Favorites From March/April 2016 Sketchbook

Sketches to Celebrate Spring

click image to enlarge

In one single day it seems that the young maiden has and spring in full bloom in upon us. My lovely little crab apple orchard is blooming like crazy and I found the first pink lady slipper in the woods. 

click image to enlarge

The lily pads are all over the pond now and a few of the yellow pond lilies are blooming.  Great soft, diffused light shining through the young leaves on the trees. 

click image to enlarge

Here I'm playing with some new Jim Holtz Distress Markers. I bought five in the spring colors I see all around me right now. These are dual tip with a brush tip on one end and a fine point on the other. The brush tip is really flexible and nice and juicy, the fine point has a plastic tip and seems to incise the paper surface unless you keep the pressure light. Fun to work with and i love the colors. They're dye based so probably not light fast but I my sketchbooks I don't really worry about that. 

Color samples below

click image to enlarge

Nature Studies, Great Egret Stalking, Shadbush and Swimming Snakes

click image to enlarge

I'm working in a Pentallic Nature Sketch, sketchbook. It has nice 130lb mixed media paper in it. It's a product I used to use all the time before the Stillman & Birn sketchbooks were around. At that time it was the heaviest weight paper I could find in a sketchbook.  It used to have a paper front cover and a heavy cardboard back cover. The paper front cover always took a beating and got ripped. I always said if they ever put a better cover on the book that I would go back to using it.  Well, Pentallic has put a wonderful cover on their Nature Sketch sketchbook.  It's heavy, covered in forest green leather like vinyl and has the same graphics as the old one only in simple silver instead of full color. The back cover is still plain uncovered heavy cardboard.

click image to enlarge

You'd think I would be elated. But....I'm finding with this book, and maybe it is just this book, the back cover keeps coming out of the metal spiral binding. That drives me crazy. The holes are rectangular and the spiral binding is the typical double wire loop, very similar to what I use when I make sketchbooks with my Cinch binding machine. The old paper cover sketchbooks had a flexible, black plastic binding that was a continuous spiral so the covers could never come off.

I'm also having a problem with scanning. The book is just slightly wider than my scanner bed and the spiral binding won;t allow the page to press flat against the glass scanner bed and light gets in at the edges and so you see the yellowish discoloration of the page on the binding side of the image. Sigh.  I am moving closer and closer to investing in a Epson large flat bed scanner, though I fear In will still have problems with spiral bound sketchbooks not laying flat.  I'm going to have to try trowing a towel over the whole thing when I scan to see if that keeps the light out. No amount of photoshop fixes seem to really help this, at least in the amount of time I want to spend fixing up images to post.

So, enough complaining!  It's been beautiful out and I had no end of fun watching a Great Egret in my pond stalk his lunch the other day. The Shadbush is blooming and that means the Shad are running in the rivers, and Shad festivals are about to start popping up all over Connecticut, a sure sign that spring has finally and truly arrived. Other residents of the pond include large numbers of Tree Swallows who are mating and nesting in hollow trees, Red Wing Blackbirds patrol the pond, and Northern Flickers and pecking and excavating holes in trees.

click image to enlarge

The Eastern Rat Snakes are out in abundance I saw four on the rock wall sunning on my way down to the pond and then three swimming in the pond, which is always a weird sight no matter how many time I see them, they're like little Loch Ness monsters!  

Much more to come as spring blossoms!

Blooming Trees and Birds

Trees in bloom are always one of the great delights of spring. I discovered a small hiking trail called the Salt Island Overlook, which covers just seven acres of coastal habitat. It must have been a farmstead at one time since there were many old apple trees all along the trail. 

Watercolors and a Uniball Signo White gel pen did a fine job capturing the fluffy whiteness of the blooms on the tree.

I'm working hard on improving my skill when drawing birds in the field.  I'd seriously like to graduate beyond just using two egg shapes and a triangle for a tail!  That means some more focused study from books and photos and improving my visual memory skills when out in the field. It's a lifetime of work but it's really so much fun that I think I shall never tire of it!

Sketching and the Gift of Reflection

This set of sketches is from the beginning of April. I was about to succumb to cabin fever, then I caught spring fever and found myself outside despite the still barren colors and chill in the air.

