20140225 - Painting Cache

I allowed things to pile up, so this blog post has three paintings that I've done during the past three weeks in my Pen & Ink with Watercolor course. Think of these paintings more as sketches than as full blown paintings, since I spend less than three hours on each.

First, I did a painting of the Oregon Coast. It is not drawn from a specific reference photograph. Instead, this is an imagined shoreline along the Oregon Coast. The sharp rocky shoreline along with the narrow beach is shown in this painting. And of course, since I enjoy vibrant sunsets, I added a sunset. This painting used Noodler's Black ink as the ink. I used both a water brush and fountain pen to apply the ink. I then added plenty of color to deepen the shading of the painting.

The next painting is a still life of two lemons with a red onion in the middle. Of course, I happened to be sitting facing the lemons in an interesting position. As I faithfully copied the scene in front of me, the teacher pointed out that I was obviously a guy, since I was drawing the nipples first! Oops! It had not been on my mind, but sure enough that is how it looks. Of course, lemons have a "nipple" shape at the bottom of the lemon. Just goes to show that you should carefully examine your subject before beginning to paint or sketch the subject. But I tried to keep at it, regardless of the red cheeks! This painting uses Noodler's Black ink via both a waterbrush and fountain pen. The shadows are deepened with watercolor adding color into the shadow (since there is no true lack of color in nature ... unless you are in complete darkness).

Finally, we did a painting of crocus. I found a wonderful reference photograph of a yellow crocus peeking out of the snow. This painting does much better in person than as a scanned painting. The scanner just seems to miss a lot of the detail of the painting. This used Noodler's 54th Massachusetts (a blue/black) ink for the lines of the crocus and the snow. Remember that blue added to white reminds us of snow and ice. Of course, the snow should also reflect the color of the sky and the crocus.

Hopefully you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed making them.