Rob’s Waterco☺ler

I recently unearthed my Winsor Newton handheld watercolor sketchbox and started falling in love with it all over again.  I have been through several fits of getting the colors I like to use for “Field Sketching” and this is the current result:

Cadmium Yellow                     Scarlet Red             French UltraMarine
Transparent Yellow                Alizirin Crimson    Winsor Blue red Shade

Permanent Green                    Raw Sienna              Raw Umber
Winsor Green Blue Shade    Burnt Sienna           Indigo

And I really like  to have my Escoda travel kolinsky sable brushes size 10, 6 and 2.

Below is a picture of the set up along with a color study using Burnt Sienna as the interest color in the middle and seeing how the other colors react to it.  Notice Transparent Yellow is completely eaten up by it and the difference between how the two blues react.  Note: CR stands for Cadmium Red but is really Scarlet as I have been trying to get away from the Cadmium’s of late.  The dollar bill is for size reference.  No you cannot have it

Came home from work and needed to at least finish the rough of this 14×17 drawing.  Now it can sit a few days until I figure out what to do with it next, or be done with it.

Friday Night I participated in the Manassas Galley Walk in Old Town Manassas.  I met some wonderful people strolling through the old town on an unseasonably warm November evening.  Sold a nice watercolor/graphite sketch I had done of the old landmark Episcopal Church to the new owners.  They are going to open an international restaurant and cafe in a few months and we are all looking forward to its opening.

I also put together the above clay pot watercolor (12×16 on Arches) and graphite sketch as a demonstration painting.  Not sure I achieved the exact effect I was looking for, but it was fun.  No telling what will come out of these live demos   Well see if it warms up on me.

Rob

Cassie Updated today (21 Sep 2008) and finished.  I washed some Burnt Sienna and Rose Madder Genuine in to get some red accents and signed it.  Hope I hit the mark.

Slight glare on it because I wrapped it in the acetone bag before taking picutres.  A bad habit….need th think…think…think…!

I started this watercolor today.  There is a story behind the dog, which I will not elaborate on other than she was a good dog, taken too early.  The painting will be a gift for a coworker who is retiring this month and has significant meaning to her.

I painted this on 100 lbs Lana paper.  I really like to sketch on the Lana paper, and it also makes a great substitute for hot pressed watercolor paper.  It is 100% cotton and archival with a surface somewhere between hot and cold pressed, and lightly brushed.  It holds the pigment VERY well and accepts light rework.  I would not push it too far though.  The best thing is it is very warm and inviting, unlike watercolor paper which can be cold.  Since I have a lot of white showing, and did not want a tinting wash, I used it for this painting.

The painting is in an interesting combination of Indian Red, Cadmium Yellow, French Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, and Rose Madder Genuine.  Tomorrow I will go back at it to add some minor details (leaving it rather loose), and then drop it in a 14 x 18 museum matt, already cut.

Today I was painting en plein air at the International Children’s Festival with the Northern Virginia Artist League.  We were invited in to be a back drop for the performing arts going on around the park.  We had a good deal of traffic come and go between the events, and the day was fabulous!  I found a nice spot next to a stream and composed a 15 x 22 loose watercolor.  I am happier with the base sketch than I am with the painting.  Might be a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory and end up in the hall of shame, or I might put it through.  Needs contrast and some color simplification…hmmmm.

Been awhile since I painted in my oils, so I thought I would break them out.  This weekend I ripped a stack of Pannelli cotton panels to 8×10 on my table saw and now have a nice stack to inspire some quick oil and acrylic sketches.  This is from a nice friendly squirrel picture I shot a few years ago and it made a nice subject.  This was done very quickly (about an hour) and kept loose.  I also used the six warm/cool primary palette.

Rob

Thought I would drop a quick post in to show what I am currently working on.  This is a 10×14 watercolor inspired from a larger, and incomplete, oil painting I have been working on for some time.  I really have not had much inspiration to work on the unfinished oils this summer.  Saving them for the winter when I am stuck inside is usually best.  Still this painting of a boy fishing on a river bank is inspiring and I did a quick sketch here.  The drawing was done in a hotel while on vacation over the Labor Day weekend, and I am almost finished dropping in the majority of the color.  Now I will let it sit for a few days and make adjustments, as needed.

Of note, is the colors I used.  Besides the standard 6 primaries (3 warms and 3 cools) I also used Burnt Sienna, Naples Yellow (a favorite) and English Red.  I usually don’t like to use the English Red, except on trees because it is very opaque, almost chalk like.   I think it helped bring out some dimension and contrast in the painting though.

Rob

We went to North Carolina this weekend and while I was there I started work on a quick floral watercolor sketch. The background was done in Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue, then washed with a very heavy coat of Rose Madder Genuine.
10×14 on Lana Watercolor Paper. Lots of very transparent yellow to make it glow
Rob

This is an 11 x 14 acrylic sketch from a Middleburg Virginia reference photo.  I completed it the other day, along with a few other odd, less finished works.  Not sure if I am done with this so it will sit on the easel till I am ready to move forward, take it off and sign it, or toss it in the hall of shame.

On a side note: it has been busy here.  I have successfully crashed the website repeatedly over the last week trying to upgrade some of the .php files.  I finally gave up today and went back to the baseline that came with WP 2.3.3.  Maybe this weekend I will mess with it some more.  I am also in process of learning Ruby and Rails (Ruby on rails), and other misc web programming books (any guess how I crashed things!)

Speaking of books, let me tell you about my Amazon Kindle I got last friday.  I have been watching on the sideline the progression of ebooks for at least a year now.  When I found out that the Kindle now:

1. Works (with some manual effort) with .PDF files
2. Will soon (this month) have access to the O’Reilly Books (computer geek books)
3. on top of the other features like wireless, compatibility with other ebooks and document types,

 I went ahead and caved in.  So far I am liking it.  If you are an avid book reader (with $375 sitting around idle), or require a large amount of technical books which you read some times, this might be for you.  Time will tell if I am completely sold (although I guess I am stuck with it for better or worse).

Rob