Draw Your Veggies

Broccoli Tree, © 2010 Sydney Harper
Ink and watercolor on watercolor Moleskine

I bought some broccoli at the market the other day and decided I had to paint it. Besides, it’s been a while since I’ve done any veggies. When my nephews were young kids, they used to call broccoli “trees”. It does make a nice stand-in for a tree.

All of this leads me to the question, what do I do when I’m not feeling very creative or inspired. I thought about this when I was reading Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit again. I was reading the chapter on Ruts and Grooves. To me, being in a rut is often the same thing as lacking inspiration. She makes the point that what you really need when you are in a rut is a new idea. She gives an example from her lectures where she goes backstage and gets a found object, a stool for example, and gives the audience two minutes to come up with 60 uses for it. The last ideas are often the most imaginative.

I do a similar thing when I’m feeling uninspired. I’ll try a technique or a media that I don’t normally use. I’ll look at the work of other artists such as fiber artists, illustrators, collage artists, sculptors, and photographers. What I’m really looking for is a new idea. I’ll rummage around in the refrigerator or my desk or my yard for something to sketch or paint. Then I’m off on another groove.

A Meerkat and a Template Change

Meerkat, 7 x 5 inches, acrylic on illustration board
© 2010 Sydney Harper

I changed my template to one of the new Blogger templates. I’ve read that it doesn’t work well with IE6, but I have no way to test that. So if you’re using IE6 and having problems, that’s why. I like the new template choices though!

I’m still painting from some Atlanta Zoo photos I took a while back. This is a little acrylic painting of a Meerkat. All of the meerkats there looked a little chunkier than the ones I’ve seen on TV. I don’t know if it’s just better fed than wild meerkats or a different, chunkier meerkat than the ones I’ve seen. It was perfect for a limited palette painting.

I’ve been filling in for someone who hasn’t been able to work lately. I don’t really mind but it has thrown me off schedule and limited my painting and drawing time. I’m slowly getting back on track.

A few links.

Here’s a few interesting links I’ve found lately.

The Dimensions of Color by David Briggs. If you’ve been wanting more technical information about color, this is your place. I plan to spend more time here. I like the 3 dimensional color space. There are also several interactive graphs that are helpful. (via James Gurney)

Harmony is an online drawing tool written in HTML5. It won’t work at all in Internet Explorer, so don’t even try. (via Drawn!) The Drawn! link has some example drawings and a video.

Flame is another online drawing tool I found on Drawn!. It does much as its name suggests. It is a flame-like brush tool that lets you select color, noise, softness and other characteristics.

An Elephant and My Word for the Year

“Elephant in the Sun” – © 2010 Sydney Harper
Ink and watercolor on Bristol – 9 x 12 inches

About a year and a half ago, I spent the day at the zoo in Atlanta, Georgia taking lots of pictures. I assume a lot of that red-orange color came from the red clay they have in the area. These photos have been good inspiration for those times when I don’t know what to draw.

I have plenty of watercolor paper but it’s all cold-press and I don’t particularly like to draw on cold-press. So I thought I would try Bristol. I like drawing on Bristol but I’ve never tried watercolor.  It has an unusual combination of being slick and absorbent at the same time. It was a little frustrating at times but not too bad.  I think I’m going to put hot-press watercolor paper on my “To Buy” list.

Word of the Year

I realized that I hadn’t posted my word of the year for 2010 yet. I got the Word of the Year idea from Christine Kane’s Blog.  My word for last year was Delight. Most of last year was anything but Delightful though. Then I realized that most of last year was about getting myself in a place where I could experience more delight. So far this year has been much much better than last year.

That brings me to this year’s Word of Year – Abundance. I’m necessarily talking about things and money, although they’re nice too. It’s also about abundant fun, friends, success, health, etc. Basically I’m looking for more of the good things in life that I was lacking last year. So bring it on!

