Sunflower leaves - decay

I used to paint like this most days, now I'm lucky if I get this flow once in a month, maybe longer. It's nearly a week since I was at my easel, and I won't get to it for another two weeks at least. But this. This makes me really happy. Some day, I know, I will be in the space again where I can paint again. In the meantime, I sketch and experiment. It doesn't completely satisfy my need to create, but it keeps me engaged with creativity all the same.

4 postcard-sized thumbnails on quarter sheet watercolour paper. Oh, and phthalo blue makes gorgeous darks. I already knew that, but for some reason don't keep phthalo blue in my palette. Something to consider.

And a little experiment with a graphite stick.

 

At the hairdressers

My hair is not what it used to be. It needs a lot more care than in the past, and more frequent visits to the hairdresser, for colour and cut. A good excuse to sketch. I wasn't going to, but then, once I started, I couldn't stop.

 

Art supplies for travel

Here we go again. I will have to cull some of these before I pack. But these colours are so gorgeous together that it will be a difficult choice!

Blues

Trying a few blues I have in my stash, and a nice orangey-yellow. Not sure any of them are for me, to be honest. Though I'm currently using some left-over phthalo blue in a palette and it's making gorgeous darks when mixed with other transparent pigments.

 

Clarkes Bakery Cabra

It was a bit of a journey, but I enjoyed sketching in Cabra. The bakery was really busy, but there was space across the road to sketch it. And Brendan had joined me, so it was a good excuse to draw him again! He should be pleased with this version of him. Not bad for a bus pass holder!

The Wall - Dublin Sketchwalk on the occasion of International Urban Sketchers Week

1-7 May was the first International Urban Sketchers Week. We did quite a bit in Dublin Sketchers for it. Well, when I say 'we', you know what I mean. 

This sketchwalk was inspired by a journey that Chris had organised for the Wednesday sketchers, following along the route of the old Dublin City Wall. Like most old cities, Dublin defended itself with a wall to prevent enemies from entering and plundering. The Vikings had mostly wooden walls, so there is nothing left of that. But the Anglo-Normans (yes, they came to Ireland too, after 1066!) built solid stone walls. Parts of it are still visible. Others are just marked by stones with a circle embedded in them. These markers were actually put in place by Pat's brother, so we feel a strong connection to this journey. 

We started at the Record Tower at Dublin Castle. The sun was shining and the wrought iron behind me cast a shadow on my book. A shadow! We don't get those very often in Ireland. So I had to paint it for posterity.

We walked across the back of Dublin Castle to the corner of Ship Street Little and Ship Street Great. So many tourists in Dublin, it's hard to avoid them. Some of the groups are quite large and take over the footpaths. Some have tour guides speaking through a microphone. As if we need more noise in the city! And somehow, the Yield sign seemed important at the time.

Onto Lamb Alley. Where this building at the back of the Iveagh Markets seemed much more attractive to me than the big chunk of city wall that is there at the top of the road. No tourists here. Not the safest spot for tourists, and yet, there is so much of the old Dublin here. This building is the former wash house, and the window is a diocletian window. With Pat around, you always learn something new! Hopefully some day, the legal wrangles will be resolved and the Iveagh Markets will open again. It is so sad to see such amazing parts of the city abandoned.

A quick sandwich in St Audoen's park, and I was ready to sketch again. My energy was starting to run low, so I kept it simple. The people on the left were jumping on some sort of musical instrument. Think of a park version of Tom Hanks in Big in the toy store! And Maya was the perfect zen sketcher in the foreground.

After a little break on my own in a café on Dame Street, I was ready to join the others again at Essex Gate. I had already drawn the building across the way on a previous occasion, so I decided to sketch the sketchers. I added the lines and colour at home, and called them The Usual Suspects.

And for our final location, before we went to the Beer Temple, we sketched on the plaza beside City Hall. The wall marker was actually used as a drying line by the occupant of the tent. If you're curious about our journey and you want to see everyone else's sketches, click here and here.

Shapes from Shinjuku Gyoen

OK, abstract explorations are fun to do, but I never seem to be fully satisfied with the result. So, back to painting from my own photos. Trying to find a different focus for each thumbnail, rather than 4 thumbnails looking almost the same.

Cascade Green, Green Gold, Quin Gold and whatever else was in my palette. I had forgotten how much I love Cascade Green! And I do love it when I can distill a scene to its most basic building blocks. Need to remember to keep a painting to 5 big shapes. Or less even. The one I would like to paint in a larger format is the bottom right. So simple.

 

More abstract Greens and a few bright colours

More turquoise than greens, but that is a colour I love, particularly associated with a pinkish red. I used watercolours, Neocolor and acrylic markers. Let's see now how they look when I take them individually. First impression is: not enough darks, too many colours, too many shapes. The only one I really like is the top left one. But I do like to look at all six of them together. Somehow, there is a harmony to them.

Greens in gouache, with a pop of colour on top.

Reduce the variables, I hear her shouting in my head! Yes, I have resisted the urge to buy gouache tubes. But I do have a few leftovers from a previous excursion in the world of gouache. And I couldn't resist. Despite the fact that all I had to play with was a turquoise and an orange-yellow, plus black and white. Ooh, I do like circles. And dry brush. And a little pop of pink Neocolor on top.

warm and cool greens?

I'm jumping from one thing to the next. But I guess there is some consistency in the colour scheme. Warmish and coolish greens. I can probably push them further than this.I enjoyed using some Naples yellow in one of the mixes, and lots of water, to desaturate the colours. I need to look at them one by one now to figure out what aspect I like and which ones don't work for me. I have difficulty seeing the big picture with all these shapes and colours jumping at me, so, let's cut them into squares and look at them separately (digitally first). When I do that, I think I like the ones with homogeneous shapes and more dark values. That's a start, I guess. But I do also like circle shapes, fireworks shapes and little dots.