Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Kachigawa

Back to Kachigawa! I finally found it!! And it's a beauty, all white in the sunshine. Not the easiest to paint - I worked all in negative shapes. Lost some of the proportions along the way, but I'm happy overall. Next time we go, we'll have to take a photo in front of the house and walk the streets together, looking at all the lovely houses in the neighbourhood! Something to look forward to!



And then on the right page, I sketched the neighbour's jumble of roofs in fountain pen with water-soluble ink.



Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Would it look better in gouache?


Would painting the view I've been grappling with in gouache in full panorama help me? Not really. But it was fun!

Playing with colours


What do I do when I need a break? A watercolour caterpillar! Thank you Sketching Playlab for this idea that has become a staple of my practise! I just love painting little square without worrying about what I'll do with them!
 
 




Monday, March 29, 2021

Chiaroscuro?

The challenge from Dublin Sketchers last week was to sketch in chiaroscuro. I decided to try two self-portraits. As is always the case, I see a bit of myself in both of them! It's all to do with the "self-portrait face", looking straight at the mirror, with my the eyes staring, the mouth all serious and the chin slightly down! Not my best look, the second one in particular!!



Saturday, March 27, 2021

Beara - The end of the road?

I think I've been here before, haven't I? I love everything about this painting, except the composition with the road to nowhere!! Someone I know would probably call it self-sabotage. I'll call it part of the journey! Even though I painted this on half sheet! It didn't take that long, apart from the 20 thumbnails and quarter sheet explorations! Actually I painted this in exactly the same amount of time as a quarter sheet. Just used a bigger brush and had to keep a close eye on paint drying in different parts, but it's helped me gain confidence in painting larger! And that is a very important part of the journey for me, to overcome that fear of painting big!


I haven't decided what to do with it yet - I could paint more vegetation where that curve of the road looks wrong. In my experience that rarely ends well. Or I could crop it. But there's no turning back once that's done!! I should really play with it in Procreate, but I haven't had the time to learn it yet. And, strangely, part of me likes it the way it is although that makes absolutely no sense at all!

Here are various options I'm looking at:

Crop 1





Crop 2



And a couple of close-ups in parts that I absolutely adore!!







Friday, March 26, 2021

Colours and final plan of action!

 It's all there. Ready for the final jump! 





A little gouache break

Sometimes, I just need to remind myself that art is play for me. I don't have commercial ambitions. I just like to paint for the joy the process gives me, not for an end result to be appreciated by others. But sometimes, I forget and I push towards more serious goals. Nothing wrong with that. Except that I can be competitive. And not just with myself!! Now it's all coming out!! Not something I'm proud of !

So a little fun break with the Queen of gouache, Maru Godas, on the Domestika platform, was just what I needed. Oh don't worry, watercolour will always be my first love, but I just love Maru's beautiful illustration style and I had heard lots of good things about this course.

So here is what I'm playing with at the moment!




I love how Maru Godas paints trees - and it's something I want to explore more for urban sketching. I'm playing with a mix of gouaches that I've had in a drawer for a while now. Always good to use up the old art supplies!!



Thursday, March 25, 2021

Happier with this one

Too many trees, and the colours are a bit softer than I would like, but I'm starting to get a feel for what I want in this scene from Beara. Although I'm still not sure about the overall composition!! A bit late, says she!


Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Sketching in the garden again

The sun is out! Spring is finally here! So I had to take a break and sit in the sun for a bit. And sketch what was in front of me! I got lost in these garlic plants, but getting lost is what it's all about!



Happy Colours


I need happier gouache colours, I think. I ended up with too many olive greens and neutral browns! Next time, I will do this exercise with leftover gouache from an actual project. That will be much more interesting.

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

A few more people

I had an opportunity to sketch a few more people when I joined Virtual Sketch Leicester on Zoom for their virtual visit to Dublin. Just a fountain pen and ArtGraf graphite. None of the people look like themselves, but it was so good to be sketching from a moving target!

And it was wonderful to see Birgit from Germany there. We had met in Amsterdam in 2019 the day after the Urban Sketchers Symposium - I had gone to a café, and she was sketching, and I sat across from her, and we sketched each other. We were later joined by Pat and Deb and we had a portrait party. It was a wonderful afternoon that was the perfect end to a perfect Symposium. Seeing her on Zoom brought back all those happy memories!


Monday, March 22, 2021

Time to push


This is the ugly duckling phase, where I do everything wrong, so the next one will be better! (Quarter sheet)

Sunday, March 21, 2021

More playing

I explored the techniques from Sketching Playlab some more. Some more successful than others. But I enjoyed incorporating a bit of watercolour pencil into all the juicy texture effects! Even if the roses ended up looking like beetroot!!


Sketching Playlab - Textures

I love Sketching Playlab's sessions. This week it was all about textures in watercolour.
As you can see, I had a lot of fun lifting and spraying and stamping and dragging! I went a bit heavy with my watercolour at the end there, but it doesn't matter! I will definitely explore these techniques further!


 




Hands

A little bit extra I did during OneWeek100People2021. I tried to sketch hands in more detail. I was struggling with it. But then I remembered the extended-tool technique from Sketching Playlab and all of a sudden, my hands were expressive and full of life!



And Sumi always likes to be on top of my sketchbooks when I'm trying to photograph them! At least he doesn't jump on the desk when I'm painting!


Saturday, March 20, 2021

One Week 100 People - Day 5

Final day of One Week 100 People. I'm pretty sure I didn't meet the 100 mark. But I had a lot of fun, and I learned a lot with this new way of working, which really helped me get away from obsessing about detail. Like the little detail of where is the woman's body? No, she wasn't cut up! Iphigénie had put away her knife, and she was actually comforting the woman who was lying with her head on the sacrificial stone. I just didn't see that the woman was actually in front of Iphigénie, and by the time I realised, it was too late. I'll blame it on the lighting. Or on the fact that I was chatting away on Zoom with a friend while I did this!




One Week 100 People Day 4

I enjoyed Iphigénie en Tauride so much that I decided to stay with it. One simple scene alone had so many dramatic expressions. Plus I'm trying to sketch hands better, and there were lots of close-ups! I also tried to include a little bit of the backdrop, again using the techniques described by Marion Rivolier in her wonderful book!