Jack’s Branch in the Spring

Jack’s Branch in Spring, © Sydney Harper
Acrylic on painting board, 5 x 7 inches

This is the perfect time of year to drag out some old photos to paint. Throughout the year, I’ll print out photos that I would like to use as a reference and stick them in a notebook. It’s a good resource for those days when I don’t know what I want to paint. This painting is from a photo at the Jack’s Branch rest area along the Natchez Trace Parkway. It was spring when I took this photo and everything was bright and green. It’s a perfect resource to work on when everything is dull and gray like it has been lately.

I painted this very quickly. It’s practically a sketch. It was one of those days where I didn’t have a lot of time to paint but I wanted to complete a painting. Since I exceeded my goal of 40 paintings last year, I decided this year’s goal would be 100 paintings. I have a tendency to get caught up in details when I paint, so this will be good practice for relaxing a bit with my paintings. Now if I can just forget I set this goal like I did last year, I might just exceed it too. Like my paintings, if I think about my goals too much, things start to drag.

Katie Cat and Four Motivational Links

Katie Cat. © Sydney Harper
8 x 10 inches. Acrylic on hardboard.

Update: I replaced the picture. I kept looking at the painting thinking something wasn't quite right. Then I figured it out. Whiskers! LOL!

I have sketched Katie many times, but I never painted her or any other cat until now. It took me a while to finally say “Done”. I started it in 2009. I would paint a bit, let it sit for a while and then go back to paint some more. Finally I got to the point where I was done with it. There’s some things I would do differently next time but I was ready to move on from this one.

I’m still working on my goals for 2010 so here are four interesting links I found over the holidays. Hopefully they’ll help you, and me, get motivated to do whatever we have been putting off.

• Is there a fear shortage? Seth Godin covers a topic that is a pet peeve of mine.
  
• Beware of Life. Chris Guillebeau covers a similar topic. The comments are worth reading too. Note I’m not proposing that you go out and be reckless, but maybe there is something you keep putting off out of fear.
  
• Get Excited and Make Things! Wil Wheaton urges everyone to quit procrastinating and make whatever it is they have been wanting to make.
  
• Finally, a bit of Patience for the thing you are going to do. This is a lovely video about a book within a book within a… It’s a little over 6 minutes long.

Goodbye and Good Riddance 2009

Snow scene, © 2009 Sydney Harper
watercolor on paper

Time to look back at 2009 before I leave it and go forward in 2010. In most years I keep a text file where I jot down my accomplishments, big and small, each month. When I went to look for the file for 2009, I realized I never got that far.  Most of this year fell outside of the norm.

Following Christine Kane’s suggestion, my chosen word for 2009 was Delight but my year was anything but delightful. What I realized as the year wound down and my life calmed down, is that I had major changes to make before I could get to “delight”.

Brief detour here. A friend mentioned on her blog that this New Year’s Eve was a blue moon and the next one wouldn’t occur for about another 20 years.  That got me wondering what was going on 20 years ago, 1989. Those last few months of 1989 were among the worst I’ve ever had – brand new job in a new location, my mom died, car wreck. I could go on but I won’t. I cried more in the last four months of 1989 than I ever have before or since then. But I made some wonderful friends and had a number of wonderful experiences that would not have occurred otherwise. It also made me realize that October tend to be a particularly difficult month for me since I seem to have a lot of stressful Octobers. My point (really there is one!) is that a lot of good came out of all of those bad experiences. That’s what kept me going through the last few month of 2009.

Enough of that, lets get on with the review. When I went back and looked at my index card with my 2009 goals, I was surprised at how well I did.

