Now that I don’t have a studio with everything set up already, it’s getting tough for me to paint in watercolor in between all the baby stuff that I do every few hours. But yesterday, Cate took an extra long nap and I got to do a little painting. I did this for the January Virtual Paintout challenge in Summit County, Colorado. It was a good opportunity to paint a snow scene. I’m thinking I might use this painting for my Christmas card next year. The reference image was cloudy and gray, but I turned it into a night scene. I also took liberties with the trees as you can see.
The other day I sat outside to draw these beautiful lilies. Unfortunately, it was much too hot for me and I was harassed by bees. I did finish my drawing, but I felt rushed. I added the watercolor later, indoors.
A few weeks ago I ordered the Noodler’s Flex Nib pen after reading a number of reviews online (see reviews from Nina Johansson, Cathy Johnson, and Roz Stendahl). I actually ordered two pens, in Lapis Inferno and Vulcan’s Coral, mainly because I wanted to be able to use two different colored inks. Also, so many people are going gaga over these pens that they are selling out very quickly and I wanted to make sure I got what I wanted.
My main reason for getting this pen is that I wanted something that could replicate the lines that you can get with a dip pen, but portable. As you can see from my sketch (click to enlarge), a large degree of line width is possible, which is really different from the Lamy fountain pen I use for writing. I am still not really used to controlling the flex and I find that I have to concentrate and go slower than normal when I want a thicker line. The pen is also sensitive to the angle at which you hold the pen. To get more flex you need to hold the pen more horizontally to the paper.
I did find the instructions that came with the pen a bit odd. Besides the bizarre drawing of “The Nib Creaper,” the instructions are one solid block of text that I had to reread several times before figuring out how to fill the pen. I had previously watched a video showing the pen assembly, so I was able to figure it out, but I wished there were some kind of diagram as well as the text. I still had some trouble filling the pen the first time (I got mostly air and very little ink), but I had better luck the next time. Once I fill the pen a few times, I think it will be easy for me.
For detailed info on this pen, I recommend the videos that Brian Goulet has posted to his blog Ink Nouveau. I haven’t tried it yet, but the whole pen can be disassembled for cleaning. The nib and feed can also be adjusted to allow for more or less flex and ink flow according to preference.
Some people complained about the smell of the pen (from the resin material that the pen body is made from), but I don’t mind it. It is noticable, but I think it is a pleasant smell, like scented soap or something similar.
I purchased Noodler’s Lexington Gray and Bulletproof Black ink to fill these pens. I will write a seperate blog post about these inks after I test them further. The sketch above is of the two pieces of pottery that I made in my recent workshop and a mini ceramic pitcher that I bought at the Old Deerfield Craft Fair last weekend. I bought the pitcher just because it is cute, and I’m still not sure what I will do with the other two dishes.
While looking through my paper collection yesterday, I found a pad of watercolor paper that had an old drawing in it, from over a year ago. I had made an ink drawing of a Mexico City street, originally intended for the Virtual Paintout, but I had abandoned the whole piece because the drawing had many errors in perspective. I never ended up starting over and submitting anything that month, so it kind of felt like a failure to me. When I looked it over yesterday though, I still liked one part of the drawing, so I decided to do something with it. I painted it in watercolor and then cropped out the part that I liked. Now I have this colorful mini painting sitting next to my drafting table.
This is what I finally settled on for my Virtual Paintout submission for December. It wasn’t a sunny scene like I had originally imagined, but it feels cold and windy more like it really is outside right now. Below is the pencil sketch that I completed before I did the pen and ink drawing. I ended up painting the sky in just watercolor, but if I had decided to draw the clouds in ink, I would have used lines similar to my sketch.
Yesterday I was looking around on Google Street View for a good scene to use for this month’s Virtual Paintout in Rio de Janeiro. I didn’t find a scene that I wanted to use for the challenge, but I did find an interesting tree to sketch. I was attracted to the shape of the foliage and the gnarled trunk and branches. It was especially fun to draw the leaves.
I spent most of the day today adding a Contact Page to my site (it is one of the tabs on the header). I have wanted to add one for a long time, and I finally sat down and did it. It looks really plain and simple, but the contact form part actually took longer than I thought it would. And although I didn’t do anything creative in the art sense, I do think playing around with html and css is pretty creative (especially since most of it is trial and error for me).
Every fall I make some sort of leaf drawing or painting. In fact, leaves seem to be a favorite theme of mine all year long. They seem to have a lot of personality and each one is different, which I love.
While doing a Google image search for “paintings of leaves,” I found the site for Vermont artist Gary Milek. He uses egg tempera, gold leaf and watercolor to create really beautiful and detailed landscapes and florals. He and his wife run a joint gallery and botanical garden called Cider Hill Gardens. I think I will add it to my list of places in Vermont that I want to visit next time I get up there.
This is a view of the Connecticut River as seen from the French King Bridge, one of the many special places in Western Massachusetts. I reworked this colored pencil sketch from last year to make this painting. I do a lot of work in ink and watercolor but this was definitely an experiment in a different style for me. It was a lot of fun, and also a welcome change as I haven’t done a lot of colorful work recently.
I’m heading to the post office tomorrow morning to send this painting off to Norway. I’m participating in the Twitter Art Show organized by David Sandum (@DavidSandumArt on Twitter). David had the brilliant idea to leverage a number of his Twitter contacts to raise money for his local library (for children’s books). I thought this was a great opportunity to help out, and I hope my painting finds a good home in Norway.
(Note: I’m @CAPappas on Twitter if you would like to follow me.)
This is a small (5 x 7) painting I did from a photo I snapped during my trip to Ogunquit, Maine this past August. This area is a salt marsh where the Ogunquit River meets the ocean. It was really interesting to see how this same scene changed with the tides (it was close to high tide when I took this). I am thinking of remaking this into a larger (11 x 14ish) painting, although I’m still considering if I want to do it in ink and watercolor or some other medium, like colored pencil. I want the grass areas to look really textural, because that is what originally attracted me to the scene. The grass was long and matted and it looked very soft, although I’m sure up close it was anything but.
I love finding new artists! A reader emailed me a link after I posted On Water and I wanted to share. Amy Arntson paints really beautiful and large watercolor paintings of water. I especially like her painting Dark Water 1.
This is a quick reminder that I am hosting a giveaway of the first three issues of The Beany by Michael Nobbs until August 26 at 9 pm EST. Click here to enter.
This is my submission for the Virtual Paintout centered in Prince Edward Island, Canada for August. So far this month there have been a lot of beautiful pieces posted on the blog. My submission is fairly simple, but I enjoyed drawing and painting it. Recently I have been doing a lot of running around so it was nice to just sit and draw and zone out for a change. This particular watercolor paper is not the best for pen though, so I might just use it for plain watercolors next time. I did this while listening to episodes of the podcast Artists Helping Artists. It is very informative and uplifting and I highly recommend it.
