Working on This Weekend- 5/17/15

I finished a few little things this week, that's always fun. All three of them are now available in my Etsy store.

Winter Thistle, mixed media drawing on paper, 5x7 inches, finished.

I've been trying to finish up some of the many little drawings that I have floating around, and I started this one quite a while ago. I started the drawing by transferring the pencil outlines, tracing them with pen, and then scrubbing in shading with charcoal. Tracing with pen works nicely, because it doesn't smear or disappear when the charcoal is added over it. After that I refined the dark areas with more pen work, sharp pencils and charcoal, and added in the white highlights with white acrylic paint. 

Beach Shells, oil on panel, 5x7 inches, finished.

This is another picture I gave up on and put away before finishing. But I tried again, and now I think it looks finished. The sand has shape and interest to it, and the shadows on the shells make sense now. 

Dam Sunset, oil on panel, 5x7 inches, finished.

I love the colors in this one, and after a few tries the grasses look good too.

AZ Aspen, oil on canvas panel, 9x12 inches, unfinished.

Still working on this one, I tried another color on the fence, and this time it looks better. The fence and sidewalk at the bottom still need a little more work, but it's close to done.

Working on This Weekend- 5/10/15

 I finished a few things this weekend, trying to clean up a bit so I can start new pictures.

Dry Wash, charcoal drawing on paper, 10x14 inches, finished.

This drawing came from a photo my mom took in the desert a few years ago, of the patterns in a dry creek bed after a rain. It's charcoal on soft paper, with highlights in white pastel and white acrylic paint.

Beach Shells, oil on panel, 5x7 in, finished.

 I started this little painting about a year ago, and then didn't like how it turned out. But I reconsidered abandoning it and worked on the background a little more. Now it's more finished looking, the sand is interesting to look at and has a sense of distance and shape.

Dam on West, oil on canvas panel, 5x7 in, maybe finished.

 This is a little sunset painting I started a few months ago and then didn't know how to finish. I added detail to the grasses in front and worked on the road today, and maybe it might be done now.

AZ Aspen, oil on panel, 9x12 in, unfinished.

 Still tinkering with this one, the clouds were easy, but the tree and the fence in the front have been trickier. And for some reason the colors are hard to photograph, they come out looking strange no matter the settings. 

Winter Deer Skull, oil on panel, 16x20 in, unfinished.

Working on the grasses in the background of this painting now, but there's still a lot to do, just because of the size.

Working on This Weekend-3/16/15

I got a lot of painting done this weekend, and started a few new pieces too. Mostly I was trying to avoid working on the deer skull, it's at a tedious place, working on the background. So I started a few new things on Saturday and worked mostly on the deer skull on Sunday.

Horse drawing with Copic pen, 5x7 on Bristol paper, unfinished.

Little drawing of a horse I started a while ago and worked on a bit this week.

AZ Aspen, 9x12, oil on canvas panel, unfinished.

This will be a painting of an aspen with yellow leaves, from northern Arizona last fall.  The sky was such a deep blue that day, and I think I got pretty close to the right color. I tried a few colors from Williamsburg oil paints, and their Sevres Blue has been very useful, especially for skies, because it lightens dark blues without looking washed out.

Kinishba Ruins, 11x14 in, oil on canvas panel, not quite started yet.

Another picture I took on my last trip to Arizona, at the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. These are the Kinishba Ruins, a Mogollon and Anasazi great house site from the 1200s, that are sadly in pretty bad shape. The ruins have been partially restored a few times, some walls propped up and such, but still need a lot of work. I just picked the colors here, and tok some notes. I need to lay out a drawing on the panel before I start painting, since there's a few things that will look wrong if I'm not careful about drawing them.

Texas Spring Flowers, oil on panel, 8x10 inches, unfinished.

This will be a little spring wildflower painting, from a picture my mom took a few years ago. I used a panel by a brand I'd never tried before and the surface was very slippery. So I just tried to get a first layer down to add some tooth, hopefully adding the next paint layer will be easier.

Winter Deer Skull, oil on panel, unfinished.

The deer skull picture slowly continues, I'm working on the background right now. About the bottom two-thirds have a dark layer done, and I'll finish the top third, then add the highlight and bright grasses on top. I think there will be a lot of adjusting lights vs. darks once the background is closer to done, to keep it from competing with the skull too much.