• I did not make as much money as I hoped in my goal but I did double the amount I earned the previous year. Besides I intentionally set a very high goal.
• I had a goal to learn Photoshop and maybe Illustrator and ended up learning Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver. I still have more to learn with these programs but I feel much more confident with the programs now and I enjoy using these tools. I used what I learned to make a published magazine ad and to develop a web site for a customer. In fact I enjoyed this so much that I decided that I need to explore this aspect more in 2010.
• I started organizing and decluttering the house. There’s still a lot more to do but there’s also a noticeable difference.
• I reached my goal for the number of paintings I wanted to do. They are not the quality I wanted since many of them were studies and experiments but I learned a lot in the process.
• That leads me to my other goal, to learn more techniques and to experiment. I focused mostly on color and negative painting in 2009 and I learned a tremendous amount.
• I had some more personal goals like becoming more mentally and physically fit during 2009. I did that but I will be working on that more in 2010.

All things considered it was a successful year. Even though it was full of anxiety and upheaval, there were some amazingly productive aspects to the year.  My next post will cover 2010.  I hope everyone has a Happy New Year!

Getting Back in My Groove: Garlic Sketch

Garlic Bulb and Cloves, ink and watercolor in watercolor Moleskine
© 2009 Sydney Harper

So getting back to my veggies that I’ve been sketching, here’s some garlic. Well, on second thought, I’m not sure most people would consider it a vegetable. It’s food so it will have to do. I decided to punch up the color a bit on the garlic, otherwise it would have been a little bland. At first I was afraid I had gone too far. Now that it is a day later, I like it better. I still may try it again sometime. You can see my previous veggies here, here, here, here, and here.

My personal life has been rather chaotic lately, so it’s been difficult getting back into my groove. I think I’m almost there now though. I still have some backlogged things I want to do but they should be easy to squeeze in.

4 Favorite Not Quite Art Blogs

Three Leeks, ink and watercolor in watercolor Moleskine
© 2009 Sydney Harper

I thought I would do something a little different today.  While I read a lot of artist blogs, there are several blogs I read that aren’t necessarily art blogs but they cover topics that are somehow related to art. Here are a few of my favorites.

1. The Pen Addict

The Pen Addict covers pens of all kinds, mostly for writing but also drawing, and occasionally they’ll cover other things like paper products and pencil/pen cases.  Really though it’s all about pens.  There are frequent giveaways and Saturday is usually Ink Link day with links to other pen reviews. I found out about Jet Pens, a US source for Japanese pens, from the Pen Addict.

2. Photoshop Tips for Artists

This blog doesn’t have frequent posts or even a lot of posts.  If you’re trying to use Photoshop or want to use Photoshop for your art photography, these tips are very good.  If you don’t have Photoshop, check the very first tip for suggestions on how to afford Photoshop.

3. Seth Godin

Seth Godin  is mostly about marketing.  I’m on a “learning about marketing” kick recently, but mostly I read his blog because of his unique perspective.  If you don’t already read Seth’s blog, check it out sometime. I usually come away with lots to think about.

4. Abstract City

This is Christoph Niemann’s heavily illustrated blog on the New York Times site.  I’m as fascinated and amused by his story telling as I am with the variety of techniques he uses to create the illustrations. Go back and look at some of his previous posts to see what I mean.

The sketch at the top is another one of my ink and watercolor root vegetable sketches.  This time the subject is some leeks I happened to buy at the store.

Turnip Sketch

Turnip, ink and watercolor in Moleskine
2009 Sydney Harper

I think I like turnips because they have that purple blush at the top. Well I like eating them too, but I would probably ignore them if they were just white. It’s interesting how important color is in our food. I was hoping to find some turnips with greens attached but it wasn’t meant to be. Probably because lots of people here eat the green tops so they can sell them separately.

An interesting historical tidbit about turnips is that turnip lanterns were the predecessor to today’s jack o’lanterns.

This sketch was done in ink and watercolor in my watercolor Moleskine.

Carrot Sketch

“Carrot”, ink and watercolor in watercolor Moleskine
copyright 2009 Sydney Harper

Digging through the refrigerator, I found a carrot.  It’s been there, uh, a while so why not sketch it. Beside it’s fun to paint orange things. Right now I’m enjoying sketching lumpy, bumpy vegetables more than smooth ones.  They just seem to have more character. Soon I’ll be left with only brown and beige root vegetables.   I guess I should have been mixing them in all along.

