My NEW Winsor and Newton Heavy Weight Paint Box... and My old Schmincke Box with Lukas colors in it

This is my new Winsor & Newton heavy duty watercolor box. 

As you can see it's got two good sized mixing areas, and one has more angled slanted areas with a deeper well to them than the standard light weight boxes (as shown below with my old Schmincke box). 

To me the best things about this box are the deep mixing areas which allows for mixing up a really big puddle of color without making a mess, and the large area in the box for brushes. What I always felt was missing from my Schmincke box was a large enough area to keep brushes as you can see my large size 12 round brush takes up a lot of room in the Schmincke box below, but I have plenty of room for 4 brushes including the size 12 round and even a pencil and a small ballpoint pen in the Winsor & Newton heavy weight box. 

The W&N box is just a bit larger, and just a bit heavier, but the design makes it much more functional to me. It can take 12 whole pans, but you could easily put in two half pans in each of the whole pan spaces and get more colors in as needed, which I will probably do eventually as money permits and my wish for other colors in the palette developes.

I got this new box from Ken Bromley art supplies at www.artsupplies.co.uk as Winsor & Newton doesn't currently sell any of their pan colors in metal boxes on the US for some unknown reason, but you can get a similar box from Jerry's Artarama at www.jerrysartarama.com in the US and can fill it with your own pans of whatever watercolors you like. Unfortunately they only seem to have a half pan version at Jerry's last time I looked, which is less useful for me than the whole pan box as I prefer to have whole pans of my most used colors (burnt umber, french ultramarine, an orangey red like vermillion or dose dore or something like that, and aureolin or winsor yellow). Another interesting thing to note is that the whole pan Winsor and Newton watercolors are not available in the US either (why?!) but they can also be purchased from Ken Bromley Art Supplies in England if you want to switch out some of the colors (as I did right away and will probably do more of as I tend to change my palette a bit considering what sort of painting I am doing regularly). I switched out winsor red for rose dore and lemon yellow for Indian yellow right away and plan a few more changes when I get some colors in half pans soon. As you can see in my Schminke box (which actually is currently filled with Lukas paints from Jerry's) below, I normally keep a larger palette than just the 12 in the new W&N box above.

 

This is my old Schmincke watercolor box which I recently refilled with Lukas paints from Jerry's Artarama. Lukas paints are much more economically priced than many artist quality paints, and I recommend them to those who can't afford the more expensive ones but still would like artist quality.  I prefer to use them with a bit of extra gum arabic (I like holbein gum arabic paste as a little goes a long way and it comes in a tube instead of a bottle which makes it easier to take when traveling).  I find that the Lukas paints feel a little lacking in gum arabic in their formulation (for my taste anyway), so I add a drop of it on my palette as I am working and add a very tiny bit to mixtures as I work which makes these paints feel better to me (more like W&N or Sennelier, which are my usual favorites).  Anyway, this is my largest selection of colors in a box that I can comfortably carry around with me, so I take it when I have no idea what I might want for colors because this one pretty much has all the bases covered.  I have smaller boxes, but the problem with the mini boxes is that they don't fit a decent sized brush or even a water brush inside them easily which I find a bit annoying.  I will do another post some day about some of my smaller palette boxes if anyone is interested in that and the pros and cons of the those.

So, these are the two boxes of watercolors that I am using most frequently lately.  I expect that the heavy weight box will be a fixture for me from now on as it works so well with the large brush I like to have with me for doing washes and mixing up the quantities of paint that are needed for such a large brush.  I am undecided about whether the large brush will stay in the light weight box since it's so tight on space for brushes. I have two size 12 sable brushes from Creative Mark, which are excellent and really reasonably priced in comparison to Winsor & Newton series 7 brushes which I have only been able to manage to get up to a size 4, but one may have to live at home as it's just too tight in the box with it in there and I can't fit a pencil or pen in there now which I am not thrilled about.  

All in all they are both good boxes, both can fit either whole or half pans which is a must for a box for me, and they both fit some brushes in the box (though some brushes need to have the handle shortened to fit in either one).  The heavy weight box has mixing areas that work better for me when I do large washes, but the light weight box works fine as long as I don't need the deep wells for mixing.  The brush space is much larger on the heavy weight box, but adequate in the lightweight box for about 2 or 3 brushes and a pen or pencil. The lightweight box clicks closed a bit tighter than the heavyweight box.  The tin of the lightweight box (as the name implies!) is lighter and thinner, while the heavy box is thicker and will take more of a beating (my old Schmincke box is about 17 years old and is scratched and quite dented in several places, though still very useable).  I expect to use both for a long time, though I may slightly prefer the new W&N one now!

