Pencil Shavings

Woo-Hoo!

My Daniel Smith Art Supplies Winter Sale catalog came in the mail yesterday.  

I don't suppose it's any kind of secret if you have been reading my blog for a while that Daniel Smith is my favourite online art supply store, and it's taking all the will power I can muster to not put the catalog under my husband's pillow with a note attached that says "buy all this for Chirstmas"

One thing that I have wondered for a while though is....  Since Daniel Smith is located in Seattle, why does their logo have a cactus on it?

Taking My New Pens Out Of The Box, And The House

Summer is the time for plein air painting and drawing.  Getting out to a location and capturing something of the spirit of a place.

The family tries to go hiking every warm weekend that we get here, because our summers are way too short not to take advantage of the good weather.  When we go out I always take an art kit with me, for painting I have a few kits I choose from to take.  But sometimes I just want to go light so I take a pen and paper for sketching. 

I really like it if the pen I take is water soluble. That way I can get some really nice ink wash effects with a little bit of water from a waterbrush.

I rediscovered Pilot Fineliners last month and I have to say they are the perfect tool for this (for me).  The tip is super fine and makes a wonderful deep black mark.  When I touch a little water to it the ink softens to a really lovely blue tinted grey.

Here are some postcards I drew at the zoo last weekend. Being able to add the wash effects changes these drawings from being line drawings to something with a little extra.  It adds texture, it gives great shading, and a certain character that you don't get from a straight line drawing.

This isn't to say that ink drawings aren't great, they are, but this is really a technique that I love, and I've been looking for the perfect pen to take with me when I'm heading out.

So here we go, 9 weeks of summer left in this part of the world and I'm going to head out and capture as much of it as I can.

Days Off Mean a Ton of Work!

I have been busy volunteering at the school and trying to find the house under the piles of clutter that I have everywhere.

I am quite likely a typical mom.  I have time off and I fill that time with stuff that needs to be done, instead of enjoying the spring sun on my face, or reading a good book, I find myself hip deep in dirty sheets, or cleaning out the cupboard that is full of plastic containers that don't have lids.

Today I'm washing those dirty sheets and hanging them on the clothes line in the spring sun (hey at least I'll feel it while I'm out hanging the sheets!)  then I have to run out and pick up supplies for my oldest daughter's school project, and deal with book work for our families company before figuring out dinner and taking the kids out for a bike ride (I need to teach the youngest how to stop her bike without jumping off of it.)

Meanwhile, on the weekend I worked up a tutorial for making watercolor panels to paint on (like those Aquaboards that I sometimes see in the store) with that groovy sample of Daniel Smith Watercolor ground.

If you want to see how I made it head over to my Squidoo page and check it out here. (Make Your Own Watercolor Panels )

Go aheaad and give it a try.  Making your own stuff can be so much fun!

Update, Product Review, Easter, Sun!

I just created a webpage (complete with product links) reviewing Daniel Smith's new product Water Color Ground.  You know I'm always impressed with the variety of products that Daniel Smith makes.  they seem to be a lot like me - they want to try EVERYthing. 

Here is my review and a step by step project you can try out with it.

Daniel Smith Watercolor Ground

Meanwhile, it's Easter Weekend and the sun is shining brightly.  So I'm going to take my gear out to the front yard and do a little sketching. Have a great day!

Watercolor Sticks, Daniel Smith Product Review Part 2

I picked up some new Watercolor Sticks from Daniel Smith recently.  I have reviewed the sticks before, and I love them for the kind of art that I do.  For all my paintings in my University classes this year I used the Watercolor Sticks because they were a lot easier to transport and had the same intense colour that the tube paints do.  They were great for the mixed media work because I could draw with them and leave a mark like a pastel, and paint with them and have all the colours match up perfectly.

I decided to get a few more colours to go in my kit.  From left to right they are: Sodalite Genuine, Pyrrol Red, Moonglow, and Phtalo Turquise. 

The sticks are smooth and pigment load is extremely high.  I love the moonglow in the tube and wanted to have it in stick form for my art kit. 

I know that many people are concerned about value for their money, especially now.  I can tell you that the original 6 sticks that I got two years ago, that I still use in nearly every painting that I make, are still 3 inches long, showing some wear and tear though (I'm not a neat artist) and I expect that I will get another 4 or 5 years of hard use out of them before I lose them in a freak travel accident.  Seriously they are so dense with pigment that I expect that I won't have to replace them until after I have finished my art degree in 5 or 6 years.  (also remember that the paintings I'm doing in art school average 22x30 inches)

I suggest these sticks to all my fellow students, and I'll reccomend them to you too.  You can tell them Kathleen sent you.  It won't get you a discount, but it will make me feel good!

