I wound up abandoning this class part way through because I was distracted by kayaking and I only got back to it near the end of the summer when I was in a hurry to get ready for the final class. I may revisit the exercises since I know I need more work here. This is the 2nd class in the series by Ian Roberts.
We started with black and white only and then, later, added ochre yellow to represent ‘warmth’ while black and white remain ‘cool’. I think one or two added a little UM blue as well, for extra coolness.
I enrolled in a composition class taught by Ian Roberts. All of our exercises were about 4×6″ and done on smooth bristol with a pencil. I haven’t used just pencils for quite a while, and never exactly like this so there was a fairly steep learning curve just for me to be able to feel like I could make effective marks on the page. Luckily he seemed aware of this and the earliest exercises were all about making smooth shapes and gradients before we ever tried to really draw anything.
The class was self-paced, but there are advantages to keeping up in that you can expect better feedback from your ‘buddy’ – the other students in the class.
Note – I wrote this post LAST YEAR and then left it sitting in drafts for 10 months. I’m going to try to get caught up to current day.
starting with simple shapessimple shapessurprisingly hard bushessimple shapesbeginning compositionsStill Lifefinding a focal pointStill lifemy own imagesNM PuddleSnoqualmiePalouseCascadesFrance 2018still lifeAncient LakesFranceSultanBarrelsWhite RiverFieldsThe BermOrcasCleat
I’ve had a recent obsession with fountain pens, dip pens, pen and ink, and watercolor sketching. I’ll probably post my thoughts on fountain pen paper later. But all this led me to the world of Urban sketching – which I like because it leans into some of my strengths, namely, playing with ink, being impatient, and accuracy not mattering as much as mood and gesture.
I’ve talked to some friends and we are planning to check out some local Urban Sketch clubs but in the meantime I thought I’d see if my current mixed media sketchbook could handle a little ink/watercolor. This was fun! I decided I liked purple. All the linework is done with purple india ink (although I know it looks black). Paper is Canson XL Mixed Media 160g. It buckled under the wash but dried flat enough again.
A street scene from a tutorialMy friend’s horses this winterSunrise before kayaking on New Years Day 2024From a photo of our trip to France in 2018
I’m also taking a composition class online from an artist I admire. I may post those images here as well eventually. So far we’ve been focusing on ‘going slow’ and ‘being careful’ – my weakness!
Using paint is intimidating but I know I’m not comfortable with a brush yet and I’m also not comfortable picking colors so I need the practice. Here’s the last two months. Most of these are very small.
Set 1: pen and ink sketches with watercolor.
Set two – oil sketches on paper
still lifemadrone barksunlit treesDeer LakeMushrooms
I purchased two tutorials by Tim Packer on how to draw the sun shining through trees.
In September I decided to restart doing one sketch or painting a day, every day. I get thrown off by life or, specifically, camping sometimes but I’ve been overall good about it and I feel like it’s getting easier with less effort. Half of these are from my own photos, about half from photos on Unsplash and one is a copy of a Georgia O’Keeffe.
Part of what I mean when I say it’s getting easier is that I have fewer obvious failures. This is not everything I did in the month but I didn’t take photos of the stuff that really didn’t work at all – the rate of failure like that has gone down.
Going even smaller than a study, I have some Arches oil paper and I tried making very small (less than 4″ paintings on it to test colors or techniques.
I think the winter scene needs a bit more of a focal point. The kelp & fish: I brushed my hand over it while it was wet and blurred the lower left corner. Violet tree: I like it. I’m not sure if I’ll have trouble adding detail if I make it bigger, but probably not. Lower right: not happy with this at all, but that’s why it’s a sketchbook.
I’ve been sketching out some more horses, I have several photos that I’m inspired by, but I haven’t got a good composition yet. I’m also in the process of rounding up skulls and props to set up my own still lifes but for now i’m using some free online images.
Last year I bought a sundew plant to help with fungus gnats and fruit flies – and it worked great. I felt inspired by some of their photos (my house is already filling up with plants, but I still want more.) In any case, Predatory Perennials gave me permission to use some of their photos as reference.
This is a 6×8 oil on panel. Hopefully there will be more soon.
I’ve been spending a lot of time doing quick sketches and practicing monsters. Monday I’m going to swoop through the thrift store to look for oil paintings that look like they need to have monsters added to them, failing that I’ll look for inexpensive frames to use for other paintings. These are all very small. they still take me longer than just one day, but I’m working on it.
More attempts at ‘daily painting’ although this took me more than 1 day. I tried it because I think of flowers as being very difficult and I guess I wasn’t wrong, this gave me some trouble.
8×10 oil on panel
I got my brother in law to spend a couple hours cutting down new panels into tiny sizes and I hope this will encourage me to paint more often without worrying so much about ‘what if I botch it?’. Wish me luck.