In the very first sketch I was excited to document the first signs of green grass and skunk cabbage in the marsh. That led me to a celebratory spread for Earth Day.

In that frame of mind even my composter became a worthy subject for an entry. The composter is such a cool thing. I love how your simple kitchen and garden left overs can create such rich soil and contribute their refurbishment back into this years garden.

On the next page I created a memorial for my Dad, who died unexpectedly when I was only 10 years old. The gray day brought up a lot of old memories and a fresh feeling of mourning his loss. That's a good thing for me. I tend to be a very future oriented person. I don't spend much time at all looking back, remembering or being nostalgic. Slowing down, sketching and recording the date reminded me of what day it actually was. So in this instance the practice of sketching and journaling gifted me with the time, space and place to reflect.

Here's just a few quick sketches of  meals. Well, actually in the first I was eating i the car and the view was a lot easier to sketch than my take out!

On the bottom there's a wonderful spring salad. Eating seasonal food is always a great way to to tune into the cycles of nature, and I always enjoy a good spring salad!

Notice how scribbly and quickly the salad is sketched in and how I reserved the color for the salad and kept the other things in gray scale. That's a great tip for helping you emphasize a portion of a sketch.  Add color to the most important element only, to keep the focus there and to help tell your story.

Sketching Signs of Spring

 My friend Sherri's goat had a kid a week ago and I couldn't resist starting my new sketchbook off with a sketch of mama and baby!

One of the things I love to do is document the seasons. I find my sketchbooks are great records of weather patterns, plant and flower bloom times and animal behaviors like nesting, and migrating.

The sketchbook helps me stay in tune with, and aware of natures rhythms. Like tending a garden it helps me stay in touch with the land and the environment that I inhabit. By observing and recording natural events, big and small I feel part of nature, as I surely am, but I am always in danger of forgetting and becoming isolated from nature in our modern, industrial and technology filled world.

This is the first year I've seen these wonderful hooded
mergansers in our pond. It was a very exciting moment when I
made the positive identification!

They join the wood ducks and mallards that we've had in the pond for several years now.

This year I've also had the good fortune to see pileated
woodpeckers several times in the past few weeks.

They are large and my friend Roxanne thinks they have a per-historic look about them and I agree. Their large created head and long powerful bill always remind me of pterodactyls, though I don't think pterodactyls are proper dinosaurs. I think they are simply flying reptiles.

2014 is the year of the Salamander in Connecticut and a NY Times article and on line slide show filled with colorful salamanders caught my eye. This page was a fun experiment with materials. The Stillman & Birn A4 Zeta I'm working in took the Faber-Castell Artists Brush Tip Pens so beautifully! These pens, filled with pigmented ink, work very much like watercolors because they are transparent and can be layered and blended with ease. a Green micron 05, and Iles de Cafe ink in a fountain pen, along with a white Uni-ball Signo and watercolors for the big heading.

All in all I happy with the way these

sketches are documenting the unique

signs of the season. I'm looking forward to daffodils and trees that bloom!

Sketching Outdoors in March

It's March. Spring has sprung, and the peeper frogs are peeping. Today it snowed, again. Sigh. On the bright side the snow has now melted and it's just damp and chilly.  It feels like Mother Nature is playing an April Fool's joke a day early.

I'm really, really looking forward to sketching outside in weather that is pleasant and doesn't make my fingers hurt!

A few days ago the temperatures pushed up into the low forties and I couldn't stand it any longer. I bundled up and went out to sketch.. The first two on the left hand page were done form the car. by the time I was done with those it seemed like it would be warm enough to go outside. Well sort of.

Realize of course that I'm wearing a couple of layers and a down coat! One thing I like are fingerless gloves with a mitten  part that you can flip over your fingers.

The sketches on the right hand page were done outside. By the time I was done I was chilled to the bone!

However, it was really worth it! It felt so good to be outside, in nature immersed in my subject. I was especially happy when a pair of Mallard ducks flew in and spent about 20 min. feeding in the marsh. The red wing blackbirds were calling back and forth and it felt very alive and sounded like spring even if the temperatures didn't feel much like it.