Midcoast Maine travel journal

We spent the last week of August in Maine right on the coast by the water.  It was beautiful and I took several hundred photos of our adventures, but I also spent a lot of time drawing each day.  This first drawing was the view from our campground toward Cadillac Mountain... the kids like playing on top of the mountain so I thought it was cool that we could see it from our campground.

 

Ella read a lot... she stays still so I can draw her when shes reading.

 

There was so much going on that Tessa went back to taking naps a lot of days.  I drew her feet while she was napping as feet are something that I find tricky to draw... they are not too bad if they aren't moving :)

Here is the view from the top of Cadillac Mountain back toward our campground.

I started this drawing in ballpoint while Tessa was wading in the shallow water in Winter Harbor on the Schoodic Peninsula. I only got about 5 or 6 trees done while I was sitting on the beach through, so I took a somewhat lousy reference photo and then finished it up later. Drawing the trees was really meditative as they are really sort of just a pattern and once I have the idea I just put them in without really looking at the reference photo much.

I was sitting on a stoney beach when I drew this one fast and using water soluble crayons. I am not sure if I like these crayons all that much, but they were interesting to play with.

The day that I did this quick drawing we had gone on a boat from Bass Harbor out to Frenchboro and back again. By the time I had a couple of minutes to draw it was dark and I did this by flashlight at the picnic table as the mosquitoes started to eat me.  I finished it in about 10 minutes flat as I slapped mosquitoes!

4 color ballpoint a the laundromat in Millbridge.  Finished in the time it took to wash our clothes mid week.

We found tons of apple trees by the roadside and brought two bushels home to turn into apple butter for the winter. 

The kids liked a little spot called Blueberry Hill.  They found more blackberries than blueberries there though!

I bought myself this lovely winsor and newton series 7 brush while we were at a great little store called the Naturalist's Notebook.

I started this little watercolor sketch sitting in the parking lot at Thunder Hole near Bar Harbor, but didn't get time to finish.  Again, I snapped a blurry reference picture and came back to it to finish when I got home. Below you can see the colors that are in my new Winsor and Newton heavy duty watercolor box, which will get it's own post in the next few days for sure as I really like it and will be using it for a long time I am sure.

It was good to draw every day.  This isn't all the drawings I did at all, there were many more than I want to post all at once.  But these were my favorites.

On finishing a sketchbook

I finished a sketchbook yesterday. I admit, I didn't love this sketchbook, a Stillman & Birn Zeta. The paper didn't work for my style of watercolor, it went soggy and squishy and spongy too easily. And ink seemed to slurp right into the paper. Not enough sizing. It was fine for pencil or ballpoint but the paper still just felt mushy. Oh well. I made it through. Some books feel like a battle to get through. You fight every step of the way with the paper and are just glad when it's over. Other books are like a favorite song, they fly by quickly and with great joy, and then you hit repeat so you can listen again. This book was a battle for sure. But hey, I made it through and that means I can start a new book soon without this old one sitting there forlorn and uncompleted. So, here is a little flip through video to show you this book start to finish. It's a mixture of mess, exploration, and more finished artwork. Most of my books end up that way eventually even when I try to keep one all beautiful. Without a bit of mess and exploration it's hard to find understanding. So here it is, in all it's messy glory. This book spans about a year. I started it last Fall and set it aside again and again because I just don't love the paper, as I said. But I hated to leave it unfinished, so I kept at it. There is only one completely empty page. I'm ok with that. I just didn't find anything that I wanted to put opposite that drawing of my daughter's bathing suit and towel on the rack. Oh well. Maybe some day I will decide to put something there. But for now, I am happy to shelve this book and start a Strathmore 500 series mixed media book instead. That will be a breeze. A walk in the park. A song. The paper makes all the difference.

So, without further ado, here's the Stillman & Birn Zeta

These boots are made for drawing...

I did this small drawing last week. I keep a sketchbook of tiny things, things that fit within the confines of the pages of this small Moleskine sketchbook, and recently I realized that this little pair of red books is probably the last pair of my youngest daughter's shoes that will fit in the book. Since I had long ago drawn her first pair in the book I decided to come back to this small format to draw these favorite red boots of hers. Here are her original little purple shoes, so small that both fit on the double spread of the book! 

After posting the photo online in a couple of groups several people have asked me how I make a drawing like this. So, so since I had conveniently taken several photos along the way while drawing this I thought I would put up a little how to for those who want to see how the drawing progressed. 

First drew the outline in a fine point black bic ballpoint. I even drew in every stitch of the white stitching detail because that white stitching is a prominent part of the look of these boots. 

Then I went in with a very light hand and started very softly building up some shading, again with the fine point black bic. Mostly I am just looking at the very deepest shadows for this first bit of shading. I don't want to go overboard with the black and have the whole drawing get super dark. 