 

Toys!

I got a couple of boxes delivered to the house yesterday.  One had my *ahem* birthday presents that I ordered from Daniel Smith in it.  The other had a sample of Daniel Smith's new product, Watercolor Ground, in it with a note requesting that I try it out and let you all know how it works for me.

So... you know what that means!  It's time to get messy and have a lot of fun.

So watch this space over the next few days and I'll be posting my product reviews as I get them done.

Now to find some paper and water....  where did I put that stuff?

365 Days of Art - Day 270 - Experimenting (Bombay India Ink)

On Day 270  I had picked up a bottle of Bombay brand India Ink in sepia.

Using my grandfathers old dip pen I played around with it for a while mostly doing doodles.

I'm not usually an ink artist.  I'm not sure why, I do like it, and I certainly like the idea of it, but I do struggle with technique.  Something I should practice I guess.

After fiddling with the doodles for awhile, I flipped the page in my sketchbook and thought about drawing something else.

Sometimes something funny happens when you are about to draw, you become intensely focused on the act of drawing itself, almost to the point of being unable to actually draw.

I saw my hand holding down the edge of the page, and felt a strange compulsion to actually draw the hand holding the page .  I suppose I could have dawn the hand and the pen, but I've been there and done that.

So that is how the hand drawing came about.

Some exciting news on The Postcard Project front is that more cards have arrived (see the comments) and I have sent more new images out.  It's slow progress, but I'm not too far behind.

However if everyone on the planet requests a card, at the rate I'm creating them it will take me about 14 million years to complete them.  I better start taking my vitamins.

365 Days of Art - Day 268 - Experimenting (Daniel Smith Watercolor Sticks)

For my birthday I ordered a few things from Daniel Smith Art Supplies. 

The package arrived and I was so excited to get into it, but I also had a ton of commitments.  I had to put it off for a little while, but eventually I had to make the time in my schedule to try out my new stuff!

I got a few new things for me and I'll talk about those later, as they need more "testing", but I did get two new colours of the Daniel Smith Watercolor Sticks:  Graphite Gray and Piemontite Genuine.

I did some tonal, monochome (sort of) paintings on backgrounds I had already painted with the delightful plastic wrap texture with thiem.  The Graphite Gray is on the right and the Piemontite Genuine is on the left.

They both have a lovely range of tone.  The gray is very much like the tone you would get with a pencil.  Both are nearly opaque when applied at pretty much full strength and transparent at lighter value.  I guess the short version of this is that they are exactly what you would expect from Daniel Smith.

I painted them on postcard size paper,  and I'm going to let them sit a while and look at them, they may end up in The Postcard Project.  Speaking of the The Postcard Project, another card has reached it's home - you may want to go and check the comments!

365 Days of Art - Day 253 - Liquid Pencil by Derivan

I mentioned a while back that I had picked up some Liquid Pencil (made by Derivan in Australia).

I comes in a bottle very much like ink, but it's much thicker (and the Sepia tone is a little grainy looking in the bottle).

I thinned it and used it both as if it were watercolour and in a nib pen.

I really liked the watercolour technique, the graininess of the pigment left some wonderful marks on the paper. 

In the nib it behaved exactly like ink.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this over time, but I really like how it's working.  If you stay with the blog you will see more of my work with it and can see what I come up with as I play around with it.

Special Delivery!

If you have been following the blog for a while you will know that I've been working a lot with Daniel Smith Watercolor Sticks.

I really enjoy how they work for me.  One day while we were outside painting my husband commented that he wondered why watercolours weren't made this way all along.

After working with them for a few months I can say that this is really a great medium for me - I think that they suit my working style perfectly.

A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from Daniel Smith thanking me for trying out the Watercolor Sticks and reviewing them in the blog.  They offered to let me try out some of the new colours they have just released.  I picked Aureolin, Quinacridone Red, Cerulean Blue (Chromium),  and Rich Green Gold.  I received them on Thursday and the kind people ate Daniel Smith included a really great pastel case that fits the sticks perfectly.  I had been thinking of trying some for my travel kit, so now I have one and I'll let you know how it works for me.

So far I've been testing these new colours and they create some lovely mixes, I can hardly wait to paint with them.  I'm thinking of adding some new posts talking about colour mixing with the sticks and showing what works for me and what doesn't.  The primary triad that I just got is beautiful and I know I'm going to love using them.

A Big Thank You to the wonderful people at Daniel Smith (esp. you Deborah!)