Another doodlie-type post...

I know you're completely surprised to see a drawing of my hand--I just never do that! It is a modified contour that I went back and added some details and color to. Ignore the writing. I had some drawings above it that I had copied from other artists' sites. I really don't like posting stuff that I copied, so I cut them out. This was done on scrap w/c paper and will be pasted into my sketchbook. ('My Molie' is completely random. I'm not sure where it came from, but this is not a Molie!)



I actually don't remember where or how this came about. I often sketch while doing other things. I was testing out a technical pen I was just given and then testing the solubility of the ink. It's a simple sketch, but I like it.






This was done while watching a video online of how to paint trees with two colors. The two colors I've used are lemon yellow and prussian blue. I went back after the fact and added the lines with the same technical pen. This was an interesting exercise. Now, if I can just remember to do it like this! Sometimes I learn these things, then promptly forget to apply them.







This is a sketch of a sketch that I did. I was still playing with the technical pen. Messed up on the hand a little, but I liked the way the mouth and the nose came out. Splashed on the paint and called it Self-portrait #12 of 100. I'm moving along very slowly on this project. It's a good thing I didn't set a time limit!

All of these are on scraps of the canson XL 140 lb watercolor paper. I'm working on getting to know the paper a little better since I had such a rough start with it. I've got too much of it left to let it go to waste!

PS Thank you to all my new followers! I always try to find the blogs of all my followers, so I can follow you too. So, if I've not done that, it is because when I clicked your icon, it didn't give me a link. If you have a blog you would like me to see, please send me an email or a comment! I like to share the love!

Sketchbook Miscellany

Finally there was a day when I could sit outside and comfortably sketch without feeling the oppressive heat suffocating me. My husband was working on a lawnmower in the garage. I sat in a camping chair out front, in the shade. Of all the things I was surrounded by, this dirty old gas can is what I chose to sketch! (well, technically, I guess everything out there is dirty!) I sketched it in pencil. Then I used tracing paper to transfer it to watercolor paper. I knew of this technique, but believe or not, I had never tried it. I think one of the advantages of it is not worrying about messing up the original sketch. Definitely something to remember if you've lost your confidence or if you would just like to try painting with different techniques!


Sketches from posemaniacs. I had just about forgotten this site existed until someone posted some sketches they did. I filled nine pages (9"x12" sketchbook) with 30, 60, and 90 sec gesture drawings. Then, I went to random pose and did these sketches, untimed. I'm not sure how long they took, 5 mins or so? And for the first time, I realized I could keep the same pose and sketch it from a different angle. (The two on the left are the same pose, rotated slightly.)


This was done mostly while watching Pirates of the Caribbean. I paused the scene at the pier to draw the two men. I loved the guy's face on the left. Very unique! Started as a blind contour in ballpoint, so his face is somewhat skewed, but I like how it gives it a caricatured look. Then I drew the skeleton, bottom left, from memory. I have a photo of a skeleton head that I drew from next, to see how much I had retained in my memory sketch. More meerkats, started blind contour, shading and texture then added. This page was fun to do. See the tilted girl? Do you do that? Seems like there is always at least one drawing on my page which somehow ends up cockeyed!



This is self-portrait #11 of 100. (A redo of it, actually, as the first one was a disaster!) After the first sketchbook I bound, I actually made another, thinner one, using a different paper. Easier to carry around! My first one is a little wonky and I discovered that I had folded the pages against the grain instead of with it. So, this book actually turned out much better! However, I've now made another discovery. I really DISLIKE the Canson XL 140lb watercolor paper I bound in it! (I think it might be their student grade. ) Everything I've done on this paper has turned out dull and sort of fuzzy. It doesn't hold up to scrubbing at all! Here, I had a sketch that I really liked. I made a small mistake near the chin area, and using a technique that Dan told me about, I tried to gently scrub it away. And, I emphasize that I was gentle! Terrible results! The paper disintegrated and nothing I did would fix it. I only realized that it was the paper, and not me, while reading Cathy Johnson's Creating Nature in Watercolor, which I just purchased. (I love the book, Cathy!) Suddenly I realized that I had not done a single painting on this paper that I liked! And really, I think it was this blow to my confidence which started the whole block I've been suffering lately!