I'm working right now in a Stillman & Birn 7x10 Delta wire bound sketchbook. The ivory paper is a nice change from white, and it's a good size for this time of year when I'm sketching indoors a lot and when it's too cold outdoors to be sketching for long periods of time. I usually use smaller sketchbooks during the winter months because they fill up fast and the sense of accomplishment of filling a book and the excitement of beginning a new one helps keep me inspired through the cold bleak months.

I'm working with the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen learning to use it and experimenting to see what it can do. It creates a very bold line, which is very black and I definitely must take that into consideration. The marks this pen makes are not just delicate outlines or guide lines for filling in with watercolors, they have lots of visual weight and presence and therefore are an integral part of the design.

This was my favorite of the four sketches. I think that the pen creates a look reminiscent of a hand colored wood bock print.

It's March and while the calendar says it's spring (frankly, I prefer the old Celtic calendar and the way the seasons of the year are broken up in that system. Right now we would still be in Imbolc, Feb.-Mar. -Apr. a winter/spring transition time during which lambs are born and trees just begin to bud. The next season is Beltane beginning May 1st,( and encompassing June and July,) which is when the weather actually begins to feel like spring here in New England, after which we quickly move into summer). But I digress.

The task at hand for sketching this season is using a palette of colors that will capture the subdued and fairly neutral hues of the season without resulting in a gray, drab sketch. To that end I'm using this.......

A special little watercolor kit I made form this really cute mint tin! (If you want to know how to make a kit form a mint tin click HERE for the resource page and scroll down to see the step by step instructions) It contains just four colors and is known as the Zorn Palette. Anders Zorn was a Swedish artist of the 19thC who was known for using this palette in many of his paintings to great effect.

                                                                                                 This is a self portrait of Zorn at showing his palette. Below that  is a close up of the palette in the painting.

This limited palette of colors is basically a version of the three primaries with black standing in for blue. Against the warmth of the vermillion and yellow ochre the grays made from black and white easily fool the eye into seeing blue.

My kit is made with watercolors and I suppose you could eliminate the white paint but I very much like using titanium white watercolor. Turner, Constable, Sargent, Homer....all the great watercolorists of the 19th century used white, and since I love their works I emulate their use of white.

This limited, earthy, full bodied palette of colors works very well for painting the in between seasons of late fall into winter and late winter into very early spring.

Zorn used this palette in a great deal of his figure work, especially nudes, so this would also work very well for a life drawing class.

Limited palettes are very helpful for producing color harmonies and avoiding muddy passages. They also help you create unique and expressive color combinations since you;re sometimes unable to paint exactly what you see and need to use a stand in color. Try it sometime and I think you'll be surprised how much you ca do with 3 or 4 colors and how beautiful the results can be.

Sketching Spring and Nature's Wisdom

Part of the happiness (for me) that comes from keeping a sketchbook is having moments in a day when I can focus on something beautiful for a little while and leave what's weighing down my mind behind.

Yesterday was the first day of SPRING!!  And not a moment too soon! We've had so much snow and bitter cold temperatures this long winter that nothing is poking through the still partially frozen ground yet. These two very traditional spring flowers, daffodils and hyacinths, came from the garden center. I love the little rustic baskets woven from grape vine.

Spring is a time of renewal and hope. Like the land in New England this spring I would like some renewal and hope in my heart.  It's been a difficult week placing my elderly mom in an assisted living/memory care facility. Those of you who have gone through this need no explanation.

Keeping a sketchbook makes me notice things. What I've noticed these past two weeks is that even though it is still very wintery out, Mother Nature is moving ahead with plans for spring. Robins are out of the underbrush and on the ground, the red wing blackbirds are back in the marsh, the blue birds are checking out nest boxes, and today the gnats are swarming.

This tells me that even though things look bleak and cold all around, it's important to realize that they will pass and to continue to makes plans for happier, better times. Isn't nature wise? Isn't keeping a sketchbook journal a wonderful thing that helps you see through the difficulties to life's beauties?

Today's page was created using a TWSBI mini fountain pen with J. Herbin Lie de The ink, Maimeri Blu watercolors, and Faber Castell Pitt Artist Brush Tip Pens. I love those pens because they combine so well with watercolor. They contain pigmented (colored) India ink, do not bleed through your paper, and are transparent, letting you layer glazes of color just like you do with watercolors. 

Happy sketching!