Next I got to work with a couple of red pens to do some more shading. I used a warm and a cool red. The cool red was from a Staedtler pack of ten colored ballpoints, the warm red was from a Tesco cheap pack of 10 colored ballpoints. Using both colors allowed me to build up a more vibrant depth of color in my shading. At this point I had worked about 1.5 hours. 

Next I used a warm and cool red Staedtler colored pencil and just a little bit of an orange and a brown to smooth out the overall look of the leather of the boot by gently laying in soft glazes of color until I had the richness and depth that I wanted. You can't really tell in the picture here but through all this I was going right over those little stitches I had drawn  back at the beginning. Now I got out a white Gelle Roll gel pen and went over each stitch with that. It was too bright a white on it's own so once it dried I took a brown pencil and lightly went over all the white stitches to give them a slightly dirty and worn look. 

I liked how that section has gone so I did the same for the next section next to it, building layers of ballpoint, colored ballpoint, and finally pencils and white gel ink again. At this point I had worked about 2.5 hours. 

At this point I wasn't too thrilled about the balance of the composition on the page and I really wanted to get the zipper  that these boots have into the picture so I drew in the second boot and started in with shading. I spent a long time looking at the zipper and figuring out how the pieces all fit together and very softly mapping it out with pencil first as it was the most complicated part of this drawing to get right. At this point I think I had worked about 3 hours on this whole drawing foe the start. 

So, next I worked though all the sections of the book first in black ballpoint shading, then the reds, then I got out a couple of yellow ballpoints, one from a Tesco pack of ten colored ballpoints, and one from a Bazic pure neon color ballpoint pen set of 10 (the are available on amazon and are not actually neon in spite of the name), and a brown Staedtler ballpoint. I worked on the bottom of the boot and the small bit of leather showing inside the second boot last carefully and softly shading and layering in the yellows and browns to get the right texture. At this point I had worked about 4.5 hours. 

I made a final layering of a bit of colored pencil to smooth out the last sections of the boot and then went around the whole drawing with pencil evening and harmonizing the whole thing, adding a bit of dark purple in the shadows, adding some very light shadows which were too light to do with the black pen in the first go around of shading. Now I am at about 5 hours into the drawing. 

The last thing I do is to give it a background color and some shading and shadows around the boots. I wanted a background that contrasted with the red and orange of the boots so I layed in some blue colored pencil and a bit of purple and brown and black in the shadow areas to give it some depth. I added the text and gave it one last go over to even out the shading in a few spots and decided it was done. The whole drawing took me about 5.5 hours divided over about 4 sessions over a couple of days fit in around other things and doing other drawings in other books etc. 

I did not set the boots up in the way I was drawing them but simply looked at them straight on and went on instinct to creat the shadows. When I worked at different times of day I sat on the opposite side of the table to be able to have the light stay to my left, but otherwise I didn't worry overly much about it being a perfect representation. Things that were difficult to figure out visually I sketched in with pencil first, like the zipper and the shape of the stitching which needed to match in size roughly on both sides. 

I hope this was helpful for you! Have fun drawing! 

Slow summer... Going fast.

It's been a bit of a slow summer artistically for me. After the mad rush of the Spring I've been sort of taking it easy and not trying to get much done. I wish I could say I've been drawing every day, but I haven't. I wish I could say I have made some amazing art that I truly love, but I haven't. It's been slow and syrupy and sticky sort of work lately... Nothing seems to be just sliding off my pen easily the past few weeks. 

Meanwhile, summer is speeding by with swimming lessons to take kids to, a vacation in Maine to plan, and a weekend away closer to home to get ready for. Plus the usual summer busy-ness... Gardens to take care of, fruit and vegetables to harvest, and kid to get through baths and showers after countless outings to the beach. Maybe the reason that I am not drawing much is that even though summer is supposed to be long and lazy, when you are a work at home mom to three young kids, life is never really slow and lazy, no matter how much I might wish it could be. Life is full, and there is not a lot of spare time right now to make a lot of art. 

In spite of all that I have made a bit of art lately for Sketchbook Skool. It's the second semester and so far I have been most inspired by the second week of it when we had to draw self portraits. It turned out to be more fun than I remembered. I haven't made any self portraits in about 5 years. So, here are a few of those, the ones that I liked anyway. 

Since I've been gone...

The Peter and the Wolf sets were built, I painted them, and the shows went great. Glad it all went well and they came out good. It was a bit crazy that last few weeks getting it all done, but hey, what's life without a bit of crazy now and then :) 

The dancers did a great job and the lighting was great. All in all I was really happy with how my paint job came out. And now I am happy to be getting back to doing much smaller paintings and drawings! 

I will miss seeing that wolf around town a little bit though... I kind of liked seeing my art all over town lately! 

