Lunch Break

(Click image for a larger, clearer view.)

When my sketching group goes to Adams, we all meet in the cafe area for lunch at noon. It's a golden opportunity to catch some quick gesture sketches of customers at a nearby register, or seated in the cafe. I sketched them in with Noodler's Luxury Blue ink in a Pilot Plumix italic pen, and used the same ink for the smaller writing on the page. (The large title is watercolor, painted with a brush.) This ink washes just a tiny bit with a water-filled brush, and I supplemented that with watercolor over the top of the ink sketch.

People often ask how I select my colors for a given scene. Often my choices are inspired by one of the borders or backgrounds that I pre-painted in my book. Other times I know what colors I want to use when I look at the scene, and I look for a painted page spread that will accommodate those colors. For this scene, I really wanted a white page to sketch on. Any border colors would have worked as long as I had the white center; I'd just sketch with the colors present in the border. But I have to confess, I was really happy to come to this blue border and be able to put the Luxury Blue ink to good use! It's become one of my favorites.

Review of Schmincke Reichgold Dry Gouache --- Glittery Glimmery Glam!

(Image is clickable if you'd like to see it larger and sharper.)

When I got home from Adams the other day after doing this sketch, I did the writing with the same pens and inks that I used on the sketch posted yesterday. But it seemed a little stark to me. It needed just a touch of something glittery for some extra holiday cheer. I was going to add some gold touches with the Krylon 18K Gold Leafing Pen, but then I got another idea...

A few weeks ago, I was in the Jerrys Artarama store in Norwalk, and I stumbled upon a bottle of Schmincke Reichgold Dry Gouache. It's metallic gold with a gouache binder in powdered form that you mix up as needed. I had to try it! It's been sitting in my studio ever since. I pulled it out and using a small palette knife, set some out on a piece of glass. I took a couple of drops of water and mixed it up with the palette knife on the glass surface, then painted some bits onto the wreath. I know you might only be able to make out a few dabs of it on the wreath; it's hard to see in photos, just like the iridescent paint, but I absolutely love this stuff! I wish you could all see it in person. It mixes up very easily and has a more textural look to it than the pen. When you mix it, you can understand why it is sold in a dry, powdered form. The metal particles separate easily from the water and binder once it's mixed up, so liquifying it as needed is definitely the way to go with this product.

Here's what the bottle and powder look like:

The photo makes the bottle look huge, but it's only 20ml. Very small. The mix remains soluble in water. I left  some to dry on the glass, then went back with a wet brush and it sprang right back to life. The small quantity I'd put out was just begging to be all used up and it reconstituted so easily that I went ahead and added it to some other sketches too. Some does come off after it's dry if you rub a finger across a painted area, so it doesn't set as permanently as the gold pen or gold acrylic paint.

The fact that the gold gouache remains soluble is a big factor, because that means it won't destroy my brush if I'm out on location and can't wash the brush right away. Although the gold leafing pen is easier to carry around and use, the gouache has some advantages. I can use more water and less powder to add a little shimmer to a colored area, or  instead paint something solid gold with very little dilution of the product. This makes it more versatile in its application. Apparently it can also be mixed into paints, though I haven't tried that...yet! 

Meercat Haven Gesture Sketching

You can click the image above for a larger, clearer view. I think the text is clear enough on the clicked image to be legible, so I'm not going to retype it here unless somebody complains! ;)

When I did my page preparations, I painted this border with sepia colored acrylic paint. Then I painted the entire page with diluted Golden Fluid Acrylic Interference Blue. When the Interference colors are painted on a dark background, there is a color shift when the light hits. That's why you can see bits of blue on the border, which is much more obvious when looking at the pages in person. The white portion of the page has a beautiful satiny sheen from the Interference Blue, though the color shift is most obvious against a dark background. This was a very interesting experiment using a dark background and corresponding color complement in interference paint. I definitely plan to explore more of this!

Because of that color shift, it was difficult to select a color to sketch with, but the combination seemed to unify into a muted reddish-brownish-violet tone, which suited my favorite mix of Private Reserve Velvet Black Ink and Private Reserve Chocolat. I used a waterbrush to wash some of the lines.

Shark Tank at the Maritime Aquarium

You can click the image above to see a larger, clearer image. I'm sorry about the glare on these pages, but due especially to the iridescent and interference paint used, the sparkly surfaces of the pages in my sketchbook reflect a lot of light.

This was another really dark room where a book light would have come in handy. I sketched in brown ink and then added a little watercolor. Even though the scene was quite neutral in color, I felt it needed a bit more than the ink alone would give me. The glittery blue border and background were done in advance. In preparation for my aquarium visit, I got several pages ready in blues, though I ended up using just two of them, and used previously prepared spreads for the rest. This particular one turned out to be ideal for the shark tank.

While I was sitting there sketching, a woman walked in with her toddler son. He walked wide-eyed up to the tank, pointed to a large fish with a chunk of flesh taken out of him, and said, "Oh, look! That fish got bit REALLY BAD, Mommy! Those sharks are mean!"

Mom seemed pretty horrified, but I'm sure she didn't want her son having nightmares about shark attacks. She picked him up and said, "Oh no, Sweetie, they were just playing! It was an accident....Just a little rough play!"

She looked at me and I looked at her and we both giggled.