Preparing Paper for a Drawing

I used to just start drawing and not worry about keeping the edges even and clean, but now I'm much more particular. I really like the crisp look of sharp edges, and the picture can be framed without being covered by a mat. Deckled edges on nice paper can be shown off too, and generally I think it looks more professional.

An example of clean edges on a charcoal drawing, and deckled paper.

For most drawings I buy big papers, usually 22x30 inch, and cut them to be exactly the size I want. This way I'm can make unusual sizes and aspect ratios.

Laying out the big paper and measuring for cutting.

First I measure out and mark the cut lines with pencil. Then I double-check the measurements and look at it from a distance to make sure the corners are square and the lines are straight.

Drawing piece cut out from the big piece.

Some kind of straight edge to cut against is essential, and a fresh razor blade. I try to keep the metal of the straight edge over the drawing side of the cut, so if the blade slips it won't cut into the picture piece. Sometimes I've had to put newsprint under the straight edge to keep it from scratching soft paper.

Artist tape placed around the drawing edges.

After the paper is cut I measure the outlines for the drawing and add light pencil lines. Then I put down  artist's tape outside the lines, this tape has nice soft adhesive that won't tear paper when it gets removed. It seals well enough to keep out charcoal and pencil dust, and has peeled off easily even months later.

Newsprint cut to fit around the back and edges of the drawing paper.

Sealing the back and sides of the paper with newsprint keeps off stray charcoal dust and keeps corners from getting bent from handling.

Bottom side labelled.

Since I usually leave extra space at the bottom for a signature, and try to put the deckles on the bottom, I make sure to mark which side is the bottom. One time I accidentally drew a picture upside down, and only realized when it was finished and unwrapped. So I now label the top and bottom before closing up the newsprint.

Newsprint taped down and sealed with masking tape.

Then I use regular masking tape and seal the newsprint to the artist's tape, being super careful not to  touch it to the drawing paper.

Artist tape and masking tape.

After shredding too many papers pulling the tape off of finishing drawings, I don't use masking tape any more. Even the painter's grade tape can stick unpredictably. Masking tape also has a bad habit of getting gooey and gross after a few months too.

Working on This Weekend-2/7/2015

 Here's some of the stuff I've been working on this last month. A charcoal drawing and a few paintings: 

Dry Wash, charcoal on paper, 12x16 inches, unfinished.

This drawing is based on a picture my mom took a few years ago. It's patterns left in the desert sand after a rain. Only on the second layer, so the darks haven't really been built up yet, and I'll probably add the brightest white highlights with acrylic paint after I get done blending the charcoal layers. I don't like using white pastel because it mostly disappears when sprayed with fixative, and I like my drawing to be sealed and safe to handle.

Toxic Beach Foam, oil on canvas panel, 5x7 inches, unfinished.

This little thing is just an experiment, playing with sand mixed in the paint, and combining a few colors I had in mind.

Winter Deer Skull, oil on panel, 16x20 inches, unfinished.

Still working on the deer skull, kind of forgot about it for a few weeks, added a few things on the background this week.

Dam on West, oil on canvas panel, 5x7 inches, unfinished.

This is the first session for this painting, about an hour, and I really like the colors on it so far.

Three Pink Roses, oil on panel, 8x10inches, unfinished.

Almost finished with the roses, I worked on the shadows and the stems today, probably need one more sitting to fill in some of the pinks and whites. Some of the colors on the flowers look grey in the photo, so I tried that and it looked dead and wrong, so I wiped it off and tried a light blue, but that looked funny too. Then I tried a light purple instead, and that really popped.  It's funny how colors can be so tricky. Sometimes if I get really stuck figuring out a color I'll open the picture in Paint and use the eyedropper tool to see exactly what it is.

Working on This Weekend-11/23/14

I was stuck working on some little pencil drawing for the last week, because it was too cold outside to spray them with fixative. But Sunday was nice and warm, so I was able to fix them and work on the next layers.

Hall House Deer Skull, pencil drawing with white acrylic highlights,  5x7 on bristol paper, finished.

This drawing is mostly pencil, with a little white acrylic paint to bring out the highlights, and that white paint made a huge difference, the drawing looked pretty flat before the whites were brightened.  