Red Onion Sketch

Ink and watercolor
in Moleskine watercolor notebook

I’m continuing with the root vegetable sketch theme, depending on what I’ve bought recently. This time it’s a red onion.  I’m enjoying doing these.  I think what I like most about these sketches is the pen. I’ve been experimenting with a lot of different pens lately, but I’m enamored with the finest tip of my set of Zig Millenium pens (005 size or .20 mm line) for these sketches.

I’m going to have to see what else I can find at the grocery store.  Of course, there’s lots of the usual stuff left to sketch but I’ll have to look for some out of the ordinary vegetables too. 

Sweet Potato

Sweet potato
ink and watercolor, 5 x 8 inches

Around here, it’s the sweet potato season.  Towards the end of summer and early fall, you’ll see flat-bed trucks beside the road filled with sweet potatoes for sale. That’s my indicator for autumn.  Earlier in the summer, you’ll see them with watermelons and tomatoes. Maybe it’s because I like fall or maybe it’s just because I like sweet potatoes, but the sweet potato trucks always make me smile.

This is done in ink and watercolor.  Lately I’ve enjoyed seeing other people’s ink sketch before the watercolor is added, so here’s my sweet potato before the watercolor was added.

 

Quick TV Sketching

One of the things I do to practice quick sketches is sketch while watching Sunrise Earth or sometimes just any show on TV.  Sometimes that’s as close as I get to watching TV.  It forces me to work quickly and not agonize over details.  Usually I just do ink sketches, but here’s a couple where I tried something different. Sometimes I’ll do little landscapes.  Other times, I’ll sketch random bits and pieces.

The sketch above was done in watercolor pencil.  It was a shoreline in Massachusetts or Maine, I forget which one. I like the sketch but the watercolor pencil didn’t work well for me.  I found myself spending more time on it than I wanted. But then I don’t use watercolor pencils that often so maybe it’s just an experience thing.

Watercolor worked much better.   I used my travel watercolor kit for the sketch above. I don’t have much time to think about colors or technique and sometimes I don’t  get a chance to finish what I’m sketching.  It’s a good change of pace from my usual sketching.

Just a Pepper

“Just a Pepper” – Sydney Harper
4 x 5 inches, watercolor

I was looking for something quick to paint. Then I remembered that I had bought some peppers at the farmers markets the other day. It was perfect for a quick little watercolor.  The paler yellow and green has a freshness about it that I like.

I have this big pack of small sample watercolor papers that I got from Daniel Smith years ago. Since the pack resurfaced recently, I’ll grab one of the sheets when I want to do a little watercolor sketch or practice painting.  This time I grabbed a piece of hot press watercolor paper. For some reason, I’ve never tried hot press paper before. I think I like the hot press better.  I’m not sure why I never tried it before. I may grab a few sheets of hot press the next time I buy paper.

Beautyberry

Beautyberry by Sydney Harper
watercolor, 5 x 5 inches

I have an American Beautyberry bush in the backyard that’s one of my favorites. It’s an ordinary shrub for most of the summer with small flowers that aren’t very showy.  This time of year is when it really shines. Right now it’s full of clusters of purple berries. Plus it’s practically indestructible. We have heavy clay soil and unusual weather patterns since I’ve planted it. One year it froze to the ground when we had a late spring hard freeze, but it sprouted back up. Plants have to be sturdy to survive in our yard.

I started this watercolor sketch outside one afternoon, got about halfway, and finished it inside. This summer has been crazy. Painting and drawing has come in fits and spurts. Things seem to be falling into a better routine now so I’m looking forward to more painting time.

