a struggle. Inktober is a good push for me to get back into the swing of looking forward to a drawing. Here is day one! Not too terribly happy with the drawing, but I did it and that is what matters. I don’t usually do ink wash but though I would give that a try…I will consider ink washes for the next few sketches as well. #inktober2016 has some prompts as well…so I decided to use todays prompt to choose the subject matter. Today’s prompt was FAST.

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Sea Creatures

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I must be easily influenced! One of my friends mentioned interest in Horseshoe Crabs and off I went to work on Horseshoe crabs. Never would I have thought to do a painting of this particular sea creature. But, it was super fun! And, I learned a little bit about them too. I am going to do a series of 3. One more to do. I actually love their shape and design. These lent themselves to the encaustic medium as a finish…and the addition of white broken shells. Both of them are done on cradled birch panel, using a combination of oil bar, watercolor and casein, encaustic and the found natural shells. Lots of fun! I just have to decide the color scheme for the last one!

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Recent Work

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I have been drawing, just not posting. Fourth of July holiday was our week vacation time. Lots of camping and sailing…and I always have good intentions to do some sketching, but it is still difficult for me to settle down. We seem to spend a lot of time moving our gear in and out of the boat and then off to another island!

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Luckily we spent two days at Little Hens so I spent a little time doing some landscape drawing (which I really never do). Once I got back home and unpacked it was back to #sktchy and faces. I am also working on some fish studies for larger paintings. The Right Whale seemed a good choice.

One and a half days left on vaca and then back to work.

Fishing

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I have been trying to finish this one up for a couple of weeks. Fish drawings for my husband! I was doing a lot of birds and he said, how about some fish! So, this is for my husband John.

Our plow guy takes out our house marker (or mailbox if up) every year. Another one bit the dust this past winter. Here is our new sign, found wood on the beach, painted in acrylic–atlantic salmon seemed a good choice for a coastal Maine house. We’ll see how long it lasts!

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Still working on my faces. Work in progress today–taking more time than I normally do.

Gifts

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Working on a little birthday gift for my husband’s aunt. She is turning 80 in May. Hard to think about what kind of subject matter would be best…settled on Lily of the Valley as this is the official flower of May. Difficult little buggers to get right! Fun to work on though.

Also messing around with oil bar paint on found beach wood. Thinking of moving on to shells, or back to the birds. Vacation week is coming to a close.

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Bird Week

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Somehow I got focused on the water birds this week. Feels like the right subject matter while at the beach. Someone pointed out to me that I keep cutting the poor birds beaks off! It happens a lot! For the next one I will try to keep the beak within the frame. I am really enjoying the paint transfer technique with the oil paint…and I have discovered how to make this work on canvas as well. The line is more difficult to control on the canvas, but still offers up a quality that I appreciate.

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Dreaming of the beach

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Taking a break for packing up my art supplies and I must be dreaming of my vacation coming up in the #outerbanks of NC. I took the resource photo for this painting soooo many years ago…I have been looking at it for a long time. Going through my supplies I found this blue paper and the old photo, and well, there you have it. I like the way the casein worked against the blue color of the paper, a little dry brush technique in areas created a nice effect. I will try some more of these. I think that the background needs more consideration, but a fun experiment (and break from packing!)

Looking forward to several days in a row of painting and drawing at the beach.

Repurposed

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This new expressive line technique seems so perfect for reinterpreting some of my past sketches. It’s difficult for me to draw the same thing again…even though I feel like that is probably a good approach for refining work. But, I tend not to want to do it. I stumbled onto this idea while looking for a way to “try” out the line technique and have discovered a way to explore the previous sketch in a new way.

I liked the way this turned out, I might try a few more in different color combinations and on different paper stocks. This linen type paper seems to work very well, gives some nice “bleeding” effects.

Line Expressions

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It’s been a marathon weekend of #sketchbookskool catch up! I got through my last 3 weeks in two days. However, I am still shy of the last weeks homework assignment. The last week is to sketch a “tiny adventure”. Unfortunately, I have run out of time for even the tiniest of adventures, so this assignment will have to wait a few days.

This particular session has really been my favorite one so far, lots of good ideas to carry forward in sketchbooks and finished work. I was kind of suspicious of Penny Dullaghan’s lessons at first…somehow I just didn’t think that they were for me exactly. But, I was WRONG!!! She gave 3 different lessons on how to achieve some interesting line work…creating ways where you have no choice to let the technique dictate the result (to some degree). I only tried one, but I love it. I plan on trying the others as well. I changed it up a bit…but the end result worked out really nicely.

So, this piece was created by slathering some water mixable oil paint onto a plain piece of paper and then placing my “sketchbook” paper on top, and then drawing right on top with an old dental instrument (she used a screw driver). When you pull it up, you have “transferred” the oil paint to the paper, but it reveals your line drawing (and some smudges that work nicely too). I then went back over it with some watercolor and colored pencil. I think this will be a fun way to revive some of my older sketches and turn them into something different.

Spirograph Break

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I have been doing spirographs in EVERYTHING! Time to maybe take a break. They don’t work everywhere. Now that I am getting the hang of them (the spirographs) I need to be more judicious with their use. I tried to do another Cala Lily, but it feel short of my expectations, so I moved on to Darwin’s Orchid. I love the shape of this orchid. Memories of Kauai and the botanical garden.