A Few Words for the New Year

Every year, I choose a quote for the year, and write it into my planner. This year, my quote is:

A year from now, you'll wish you had begun today.

As we close out 2019, it's an opportunity to look backward and forward simultaneously, take stock of where we are and where we want to be, express gratitude, and make positive changes in our lives. Many of us make a list of New Years Resolutions. But this quote reminds me that every day should be like that -- reflecting, trying to become a better person, implementing new strategies for success in all areas of our lives, and making better choices. We don't have to wait for a new year in order to take action, begin again, or start something new. 

Whether your goals are art-related, work-related, health-related, in the area of personal development, or spiritual, there's no time like the present. Any day can be a new beginning, and this year we get an extra day!

Happy New Year, everybody. I'll be back to my regular posts next week.

Jamie

Megasketch Monday -- Silhouette Power

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen with Platinum Carbon Black ink

If you open up the Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide to the Birds, the first thing you see is a two page spread of bird silhouettes. What always surprises me is that each bird is so identifiable from its silhouette alone. Their poses are also perfectly in character, sitting on wires, standing on a fence post, walking along the ground, or looking up and chirping. Silhouettes seem simple, yet they can tell a

Twenty White Gouache and White Watercolor Brand Comparisons

When I want a bright white highlight on a sketch, I often count on white gouache to do the job. All whites are created equal, right? Wrong. In fact, even all Titanium Whites are not created equal. On my sketches, I've noticed if a brand of white gouache isn't a brilliant white, or isn't opaque enough, or has an annoying sheen to it. Whether this is due to different brands of the pigment itself, or differences in the color of the binders, the whites are not the same. Consistency, texture, ease of application, and sheen also vary, which affect their use and appearance.

Over the years, as I accumulated and used new gouache and watercolor whites, I made swatches of them on gray paper to see how they measured up against one another. Today, I noticed that there were 20 swatches on the sheet, so I thought it was time for a little Reveal Party.

Megasketch Monday -- Drawing Trees

Gouache on black paper

Painted from life in Trish's back yard

For landscape painters, being able to capture the character of a tree, or the silhouette of a distant tree line, is an important aspect of making a successful painting. Project Megasketch gifted me with ample time to study many different ways of drawing and painting these beautiful and graceful living structures. Toward the end of the project, I combined what I'd practiced with some experimental approaches. I hope this post inspires you to push forward with a favorite subject of your own to develop skills and style. It doesn't have to be trees!

Ink and wash, from one of my own photos

Some I sketched from my own reference photos, like the unique tree (above) that resides at the Bronx Zoo. I tried to keep in mind what I'd learned about tree contours in the time I'd spent with the online

Lightfastness Tests -- Charvin Water Soluble Pastel Painting Sticks

In January, 2015, I made swatches of the 48 colors in the Charvin Water Soluble Pastel Painting Sticks set, and cut the strips down the center. I put half of each strip by a south-facing window of my studio, and the other half wrapped up in a dark closet. In another month, it will have been five years since I started the test. By art longevity standards, five years is not a long time.

In case you're not sure which pastels I'm referring to, above is a photo of the set. Here is a link to them on the Jerrys website. They claim to be pure pigment and lightfast. They are certainly well priced! As you can see in the image below, the colors are rated by the manufacturer, some as "**** Excellent" and some as "***Good". But if you know me, you know I often need to prove things for

Megasketch Monday -- Abstract Art and Doodles

Golden High Flow in an empty Montana marker

While many artists are happiest when doodling or playing around with abstract concepts, I get bored to tears. Pushing around paint or pens without a specific image in my mind always felt like a waste of time. I was determined to spend at least a small part of my Project Megasketch time trying to understand what it was about these genres that appealed to others. Maybe it could become appealing to me too. Hopefully I could learn something from it that would be useful in my representational work, or in my appreciation of abstract art in general. Maybe it would improve the quality of my line