 

Three Mockingbirds

A little over a year ago I made a bunch of quick mockingbird sketches with the idea of a painting or drawing or something.  You can see a few of them at the link in the previous sentence.  Luckily I made lots of notes and stashed a couple of not so good reference photos. Plus if all else fails, we have plenty of mockingbirds around the house.  That was the last I thought about it until last night. I grabbed my old sketchbook, a piece of charcoal paper and my Pitt pen set and started drawing.  This is the end result.

Three Mockingbirds, 9 x 12 inches (8 x 10 inches displayed)
ink, gouache, and white charcoal on paper

I added a little bit of white gouache for the white feathers and a teeny tiny bit of white charcoal here and there.  I love to watch mockingbirds running around the yard looking for food.

Watercolor Papers and Moonflowers

Moonflower, watercolor, 5 x 5 inches

I’ve been painting the latest batch of small watercolors on some watercolor paper samples I have.  Normally I prefer Arches 140 lb or 300 lb paper.  It’s what I learned on and it takes a lot of punishment. Every time I try a sheet something else, I end up regretting it.  Since I’ve been using these samples, though, I’ve found a few that I might try again. 

Unfortunately the paper I used for this painting was not one of them. I lost the little identifying label so I don’t remember what it is, but hopefully I won’t run into it again. If you’re putting down multiple washes like I did here, it just doesn’t hold up. Pretty soon it starts bleeding and pilling. I ended up stopping before I planned to stop.

So if you’re just starting out with watercolor and having trouble, try some different papers. You might hate Arches and love some other paper. To me there’s a huge difference between watercolor papers.  So don’t assume it’s you, it might be the paper. 

In spite of the paper problems, there’s a lot I like this painting. I might try another version on a different paper one of these days. Moonflowers (Ipomoea alba) are one of my favorite flowers.  They’re one of those remarkable flowers that blooms after the sun sets.  They’re similar to morning glories except they’re white. The other remarkable thing about moonflowers is that hummingbird moths love them. I had never seen one in the yard until I planted moonflowers. They do look a lot like hummingbirds at first glance.

Rooftops in the Negative

Watercolor, 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches

I’m still playing around with negative painting. I’ve always been fascinated with rooftops, so I decided to try some negative painting with rooftops. It’s very loosely based on one of my sketches, which is pretty darned loose too. Anyway I like the way this turned out. I’ll have to try some more of these. I might try it a little differently next time though.

This was one of those times that I had a huge ah-ha moment. I haven’t done that much watercolor and I’ve struggled to find a style of my own that I was happy with. But lately I’ve been working on Linda Kemp’s Watercolor Painting Outside the Lines, Jeanne Dobie’s Making Color Sing, and Stephen Quiller’s Color Choices. Even though Stephen Quiller’s book isn’t strictly watercolor, I saw the connection between all of them. I could feel my style mentally taking form. Now all I have to do is find a way to make it take the form of actual paintings. So it looks like more practice is in store.

Negative Painting

Leaves, 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches, watercolor

I bought Watercolor Painting Outside the Lines by Linda Kemp the other day. I’ve been obsessed with it ever since I got it. It’s only 125 pages but it’s chock full of information and exercises. She covers supplies, paint qualities, underpaintings, negative shapes of objects, how to paint negative shapes, and composition and planning. Even if I decided that I didn’t want to do any more negative painting, I would still get a lot out of this book. The underpainting section seemed a little early and misplaced to me, but she admits at the beginning of the section that she debated where to put it. There’s probably not a perfect place to put it.

If you do get Linda Kemp’s book, be sure to check out her free video lessons at Jerry’s Artarama. There are eight video lessons that coordinate with her book. There’s also a DVD of the book which I haven’t seen. The painting above is one of the exercises from the book. Doing the exercises has been worth it for me. It’s more difficult than it looks. Below is another little exercise from the book, creating landscapes with layers of watercolor washes.

Landscape, 5 x 5 1/2 inches, watercolor.

I’m about halfway through the book right now, so I’ll let you know my progress as I go along.

Virtual Sketch Date – May 2009

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.