A Brutal Self-Portrait!

Everyone in my family has a "specialty", and when there is need for that specialty, that person is expected to do the job. For instance, my husband cooks the meat, I am not to be trusted. I cook the side dishes and homemade breads. I am also the painter of walls and ceilings and cabinets. Because I am persnickety and I won't leave splotches everywhere or crooked lines. No, definitely no crooked lines. I have a half inch flat watercolor brush that I do touch ups with! Well, recently someone stepped through the attic floor/bathroom ceiling, and after it was repaired I was sent in to do the painting. I hate painting ceilings!! Seriously! Neck and shoulders...it just isn't good! Anyway, as I grumbled while applying a second coat, I heard a reciprocating saw in the next room. I came around the corner just in time to see the saw blade hit the drain pipe to the bathtub upstairs and see the water come gushing down. It was not my job to clean up that mess (TG!), so I got off easy there; but, guess what I'll be doing again in the next couple of days? Yep...another ceiling. Bummer!
This is me, in my painting get-up: a cheapo baseball cap to protect the hair, and an old reject t-shirt of my husband's with paint all over it. Now, this is not an attractive look for me in the least, but I'm just going to go ahead and let you know that I didn't do myself any favors here! It is micron pen (sepia) and watercolor on exacompta sketchbook.

Self-Portraits 8 and 9

After my serious portrait attempt with charcoal left me feeling a little down, I decided I needed to try something a little more upbeat, fun. The charcoal drawing was laborious without the quality you would have expected for something taking so long. So, at the top of this sketchbook page I wrote, "unkempt me", because I hadn't showered yet, and I looked a little bedraggled. The shirt that I was wearing was actually just a plain dark blue t-shirt. I made up the stripes and the folds in the shirt and this actually turned out to be my favorite part. The drawing was done in five minutes (the best kind, if you want to know my opinion!) I like the colors I've used on this. Notice the name, 'unkempt me' has been cropped out here...I don't think I caught the slovenly part of my look. Plus, it looks like I have makeup on and went crazy with the blush, and who does that before the shower? I look serious, don't I? That expression makes me laugh. It is so recognizable in artists' self-portraits. This is pencil and watercolor in my exacompta sketchbook, which isn't for watercolor but works surprisingly well for simple ones. (you can see that the paper waves)



Eh, this wasn't intentionally a self-portrait. This was a doodle with a ballpoint pen that I thought looked similar to me, so I slapped on the glasses and watercolored. I'll never get to a hundred if I don't take these freebies when I can!

Of the self-portraits I've done so far, only #3 and # 8 (above) are from looking in a mirror. All the others, except nine, are from photos. Now, I really like #6, it is probably my favorite so far, but I think the two done from life are really good, and they were much easier. Both were drawn with relative ease. I will keep this in mind for the, um, 91 more that I have remaining!

Self-Portrait #7, and a Redo

You may remember this one from here. I really liked this sketch but ruined it with watercolors the first time. So, I redrew it from the prior sketch, and amazingly enough it looks MORE like him this time. I wanted a portrait similar to the one I did of myself (#6), so I could frame it and put it next to mine. (see it on the wall in the photo of my workspace?) Things didn't go as smoothly though, and even though I used the same paper, the mistakes couldn't be scrubbed out. The paper began to disintegrate. Can you see that dark spot under his chin? That would be one of the spots! I also don't like his pupils being that dark; they're distracting. This was sketched in pencil and the tone was added with neutral tint watercolor.

