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 ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, 12-7-10 sketchbook page (Ireland). Watercolor in 8 x 5.5 inch sketchbook. Yesterday I was playing around with some watercolors while looking for a scene to paint for my Virtual Paintout submisison. Afterwards I finally settled on what I was going to paint and I spent most of today working on it. I think I will hold off on posting it for a few days though, in case I paint something better in the meantime. I am really indecisive these days!  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, VPO Sketch (Ireland). Colored pencil in 8.5 x 11 inch sketchbook. I am just starting to feel semi-decent again after being sick (read: invalid) for the past week. I haven’t had a bad cold for a few years so I guess I was due for one! I only had the desire to start drawing again yesterday. I started off only wanting to do a “quick sketch” of a scene I was thinking of for the Virtual Paintout, but then I ended up spending a lot longer on it than I had thought I would. I think it is too depressing with that ominous tree and all, so I will move onto something else that I will spend more time on. The hard thing about this month’s Virtual Paintout (set in County Clare, Ireland) is that the landscape is so beautiful that it is hard to decide what to paint.  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, Avenida Niemeyer. Colored pencil, 8 x 10.5 inches. I finished my submission for the Virtual Paintout (set in Rio de Janeiro) just in time. I skipped October and I didn’t want to miss this month as well. Instead of doing something really detailed and time consuming, this is more of a sketch made up of lots of lines. I really enjoy participating in the VPO, partly because I would never be able to actually visit some of these places in real life and this gives me a chance to get a taste of what it would be like. Rio de Janeiro, for example, is a beautiful city but a very dangerous place right now. It’s really a shame.
I also used this drawing to form a part of this handmade calendar. Although I already bought a 2011 desk calendar that I will use for my appointments and such, I wanted a “year at a glance” type of calendar as well. I also thought it would be perfect for my new (freecycled) bulletin board that I got last week. When I get sick of the picture, I figure I can just change it out for a new one.  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, 11-14-2010 sketchbook page. Ink and watercolor in 5.5 x 8 inch sketchbook. 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).  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, Entrance to Nature. Colored Pencil, apx 10 x 11 inches. I’ve only been to New York City a handful of times, and only once in the past ten years, despite living only a few hours away. I guess I’m just more of a country person. I’ve never been to Central Park as far as I remember, but I think I would like to visit if I had the chance. In this piece, I tried not to get too detailed and I wanted it to have a soft feeling. I also worked a little bit larger than I normally do. I meant it as more of a sketch, really. Because it wouldn’t fit on my scanner, I had to take a picture of it. I tried to correct the contrast a bit, but I wasn’t able to get it to match the original fully. Unfortunately, I do not have reliable internet access at the moment and have to use wifi hotspots to do my blogging. Luckily I saved a screenshot of Google street view so I was able to work on this drawing offline. If you leave me a comment it may take me some time to approve it as I have comment moderation turned on.  ©2010 Carolyn A. Pappas, Brush. Ink and watercolor wash, 5 x 7 inches. I cut it close again with this month’s Virtual Paintout. It was mainly because I was going to lots of summertime parties and cookouts on the weekends which ate into my usual art time. I had some trouble finding a view that I really liked in Hong Kong as well. I’m usually drawn to nature type scenes and I think that I was expecting to find something exotic and unusual. In reality, I thought most of it, except some tropical plants, looked like places in the US. I ended up painting some trees and brush on the side of the road that could have been almost anywhere. I did try to be more “free” with my watercolors in this piece though. I hope it doesn’t come across as sloppy, because that was not what I was going for. I miscalculated in my last post on how many pages I had left in my watercolor sketchbook. I realized that I had some paintings on the back sides of the pages (I don’t use both sides of the page in my sketchbooks). Now I only have one more page to finish until I start my new watercolor moleskine!
Road to the Sea, colored pencil, 10″ x 8″ This month I’m posting my Virtual Paintout submission a bit later than I normally do. In fact, I almost skipped participating altogether because of a lot of other things I had going on this particular month with various classes and commitments. I’m glad I did it though, and I had fun making this drawing. It was pouring rain last weekend and I made this drawing while listening to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio. I missed doing something in colored pencil, so I decided to change it up a bit this time around. My elbow was killing me the next day though. Next time I decide to do anything in colored pencil, I am going to pace myself and spend a few days working on it.
I did this the same size as last month (5 x 7) in the spirit of making my VPO pieces consistent. I looked around for quite awhile before coming up with this scene. I made some other sketches, one of which you can see here, but I really liked the swamp feel as seen in this view.
I’m thinking that I might do all my VPO pieces in the same size and media so I can frame them all together when I have a nice collection. Speaking of framing, I just signed up for a workshop on matting and framing this coming June. I am excited about this because I have a lot of pieces waiting to get framed and I’d like to see them finally on display.
This is my submission for March Virtual Paintout, which was based from Stavanger, Norway this month. What I loved about the location was the combination of green grass and blue sky found out in the more rural sections. It felt very springlike and inspiring to me. This particular view reminded me of something I might find in a children’s book illustration. I made this picture using dip pen and watercolor wash in a 7 x 10 watercolor sketchbook. I’m not horribly pleased with this piece because I find it to be a little fussy and I wish I had tweaked the composition a little differently. I do think that I could possibly rework however, and I’d like to try it in colored pencil at some point. |
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