 

I am going sort of crazy trying to make art and run my business (www.pinkletinkbaby.com) and build sets for Peter and the Wolf and take care of my kids and get my garden in and do the household chores while my husband is away traveling for work.... and and and the list goes on and on and on!  Things are hectic to say the least and my head is spinning trying to keep track of it all. 

I actually did quite a bit of drawing last week, but I wasn't thrilled with any of it.  This drawing of my dog, Amy, in my sketchbook is the only one I was really totally happy with.

In other news my Peter and the Wolf poster is starting to pop up everywhere and it's cool to see it around town. I like seeing my showing up in places I don't expect to see it... that's pretty cool :)

On the road...

 

Last week I was traveling with my family and in-laws which is why no posts last week. Traveling and making art is a lot of fun, but tricky with kids. It got really difficult after illness set in for me and my oldest daughter (my younger daughters had the bug before we left and were on antibiotics for the first few days of the trip).  Taking care of sick kids while on vacation was rough and I didn't make too much progress in making art after the first few days. But here are a few things we saw along the way.  I discovered that it is possible to do small paintings in the car like the one below, but not to do tighter and more precise drawings as above.  For me, the movement of the car makes drawing difficult, but loose watercolor works quite well I thought.

This week I start work on rehabbing sets for Peter and the Wolf for Turning Pointe Dance Studio.  I already did the artwork for the poster for the performance, so hopefully the work to do the sets will go smoothly and they will come out well.  As soon as I have the finished poster available I will post it here, hopefully soon.

Excuses, excuses

For years I have spent a lot of time making excuses for why I don't have time to make art.  I say I didn't get enough sleep last night and I can't focus.  I say I am busy with taking care of kids.  I say I need to work. I say I will draw tomorrow.  Lately I have decided I need to make the excuses go the other way... I need to say, no, I am sorry but right now I am drawing and I will do that other thing that needs to be done when I am finished.  OK? Good.  Glad you all agree :)

A few words about artistic satisfaction

Here is a set of pages from my most recent sketchbook.  Both are from the same day, but the one on the left made me feel completely as though I had failed (after all, it is difficult to make a good drawing while watching your kids riding their bikes on the road, right?), and the one on the right left me feeling like I might be able to sort of draw after all.  When I looked at these pages after completing them I wasn't sure if I would share them together or just scan the drawing of the French macarons and try to forget the other existed at all. But then I thought, what the hell, I started this blog as an exploration and to record my artistic journey for those who care to look.  Some drawings are better than others.  Some leave me feeling like an artistic disaster.  Some I like.  And so, I am off to make some more terrible drawings... ones with weird perspective and crazy lines that don't always make sense.  But somewhere among the crazy maybe there will be another lovely, clean and tidy box of macarons, or some other wonderful thing that will be a good drawing... the only way to get to the good drawings, the ones that you finish with a sigh and a smile, is to get past the crappy drawings, to keep drawing.  If Van Gogh had just quit what would have happened? His early drawings are really pretty lousy, but look at his paintings toward the end of his life... they were amazing. 

I often go through my sketch books out of order.  I don't know why I have the urge to start something on one half of the double page or the other some days, but I often will draw something on the right side of the page and then go back and fill in the left, as I did here.  I did the drawing of  the hydrant, and then the next day added my bike on the left hand page because I felt like the green of the bike would be a good thing next to the green of the hydrant top.  I like the way the whole layout turned out and this week of assignments to do directly in ink with no pencil drawing first has been interested and both freeing and scary at the same time.  I like to lay out a very sketchy sketch with pencil usually before starting in with ink and not doing that obviously made for somewhat wonky and crazy lines in places, but I rolled with it and I am relatively happy with the outcome on most of my drawings this past week. 

This week we begin with drawing in public and drawing in colored pencil as our homework for Sketchbook Skool.... that's so much more relaxing to me than drawing directly in ink... this week should be a breeze! I started by getting out my colored pencils and drawing my teapot just because I like the color and the reflected light on it. Ahhh colored pencil, a little watercolor for the background, and an ink border... now that's something I can relax with!

Now I just need to figure out what to draw in the rest of the page....

Yesterday I admitted my weird love of fire hydrants to the members of Sketchbook Skool... and it turns out I am not the only one who thinks they are pretty great :)

The best part of the day wasn't drawing the fire hydrant at the end of the road though (though that was pretty fun....).  The best thing was when Lucy decided that she was going to sit down and draw too while Tessa was napping.  She got out her pencils and got right to work while I drew with her markers for a while. 

Lucy put all her pencils in rainbow order and then made a drawing of her headphones and her iPod that is pretty great.

And I made a pretty lousy little drawing of the peanut butter jar with some big fat crayola markers that belong to the kids.