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.