Swan Bits

Here’s where I got the main photo reference:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Down_%28086%29,_October_2009.JPG

Next stop on this trip was a bus breakdown.   So I sketched the local swans.

I never knew they had almost black legs and feet and their knees/elbows are knobby!

2 more lessons to go and it will be on to Laure Ferlita’s Greece Trip!

Save the caps on your organic milk cartons, 6 of them fit snugly (I had to squish them in but not too much)  in a regular size Altoid tin.   They weigh very little and you can swap out your favorite colors as you like since they aren’t glued in.  (save lots of caps)  And for travel, 6 is probably an okay number of paints, maybe I’ll change my mind about that after I try it.

This tin needs to be painted white inside the lid for a mixing palette and I’ll need a separate thingy to carry brushes, paper and water.  But for now, it seems to be a good idea…..

Now I have to go pick my colors.  I’m just starting an Imaginary Trip to Ireland with Laure Ferlita and think I might use this tin for her trip as if I were really traveling.  At least use just the 6 colors I’ll choose for starters.

More on this later, so ya’ll come back now, ya hear?

For the first time in days, we’ve got a sky that’s not solid gray.   So I wanted to try my hand at capturing the colors.  About 8:30 this morning, and it changed very fast.  When I started there were a few clouds and lots of blue sky, within less than an hour, it’s all gray again.  And that tree actually looks pretty close to the one standing there, I surprised myself!

This view is out my west facing window, my favorite window, in the most inconvenient location in the house, the laundry room.  I used my Prang set, which I’m liking more all the time.  Just a few colors is great, no big decisions about what color to use next.

I’m trying to paint a bit or draw a bit of something every day and this Strathmore Visual  Mixed Media paper journal is working well.   It calls to me without being pretentious!  Gotta not scare the elephant…..

Actually, I just read something that really caught my attention, from Joe Miller’s book “Old Watercolorists Never Die, They Just Wet Their Sheets”  (which is like listening to an old, trusted painting friend, a keeper book)  Joe says, on page 26  “Isn’t it funny how we listen to that little voice inside our heads.  I hear it loudest when it says,  ‘Joe, that’s that’s the worst painting Ive ever seen.’   But when it brags on me, I can hardly hear it at all.  I’d like to know what gives that little voice the right to critique my work?  When and how did he become the expert?”

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, or something.

This tree has been here since before we moved in 28 years ago.  It was just a young-un and it’s on the border of our back yard and the neighbor’s to the north.  We had been here just a short while and the old guy, Charlie, who owned the property next door was out back with a younger friend, getting ready to cut it down.  I just happened to be in the ‘back 40′ as we call the back-back yard (our lot is double deep) at the time they were revving up.

I begged Charlie to leave it, he wanted to take it down as it would shade his garden when it got bigger.  Surprisingly, he changed his mind.  He lived only another few years and was unable to garden anymore anyway.  So the tree still stands, it’s lived and grown up through several other owners, no one wants to put a garden in these days, so I think it will be safe.  Actually, our garden is just off to the left of this photo, out of view.

I see this tree every day out my laundry room window, I check it every morning to see what the weather is like.  In the spring it will have blue jays and crows and cardinals and tufted titmice and many other birds teaching their kids to fly from it’s branches.  The squirrel family plays in it and it’s Caleb’s favorite spot for pooping under.  (I clean up often).

We’re nearing winter, Dec 21st,  and my oak will hang on to many of it’s leaves through most of the winter, dropping them when the buds come for spring.   It drops a few acorns, not many, and the squirrels plant them around.  A baby from this big mommy is growing in our garden now and there’s one waaay out in our front yard coming up, too.

I sketched this first with a unipin pen, .03 black and painted it with my Peerless palette  (see earlier post), using a waterbrush (a match made for each other) then went in when it was dry and added some darker darks and lighter bits with Aquastic watercolor oil crayons.   Took about 40 minutes all told.  That includes the writing bit.

This class is really teaching me to pay attention!  I never would have noticed how important this tree is to me if I hadn’t done this assignment.  And I’m learning to stop talking to myself in such a negative way about my skills.  Serves no purpose except to make me want to quit……which I’m not doing.  Have I said this before?  lol,

Trying to organize my art supplies, so I can find what I know I have instead of just buying more, I came across something cool.

Back in 1988 I was possessed to buy a 15 color set of Peerless watercolors, then just $6.  (What made me want them was the company that made them was just a few blocks from where I grew up.  And they were watercolors.  I wasn’t painting or drawing at the time.)   I had tried them a little bit, using them as the instructions suggested.  Cutting off a piece of the color-filed paper and putting it in water.   I remember doing it with 3 colors, it wasn’t fun, so I put them away….for 23 years.

Now when I found them, I looked on the internet to see if they were still being made and Wowza!  I came across  on youtube, this:

Jane Davenport, I never heard of her but look what she does!   Funny, the first pictures she shows are of Paris, which coincidentally is the class I just took with Laure Ferlita, Imaginary trips.  Which got me painting again after 40 years.  Funny old world…..

So anyway, that’s what I did with my set, see here:

Then I tried them out.  And I love them.  Just using this and a water brush and tissue, I’m ready most anytime the mood hits me.

See my first attempts,  it’s OK to play.  Yes it is.  (I’m telling my gremlin “yes it is”).

I did this for a card for my 93 year old Mom.   She got it today and loves it, even if it’s a fake/copy-sort-of of an Erik Blegvad illustration in a cookbook.  Which I got, not for the recipes, but for his art.

Don’t they look like fun?  Have you ever tried these?