My Favorite Dessert Recipe

RiverWinds Gallery is putting together a cookbook of favorite desserts by their artists and the gallery owners. I contributed a recipe and did this sketch of ingredients for the book. The book should be out in a couple of months, and then you'll all be able to make my favorite recipe! Stay tuned....

Every once in awhile I start to feel like I just might be getting the hang of this watercolor thing! This was so much fun to paint, and I love the brilliance of the colors.

Notice how much straighter my writing is, now that I have those journaling templates? Those were a great find!

Reviews of La Reine Mauve ink and Journaling Templates

I got some great new art supplies to add to my journaling arsenal last week! I found this set of journaling templates by Karen Foster Designs that are going to enable me to finally write straight! They come held together by a key chain and offer a couple of different line width options. The widest is about 4", and I do wish there was a 5" and a 6" also, but I can just slide the template over to extend the lines.

In addition to Noodler's Kung Te-Cheng ink, which I reviewed yesterday, I also got their La Reine Mauve, Zhivago, and a couple of sample bottles of the new Blue Nose Bear. The brush pen and fountain pen shown above came with the Kung Te-Cheng ink --- a little bonus for having to purchase such a large bottle of it. I'm glad I love that one so much, because I don't think I'm ever going to run out of it!

The purple writing and drawing on this page was done with La Reine Mauve. How much do I love this ink? Let me count the ways! I purchased this to be a more vibrant purple version of the Kung Te-Cheng, and it does not disappoint! The ink has nice flow properties, and vibrant as it is, once down, it stays put. This is in the Noodler's line of bulletproof, eternal inks, so I don't have to worry about water spills or using watercolors over a drawing. And what a great color! La Reine Mauve only comes in a 1 oz bottle, so it's a bit on the pricey side, but worth every penny for its high performance and beauty.

More ink reviews coming soon! If you'd like these posts delivered to your email, you can just enter your email address in the box on the right sidebar.

Remnants and Review of Noodler's Kung Te-Cheng Ink

I picked these flowers from around my property before the Hurricane Irene hit, and painted them out on the patio after the storm departed. Even the mug is a remnant from a former time; it was left in a cabinet by previous owners of the house!

I got a delivery of some new inks last week, and used this opportunity to break out my brand new bottle of Noodler's Kung Te-Cheng. I used it for both the journal writing and the sketch above. For awhile, I was most interested in inks that would wash for my ink and wash sketches. But lately I've been yearning for more colors that will stay put. They are more useful in combination with watercolors, since they don't bleed and dirty the color. I've also been thinking that if I were to ever spill water on one of my journals by accident, all the text would bleed if the ink wasn't waterproof. I tried a small sample of Kung Te-Cheng six months or so ago, and loved the color, which is midway between blue and violet, and muted enough to not be overpowering. Perhaps the biggest surprise came when I did lightfastness tests of 13 inks. Many of them faded a lot within just a few weeks, but Kung Te-Cheng hung tough and easily outperformed all the others in terms of lightfastness. So, I knew it was just a matter of time before I treated myself to a bottle! It's only available in a 4.5oz size, but comes with an eyedropper-converted Platinum Preppy fountain pen and a brush pen to use with the ink! You can get it from one of my favorite suppliers, Goulet Pen Company. If you don't want to order this huge bottle without trying it first, you can order a sample of it. More ink reviews are on the way in the very near future!

Hiking to North Point

I'm still trying to catch up on photographing sketches and paintings and getting them posted! It's been hard to get that done on vacation, but it's quickly approaching "Back to Work" time! This watercolor sketch was done on a hike to North Point in the Catskill Mountains. North Point offers 270 degree views facing south, east, and north. This is the south-facing view, which overlooks North South Lake and the old Catskill Mountain House site. We were hoping for better visibility, but it was quite overcast that day. The trail was wet, rocky and slippery almost the entire way. Next time I'll definitely go when the trail is dry, but of course we were rewarded by the fabulous location at the top.