Thistle Seed, pen and charcoal, 5x7 on bristol paper, unfinished. 

 I did the underdrawing for this with copic pen, so the sharp spines wouldn't be blurred by blending the charcoal. Making this look 3D will be my goal, because even the photo looks pretty flat.

Torrit Grey Lady, oil painting, 11x14 on a canvas panel, unfinished.

I've been wanting to paint a figure for awhile now, so I picked a vintage erotica picture to work from. These pictures are old enough that the copyrights have expired, and there are tons that would make beautiful paintings. Also I prefer these "real" figures over the oddly photoshopped anatomy you see in most modern photos. She needs a good name too, but there's time to find the right one.

Deer Skull, oil painting on Gessobord, 16x20, unfinished.  

This is the big picture I'm working on now, and it's slowly progressing. I wasted some time drawing in grass in the background and then losing the drawing when I tried painting over it, but I was trying to figure out how to deal with the grass and I think I'm closer now.  With a mid-tone background I can draw in the light colored stems of grass and add in the darks around that.

Working on This Weekend-8/5/2013

Better late than never I guess. I added all the pictures to this post a year ago and then never finished it.

Guadalupe Fail, 9x12, oil on canvas panel, unfinished.

I never finished this one, it just got too messy, but the colors were nice in some places. Might be worth trying to paint this scene again eventually.

Weaver's Needle, 5x7 oil on canvas panel, finished.

A little 3 hours painting from a photo my mom took in Arizona.

Rhino at SA Zoo, 5x7, pencil and charcoal on bristol paper, finished, sold.

A three hour drawing from a picture I took of the rhinoceros looking lazy at the San Antonio Zoo. I had a hard time figuring out the shadows on his face, until I started drawing the shadow and realized there were two horns and not just one.

Butterfly II, 5x7, oil on Claybord, unfinished. 

It was a really cold day at the Arboretum when I took this photo, and it was around freezing the night before too, so it was a nice surprise to see a butterfly. I had a hard time identifying it, turns out there are lots of orange butterflies in Texas. So I submitted a photo to the nice people at butterfliesandmoths.org  who identified it as a Danaus gilippus, or Queen butterfly.

Sophie, the best studio cat ever. 

Working on This Weekend-9/1/2014

Finally done with the big Hill Country painting I've been working on for months now, you can see it here on it's own blog: http://hillcountrypainting.blogspot.com/. So now I have a ton of other paintings and drawings to get back into.

Little 5x7 paintings, all unfinished, one is a picture my mom took in Arizona, one is of some tiny seashells from Port Aransas, and blue bonnets from a family reunion a few springs ago. 

Color sketch, practice before I start the bigger painting.

Some pretty pink roses from the San Antonio Botanical Garden, this is the pencil drawing I'll paint over.

My very messy desk.

Twister

I love bats, flying mammals rock. If people could fly, this is probably what we would look like.

 Even though bats are funny looking and kind of creepy, they are hugely important pollinators for many fruits we like to eat, especially mangoes and bananas. They also eat tons of bugs. Literally tons, every night. Unfortunately, many bat species all over the world are endangered, due to things like habitat loss and diseases. The good people at the Lubee Bat Conservancy work to protect fruit bats and their habitats around the world. They were nice enough to give me permission to draw one of their residents, and even sent me some extra pictures. I went a bit crazy and drew him twice, in pencil and pen.

Twister, a fruit bat that lives at the Lubee Bat Conservancy.

Twister II, copic pen on bristol paper, 11x14 in.

Twister, mixed media, pencil, charcoal, and white acrylic on bristol board, 12x20 inches. 

Vashti

I kept trying to draw this tiger from the Toronto Zoo at a reasonable size, like 8x10 or something, but I couldn't get it started. After a while, I realized that this tiger deserved to be drawn at life size. Most of the picture was drawn in charcoal, with highlights in white pastel and white acrylic paint. I initially tried to sketch in pen, before I realized that it was a waste of time, so scribbles in pen are visible here and there.

Vashti, 22x30 inches, mixed media on heavy paper.

Vashti, detail, 22x30 inches, mixed media on paper.

Much thanks to MoonsongStock on DeviantART for the reference photo!

Vashti, out on the porch to show the size.