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One might think that cloud studies would be easy to do in Oregon but the fact is that Spring and Fall are when we have the best clouds. In Summer the sky is pretty much cloudless and in Winter it’s just a single endless cloud with no discernible form. I stared this plen air and it was awful but I couldn’t leave it alone. I like it better now.
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6″ x 8″ oil on paper 6″ x 8″ oil on canvas
Two more pear and plucot paintings. one painted direct and the other is one of the earlier value studies glazed with color. My camera doesn’t seem to want to register turquoise. The colors are way off in these especially the backgrounds which are turquoise in both paintings. I messed with them quite a bit in Photoshop trying to get the color right but it just made them look weird so I’ve posted them without any of the color adjustments.
I admire the paintings of Deborah Paris who uses an indirect painting method. I had those value studies sitting around from last week so I decided to try some glazing.
This is after a couple of layers but I think I need to get some softer brushes for the technique to be effective.
Deborah Paris explains her method here.
Quick monochromatic value studies. Rather than using black, the greys were mixed with different combinations of complements and Titanium White. Some are made with Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna, Alizarin Chrimson and Pthalo Green, Prussian Blue and Cad Red Medium.
All 6″ x 6″ oil on canvas, paper or board.
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8″ x 5″ ink and watercolor
This is my daughter’s dog. She’s away at college. He looks like a puppy but he’s really getting quite old, 15 or 16. That one eye is blind and he’s mostly deaf, except at dinner time. My daughter picked him out at the pound, when he was 5 and she was about 8. His papers said that he’d been an outside dog and was not good with cats but he’s never complained about sleeping in my daughter’s bed nor chased our cat. He likes to wear one of his ears flipped back. He blew his knee out, a few years ago and needed surgery and, although he spends most of his day in slumber, he still has a little bounce in his step on his walks.
I’ve been very busy with work and haven’t had time or energy to do anything but some sketching. I’ve enjoyed trying to learn a little more about goauche.
This is another quick sketch, testing out papers. This is a piece of Arches Text Wove/Velin Arches that was sent to me by a fellow Sketch Journaler, Roz Stendahl to try out.
watercolor ink and gouache
It wets more readily than the handmade paper put it is quite a bit less substantial and buckles a lot when wet.
I also did a little more testing with Noodler’s ink and it does seem to run on the Twinrocker paper I just bound into a sketchbook. I checked their website and they say that it should be waterproof on cellulose paper. The paper is cotton rag so should be cellulose. I’ve written them for advice.
I splurged and bought some handmade paper from Twinrocker Paper Mill to make my next skectchbooks. Although I like to paint with watercolor, I don’t really know what I’m doing. After I made one sketchbook, I wanted to try the paper out so I did these little sketches of our dogs on some leftover scraps.
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Watercolor and ink on Twinrocker Handmade paper
I was a little disappointed that the paper seemed to resist the watercolor more than I’m used to with the Fabriano Artistico I usually use. Maybe this is the way good watercolor paper is supposed to be. I seem to remember that you’re supposed to wet the entire paper before painting on it, which I did not do. Since I work back and forth with ink and watercolor I’d rather not have to do that. If any expert watercolorists happen to see this, I’d appreciate it if you could enlighten me on this.
The other thing I wanted to test was if the ink I use would be waterproof on these papers. I use several kinds of inks including Noodler’s and Platinum Carbon in my fountain pens. For dip pens I use Calli and Dr Martin Bombay India ink. I like to be able to paint back over ink lines with watercolor. Some inks depend on a chemical reaction with the paper to become waterproof and the reaction depends on the content of the paper. The testing I did was also a bit disappointing. Most of the inks ran when I painted over them, some worse than others. My testing was not very thorough so I still have hope that I can find a method that works for me.
This is a really weird color scheme. I wanted to see if I could make the oranges read against a red backdrop. The red is pretty much pure cadmium red medium. I found it challenging to read the values with all this red.
6″ x 6″ oil on canvas
I would have to say that the end result is pretty ugly. I don’t think I could live with this on my wall but it was an interesting exercise.
