Keeping track of progress on creative projects
After all the firsts yesterday, there’s just one new one today: I’ve never drawn a ghost with the sketchbook sitting flat on a table before. It went reasonably well, though I have to admit that for comfort and ease of use, the combination of dip pens and my drafting table back home is hard to beat.
The colors this time are Winsor & Newton Ultramarine and Deep Red.
So many new experiences this time around!
This is the first time I’ve ever brought leaf ghost stuff on vacation with me. First time drawing with dip pens on an easel rather than a drawing table. And first time drawing outside (unless you count some class sessions in art school that I found unpleasantly overwhelming).
Here the experience was delightfully relaxing. The weather was perfect. The morning was full of birdsong, and when someone nearby started mowing the grass (like I needed to go on a trip to listen to that noise), I put on my headphones.
As wonderful as it was to lose myself in drawing, I admit that the cross hatching approach might not have been the best fit for vacation. It’s wonderful and meditative, but each drawing takes three or four hours to complete. And I have other things I like to do as well when I’m out of town.
Still, it was a great opportunity to try several new things. I’m glad I did it.
For the record, that’s Winsor & Newton Emerald and Vermilion. I packed the bottles of ink in an egg carton to keep them from shifting around and breaking in my luggage.
And if you look closely at row seven, column four, the dark lines in the middle of the square were an accident. The hot tub on the deck kept turning itself on at random intervals, and each time it startled me. When I was drawing, it made my hand jerk, gouging the paper and getting a tiny scrap on the tip of the nib that made the lines too thick until I noticed what was happening and cleaned it off.
The experiment this time around was entirely unintentional: this is the first time I’ve changed pens in the middle of applying a color.
Actually more toward the beginning. I was a square or two into using Peacock Blue for the darker of the two background colors when I found that the pen was running too low on ink to use for the rest of the drawing. Fortunately the dead pen was B06, and I just happened to have B05 Process Blue handy as a back-up. The name might not have been as romantic, but the color worked just as well.
The other background blue is B24 Sky, the foreground is B28 Royal Blue and B39 Prussian Blue. The shadow is 100 Black.
This is the 40th ghost of 2023, so I’ve done as many so far this year as I did all last year.
Sticking with the same color scheme as last time, this time (appropriately enough) with Winsor & Newton inks. I used W&N Purple for #23, but this is the first time I combined it with Violet.
I did the drop shadow using the foreground color. Logically it makes less sense, but aesthetically I’m pleased with the result. The hue, saturation and brightness appear to sit neatly between the pen strokes for the background and the foreground.
After reading the latest article on color history from Winsor & Newton, I’m in a purple mood. I opted for Holbein Violet and Titanium White, both new to me.
I decided to do the whole painting from one cup, starting with a lot of white and then adding more violet for each step. At first the smallest drop of violet made the mix significantly darker. But by the end I had to add a lot of violet to darken it enough for the next set of squares.
Though I’ve learned to be careful about letting everything dry before starting the next pass (for gouache it’s a minimum of one complete song on the playlist), I ended up with a small smear. As I’d already mixed the lighter shade away, for a minute I thought I was stuck. Then I remembered that a friend of mine has been doing some great work with blending gouache. “Just get it wet again,” she advised.
So I did. Using a clean, wet brush, I carefully blended the smudge into its surroundings. And voila! it was gone.
I got a snazzy new Copic branded sketchbook and couldn’t wait to try it out with Copic markers.
The results aren’t bad, but they aren’t spectacularly different from the mixed media paper I’ve been using with the markers. The paper has a nice, smooth texture. But it’s thin and bleeds through like crazy. I get the feeling the premium price is more for the branding than for the paper quality, which makes me glad I got it on discount.
When choosing colors, I did the thing artists should never do: made my selections based on color names rather than saturation and brightness levels. As a result, here we have YG63 Pea Green, YG21 Anise, G17 Forest Green, G03 Meadow Green and YG67 Moss. Despite the not-by-the-book palette, I like how the combination turned out.
Again the experiment this time around was the paper rather than the paint. One of the sketchbooks I bought at Dick Blick earlier this week is specifically for watercolors, so I was curious to see how wet-on-wet would compare to the mixed media paper I’ve been using.
It was a different experience, but I’m pleased with the result. Originally I intended to make the leaf blue, but I had a last minute change of heart and went with green. In the process, I inadvertently reused the color scheme from Leaf Ghost #65. That’s okay, though. It gave me the chance to compare Art Creation tube to Yasutomo tray watercolors. The latter work better for this technique, at least in terms of the amount of paint used.
Hard to beat the colors, too. The yellow went on surprisingly evenly, but the others have the look specific to wet-on-wet. I also liked how the lighter areas of the dark green were so close to the darker areas of the light green.
The experiments continue. This is my first time drawing on Bristol board. I found it similar to mixed media paper. It’s heavier, but the surfaces are pretty much the same. Maybe a little less ink pooling at the ends of lines.
In some past ghosts, Winsor & Newton’s Emerald has looked a little blue. But combined with actual Blue, it appears more green (closer to what I expected when I got it).
It felt nice to be back to dip pens for the first time in nearly a month. Meditative.
Acrylics again. The background colors are the same as last time, and the foreground colors are Flat Brown and a mix of Brown Sand and Flat Brown (with a Black Red drop shadow). This is the first time I’ve ever mixed colors for use with an airbrush.
And now that I mention it, this was airbrushed. The new Badger 150 Patriot in its trial run proved much easier to use than the Krome, knock wood. I’ll need to do some more work with it before declaring it a success, but at least initial signs are good.
Thanks to an overabundance of caution on the paint-to-thinner mix (seeking to avoid the jamming problems that plagued the old brush), I used way too much thinner for the Flat Red in the background. As a result, it got all over the place, even creeping up under the masking film and making a mess. By the end of the process I’d found a more even mix that gave me better coverage and less splatter.
Though I made a few more mistakes along the way, overall I’m pleased with how this one came out. I’m looking forward to trying more airbrush work in the future.
I’m also looking forward to trying a new color scheme. It’s getting to be time to break out of the red and brown rut.