After seeing Dan's wonderful charcoal drawings, I decided to pull mine out and try using them. I had vine charcoal once upon a time, but I couldn't find it. I have these things, but don't confuse that with 'having used' these things before! Like my oil paints, they have been sitting in a drawer, unused. Now, when I did a quick sketch with the vine charcoal-- a couple of decades ago--I remember it being easy to smudge around. I didn't realize the pencils would be so different! If I had known it wouldn't be as easy, I think I would not have put in the tone the way I did. See all those lines in the background? I thought they would smudge out. Anyway, I struggled with this one and finally gave up. I knew something was off, but didn't realize exactly what, until I scanned it and accidentally hit mirror! Now do you see it? Maybe you saw it in the first scan and I didn't because my eyes weren't fresh, but when I mirrored it, it was so obvious!! There is a definite slant to the head that shouldn't be there. The good news is that I now know of a quick way to look at things anew. I'd like to try this again, but I think I'll pick up some vine charcoal next time I'm out, or perhaps locate the stash I have around here, somewhere!

There is a lot of talk amongst our group about how negative we can be on our own work. We see the flaws that others don't. I think about that a lot when I write my posts, but I just can't stop pointing them out. But, I wonder if that is really a bad thing? The way I see it, if I don't acknowledge the flaws, how can I improve? There is a lot that I like about my drawings too. I may not mention them as often, but I think if I didn't find some redeeming qualities, I would have quit already. Sometimes I am embarrassed to admit that I like them, almost like it is too immodest(?). Maybe, but perhaps by my picking out things that bother me, it might help you too? I can think of several occasions when other bloggers have pointed out things they didn't like, which I hadn't noticed or even thought about before. It was new to me, and I learned from it, and I can now apply that to my own artwork. What are your thoughts?

I'm moving slowly on these self-portraits. Number 100 seems so very far away!

Self-Portraits 4, 5, and 6

Whew! I've been doing some crazy things the last few days. Most of it has been a complete fiasco. Like the canvas that I glued tissue paper onto and then tried to do a portrait in acrylic. Only, I've very limited selection of acrylics and they didn't work the way I expected. Not only did the skin tone turn out a hideous orangy color, like someone spending too long at the tanning beds, but the tissue began to dissolve and break apart as I added layers of paint to hide the mistakes. It WAS a failure-- an utter failure. But that's one way I know I won't fail again. And it was fun to do something I've never tried before.

Not letting that get me down, I had something else I wanted to try. I've seen people draw and paint in books and I always thought it looked cool. So, I tore out the last pages of some book I had just read, you know the part where they introduce you to the first three chapters of some other book they want you to buy? I started splashing around and having fun. But, it was harder than I thought it would be. I misjudged how much the paint would lighten when it dried. I didn't get a good likeness. I tried again on another page...still didn't get a good likeness. So, I quit for the day, knowing that I had at least been experimental.

Oops...lips too red. Oops...face to red.

Oops. Oops. Oops. That was my yesterday.

So, I woke up today determined to do something a little better to get my confidence back. It started off as an exercise in tones, but I quickly realized my photo was taken with a flash camera and had washed out most of the tones. Though it's light, I kept going. I made a few mistakes along the way. Like when I got a little green mixed in with my black and then painted the lenses. Oh, that was a happy accident. Then I decided I would paint just my eyes blue. But the pupils weren't yet dry and it turned into more of a gray. I like it enough. I did have fun with this one. There were other things I had intended to explore in this one that I didn't get to, but hey, it's only #6 of 100!

You may wonder why I put that one at the top of the post, when I talk about it down here at the bottom. Well, it's like this: Would you be able to look at your blog with these horrible drawings being the first thing you see? No way! Not me! If I'm going to post my uglies, I'll do it with dignity thank you very much!

Self-Portrait #3 of 100

This is the first time I've ever attempted to draw something while standing up. And while the drawing only took about five minutes, my arm thought it took at least thirty! Wow! It was burning like I was holding a twenty pound sketchbook instead of the little 8" X 5.5" Exacompta (very lightweight!) that I was using! Seriously, my arm was nearly shaking by the end. This could become a new workout routine!

I'm undecided on the painted version. I like it; but it's not what I had pictured in my head. No reason to get down though...this is only number three!

