Month: February 2011

This little knitted chicken puppet has lived in my knitting bag for years atop my needle gauge.

I like using the piston fill waterbrush from Blue Heron Arts. It's easy to control the ink in the brush and you can even let it go a bit dry for a nice dry brush effect.

I did a few sketches at the Steamboat Arabia Museum into the Fabriano Venezia Journal. The last one was done in pencil then lightly gone over with pen and ink and watercolor. I like the control and feel of sketching with a pencil, but the tombow was fast to sketch with. Since it doesn’t fit completely on my scanner bed, the scan turned out pretty bad, I really have to speed up the search for a large format scanner.

Our assignment in Jane LaFazio’s Watercolor on Location class was to go sketching in a museum or shop and skip the pencil, instead sketching directly with a Tombow pen. After church today, I drove up to the Steamboat Arabia Museum to get in some sketches. I’d never been to the museum before and it was very nice. Our guide was wonderful, and I would have enjoyed the museum even without sketching. I’m one of those people who can focus and tune everthing else out (just ask DH, he hates trying to get my attention when I’m reading!!) so I really wasn’t bothered by folks peaking over my shoulder while I was sketching. I did get a laugh when I was roughing in a sketch of a gunpowder flask. The gift shop lady stopped by and said, “My, you are intent. Are you sketching the flask or a lightbulb?” What a hoot!!! Things like that definitely keep you humble!

For the watercolor sketching on location class, this week we are to go to a museum and do some pencil-free ink drawings using a watersoluble pen, the Tombow brush pen. I decided to give mine a test drive at home. It was dinner time when I got home from buying the pens, so I wedged in a couple of super-quicky sketches of Da Bear. I’m sure glad I did. The Tombow pen handles much differently than watersoluble ink in a fountain pen. It lays down a lot more ink and when water is added the wash is more intense and harder to control.

I bought the teacup that started my collection (and mild obsession) of all things tea while out antique browsing. DH, his dad and a brother were all off freezing at a Chiefs game. I didn’t want to stay home, so I bundled up baby R1 and we went out shopping. He made for a great shopping companion riding along in his sling!!

Fun with a fortune cookie!

With all the snow and bitter cold, I wouldn’t blame the groundhogs if they refused to come out of their burrows today!

Well January is finished and so is the journal of daily drawings that I made for the month. I really like the book I used, The art of watercolor, 180 gsm A5, 5.75″ X 8.50″. It took a pretty wet watercolor wash with little to no buckling and the paper was thick enough to prevent show through of dark colors. The only draw back to working in it was being limited to one type of paper and format, although I did like being able to make two page spreads across the gutter. I think this month I’ll just do maybe a drawing or so a week in a journal so I can use other papers for the rest of the time. I did todays drawing in a new journal, the Venezia by Fabriano 90lbs , 6″ X 9″. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite fit onto my scanner. I’ve run into this problem before and am thinking of researching a new scanner since mine is ancient anyways….. Any recs for a larger format scanner? The good thing about mine is that as a flatbed, it tucks away into the computer keyboard slide out tray of the rolltop desk where I let my laptop and printer rest. I can pull it out to scan and then tuck it out of the way when i’m finished. Do they even make flatbeds anymore? R1’s new set up is a big cube shaped all-in-one.