14 x 11 inches, charcoal on paper
This month's reference for the Virtual Sketch Date was a photo of two sister's at a hoedown. I decided to focus on just one of the sisters. I also decided to do it in charcoal. It's been a while since I've used charcoal and I rarely do portraits. I ended up covered in charcoal so I must have had fun with it. I was nervous about it at first since I don’t often do portraits, but I’m kind of pleased with it, all things considered.
Rhododendron Bud
Watercolor, 7 x 5 inches
The reference for this month’s Virtual Sketch Date was a beautiful photo of a rhododendron bud provided by Jeanette Jobson. I decided to use watercolor and focus on the main rhododendron bud. I had fun doing this one. I would lay down a wash and then do some other things. Then I would come back and lay down another wash. So it was a relaxed, enjoyable painting.
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Pencil and colored pencil, 7 x 10 inches
This time I decided to sketch for this month’s Virtual Sketch Date. Partly because I knew if I painted it, I would get caught up in the details. Also I was just in the mood to try something different. This was done in pencil with a little bit of colored pencil added in here and there. I had fun with this. It’s good to shake things up and try something different sometimes. You can view the work of other participating artists here and here.
Selling Art
Earlier this week I was at my day job, working on a customer’s computer on site. While I working on the computer, Rick was showing someone my art on Flickr. They mentioned how much they liked one particular painting. Now I’ve never made much of an effort to sell my art. It’s more of a mental roadblock than a conscious decision. A more alert person would have offered the painting to them for x number of dollars. After all, I can make more. Me, I just thanked them. Oh well, next time. For those of you who make a better effort to sell your art than I do, here’s a list of observations and suggestions from someone who recently spent some time buying art. I thought there was some good information in there.
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This month's reference for the Virtual Sketch Date was a photo of Lake Louise, Canada was provided by Debbie Later. I decided to do this month's Virtual Sketch Date in acrylic. I tried not to get too caught up in all of the details in the rock layers. If I don't watch myself, I will. I had fun with this and learned a little in the process.
I visited Lake Louise many years ago. It's absolutely beautiful. It was spring when I visited. There's a trail that goes around the lake. At that time on the shady side of the lake, there was still some ice. Some of the ice was in little needle like pieces arranged vertically. When a breeze would come through, you could hear the little ice needles tinkling as they fell over.
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This month's reference for the Virtual Sketch Date was a peeled clementine. I decided to do this one in watercolor with a touch of white gouache at the end for the stringy bits. I don't like to use masking fluid and gouache seemed like a better choice. I had fun with this.
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Watercolor on tan paper, 8 x 5 inches
Farm in Lehigh Valley, PA
I seem to have fallen into a trend of using the Virtual Sketch Date for experimentation. For the December Virtual Sketch Date I experimented with limited palettes. Actually I prefer to use a limited palette of three to five colors. It just works out better for me. I did this watercolor sketch using a two color palette with a warm red, a bit of complementary color and some white for the snow. I have plenty of watercolor paper but I was in a hurry, so I just grabbed some tan paper rather than make my own toned paper. It's not meant for watercolor so it buckled badly at the bottom where I used a lot of water. In spite of that, I really like the way this turned out. I also did one on the same paper with a cool palette using a blue and a bit of red as a complement. I kept the water under control on that one so the buckling isn't as bad. I like it too, but I like the warmth in this one better so I put this one up anyway. The other one is up at my Flickr account. This was a lovely reference to use. I enjoyed working with it.
I'm not sure what it is but I'm having a hard time finding free time lately. Something always seems to come up to keep me from spending time on the things I would like to do. I guess part of it is the holiday season and the rest just falls into the "stuff happens" category. We'll be taking two weeks off at Christmas so I should have more free time then. I am so looking forward to it.
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pen and ink in sketchbook
I've been reading Stephen Quiller's book Color Choices
so I decided to use this month's Virtual Sketch Date to do a limited palette study. I'm enjoying this book, especially the way he does several studies of the same scene using the same palette and creates different effects. The book also includes a nice color wheel. He starts off with monochrome palettes and gradually adds in more colors.
This month's reference photo was provided by Jeanette Jobson. To keep myself from following the photo too closely and getting caught up detail, I made a quick sketch of the photo (above). Then I did the painting mostly from the sketch. While these aren't colors I would normally pick, I got a lot out the experience. Here's the final study. I'll have to live with it a few days to see what I think. I'll experiment with other color combinations though.
acrylic on illustration board, 8 x 10 inches
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I decided this morning to try this month's Virtual Sketch Date. The reference photo for this month was provided by Leslie Hawes. This was probably a stretch of my colored pencil abilities but I had fun and I learned a lot. It's about 5.5 by 3.5 inches in colored pencil in one of my sketchbooks.
Otherwise, I've been struggling with a painting lately. It's a new surface (gessoed masonite) and somewhat of a different subject matter for me. It's still at the ugly stage but I think I'm getting it whipped into shape.
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