Self Portraits 1/100 and 2/100

Nothing like a commitment to do 100 self-portraits to make you suddenly realize you need a haircut--BAD! So, I went and got one on Monday. Time to get on with the project; no more excuses!


It's a good thing I've committed to doing 100 of these. I can only get better, right? The first one I did for the series, Self-portrait Picking Weeds, was done from of photo of me working in our garden several weeks ago. It seems I spend a major part of my days doing this, so it's only appropriate to have as one of my portraits. My hair was a mess, half up, half fallen down. Wind blowing. You get the picture!




After surfing the internet for hours on end, without doing any sketching whatsoever, it being very late and time for bed, I finally decided I should at least do one drawing before bed. So, I did a very, very quick self-portrait with my Pentel pocket brush pen. Not being warmed up, nothing went quite right. It's on some cheap printer paper. Added watercolor the next day. The watercolor was very difficult; nothing wanted to stay wet long enough to make decent washes. Though the resemblance isn't all that strong, I do like it. It is looser than my usual work.

What I've been doing in the absence of my creative muse.

Okay, so my creative muse decided to just up and leave me; perhaps I stepped on his foot once too many times while dancing? Nevertheless, I've decided to keep going and I'll apologize profusely the next time I see him. What to do when nothing is working and nothing is inspiring?Well, I did this horrendous self-portrait. It was from a picture which wasn't so good to begin with, but then I proceeded to accidentally get out of lines here and there; and then it started looking a bit like a villain from a Batman movie. I'm posting it though, to prove that I can take what I dish out to my loved ones. I now think I understand why they run from me when my sketchbook is in hand!


You may recall, if you've been around long enough, that last year around my birthday I got a full-pan set of Yarka professional watercolors (above). I was asked my opinion of them and never got around to answering. I cannot say, with any real knowledge, how they compare to other artist quality paints, since mine were all student grade prior to this. I have since purchased a few tube paints, some Sennelier, some Dick Blick, and I do like both of these brands a little better but it could be due to them being tube paints. My biggest complaint about Yarka is the palette. If you have carried them around, it is very likely that when you open them again that the pans have come loose and scattered. They are set into some cheap plastic that can easily crack. And the 24 color, full-pan set is enormous. Not great for urban sketching.




Solution:I found a company called Kremer who sells empty palette boxes for a reasonable price. I could have ordered the large one for only three dollars more, but being more interested in portability, ordered the small one which holds eight full-pans. In my mind, this meant it held sixteen half-pans, but not so; I wasn't considering the width of the pan sides! It holds fourteen. I stayed with this format for about a week but found myself missing some favored colors, so I made a few modifications and now it holds 21 half-pans. I LOVE this setup! It is tiny and I can take it anywhere! (I filled most of the half-pans by cutting out half of the full pans from my Yarka set. It was a tedious process, but I'm happy.)


I also replaced my cheapo waterbrush (on the top) with some kuretakes from jetpens. The difference in quality between these two brands is incredible. The cheapo version was just too stingy with the water and my hand would shake while trying to paint and squeeze at the same time. It was frustrating and I couldn't see why everyone loved waterbrushes. The ones from jetpens are perfect. The plastic is soft and squeezable. Don't waste your money on the cheaper version (even if it is all your art supply store carries!)...for only a little more you get something that works the way it was meant to work! I will not be leaving home without them!

Okay, I'm off in search of my muse. Take care!

EDM #56 Self-portrait

My forty-second birthday is in ten days. I thought it would be nice to get a self-portrait in before everything starts heading south. (I heard that starts the day after your forty-second b-day!) This one is from a photo since every time I do one in a mirror I have that growl look. The eyes look a bit off, I think I've made my pupils too big.

And this is the one that I royally screwed up a while back. I went back and added payne's gray to the background to tone down the color a bit, and then painted my husband. I did a lot of guessing on the shadows and it probably isn't consistent. I like it okay...At least I feel like I can bring this one out of the closet now.

Wow...productive month for me. This post will tie me with my biggest month, and it is only the twelfth. (And I haven't typed the word "twelfth" in so long that it looks strange to me. hmm.)