Red Crossbill. Carbon Pencil.

Lately, I’m even drawing freehand, without a grid, without tracing.  Which, for me, is happying beyond belief.

Indian Skimmer. Carbon Pencil.

Anyway.

I have a set of Koh-I-Noor Woodless Graphite Pencils that I like to use much more than the traditional Derwent pencils.  So I gave all my Derwents to my daughter and use only the Koh-I-Noors now. My only complaint about the Koh-I-Noors is that the print on them is so small and in a color that doesn’t contrast with the pencil itself.  It was difficult and frustrating to try to see whether I had a 2B or a 8B in my hand.

Koh-I-Noor Pencils Before

I mentioned this aloud and said that I was going to write the number on a bit of masking tape and stick it on each pencil.  But my daughter suggested using the label maker.  So I tried it.

Koh-I-Noor Pencils After

I can certainly see which pencil is which now.

Now, the problem is that the label tape doesn’t stick to itself very well and the edge comes up a smidge.  I’m going to use a tiny smear of PVA to seal it down.  I expect that to do the trick.  If not, I’ll update you.

Even better than these graphite pencils, however, I like my Royal Sovereign Wolff’s Carbon pencils, which I also labeled just for consistency’s sake.  I like them because they have ‘wolf’ in the name, but also because I can achieve much darker darks with them than with the graphites.  J. D. Hillberry mixes graphite, carbon, and charcoal, and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.  So I’m going to start trying it in order to get a full range of grayscale in my drawings.

Also, you might be interested in how I store and carry my pencils.

Pencil Roll Closed

My daughter made this pencil roll for me.  I also have a red one for my colored pencils.  If you visit her Etsy store, you can request she make a custom one for you in any color you like.

Pencil Roll Open

Under “Art & Nature,” there’s a calendar listing Northern Virginia Art & Nature Events (it only extends to about 1 month into the future so far) and also a listing of Northern Virginia places to go birding, wildlife watching, and plein air painting.  I’ll be adding to both of those as time goes by, too, including my reviews of those places, and eventually a map of all the locations.

So enjoy these new features and leave a comment below if there’s anything specific you’d like me to add.

Most of these will eventually be turned into step-by-step demo blogs soon, so I’ve been taking photos along the way of everything I’ve done.

Here’s what I’m working on today:

Shell Inlay Box

Today, I’m hot-glueing the shell mosaic onto the box.  This is a photo of me testing out different designs.

Shadowbox:  Rose Tints My World

I got this box on clearance at Michael’s for 99¢.  Now it’s very hot pink.  Well, the front half is.  So today I’ll be painting the back half.  Then I can proceed with the decorating.

Sunflowers on my Easel

The other major thing I’ll show you is the sunflower I’ve been painting. The reference photo is one I took last summer of a rogue sunflower that grew under one of the bird feeders in the backyard.

Medium:  Oil Pastel
Paper:  Portofino Acquerello, 140 lb, Hot Pressed, 20″ x 14″
Primer:  Colourfix
Image size:  18″ x 12″

I just put in the background colors yesterday.  I’m not quite happy with them yet… I can’t decide if they’re too blue-ish, or not blue enough.  What do you think?

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954).  A Mexicana who taught herself to paint and whose work reflects all aspects of her life, from her long-term physical disabilities, to her difficult marriage to artist Diego Rivera, to her love of Mexico.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1976).  An American woman whose independence and big bold paintings are a constant source of wonder to me.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890). He was born in Holland but most well-known for the paintings he did while living in France.  His use of color, line, and texture are amazing.

Who are your favorite artists?

It’s try that the creative person needs long stretches of isolation to do his or her best work, but that doesn’t mean you that can’t do anything at all with just five minutes.  And it doesn’t have to be your best work.  Just do something.  Anything.  Or not.

Here’s a list of possiblities:

1. Write something:  a quick blog, a status update, a shopping list, a journal entry, a list of random ideas, a poem, a postcard to a friend, a love letter.  If it’s Tuesday, try Five Minute Fiction.
2. Sketch something: your pet, child, or spouse, a book on the table, your own hand or foot, the view from the window.  Read Robert Sloan’s advice on creating five-minute art.  Or this article by Courtney Jordan.
3. Sing something:  sing along with your favorite CD, or sing a capella a beloved song from childood, or a silly song, or a love song.  Can’t sing?  Hum,then.  Or drum your hands on everything around you and listen to the different sounds.  And maybe dance.
4. Got a bucket list (which you might share here or here)? Or a list of impossible things you’d like to do?  Use 5 minutes to research information about one of the activities on your list.  That’s the first step to getting it done.
5. Take a photograph of something: your pet, child, or spouse, a row of books, DVDs, brushes, or drawing implements, your cup of tea or coffee, your work in progress, the dead bug on your desk.
   

   One of my Dead Bugs

6. Read something: a news article, the sports page, the comics, a couple poems or pages of a novel, a blog, a new recipe, an instruction manual.
7. Drink a glass of water.  Staying hydrated is important.
8. Tidy your office or studio.  This is something we all put off, since we’d much rather be in the process of creating something rather than putting away our toys.  But it does need to be done sometimes, and it can prove cleansing or meditative.  And I almost always find something I thought I’d lost (or forgot I had) when I tidy up.  So it’s all good.
9. Stretch.  Look out the window.  Stand outside, if the weather is suitable.  Take a deep breath.  Stretch again in a different direction.  Or two.  Look around from that stretch position and see the world from a different angle.
10. Meditate.  Sometimes the best action is no action.

Don’t like any of my ideas?  Try these:

Things to do when you’re bored.

Five minutes in the kitchen.

Yurmby Wheel

I’d heard of the Munsell Color System before, but never found it helpful. But until yesterday, I’d never heard of the Gurney Journey or the Yurmby Wheel (although the advice in the Wilcox book is similar to the Yurmby Wheel).   The Yurmby Wheel is also used on this Gamut Mask site.

Also, I wanted to include the Color Scheme Designer Website last week, but it was down for some reason.  Now it’s back.

I can only guess that as I continue to have more experience as a painter, I’ll develop a deeper, more intuitive understanding of color.  I’ll eventually remember which mixes work together and which result in mud.

In the meantime, I’ll keep using my swatches and wheels and any other crutches that help me make beautiful paintings.

The defining feature that unifies the order Rodentia is that their front teeth grow continually and have to be worn down by near-continuous gnawing. If they didn’t gnaw, their front teeth would grow until digging into some other part of the face or mouth and disable or killing the animal.

Typical Rodent Teeth (Image from Wikipedia)

Squirrels live on every continent except Australia and come in 200 species.  Our most common squirrel around Northern Virginia is the Eastern Gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis). However, there is another species that lives here: the Black Squirrel.

Black Squirrel in DC (image from the DCist)

The first time I saw a black squirrel, I did a double-take. I hadn’t known there was such a thing. I looked it up first chance I got. Apparently they were brought to the DC area from Canada in the early 1900s and the population survived.

I like squirrels as much as any other animal. Until they raid my birdfeeders. Most of my feeders are squirrel-proof, but I still end up feeding them since birds aren’t the neatest eaters and some feed ends up on the ground.

When I can count seven or more squirrels in my yard at once, even I might think all squirrels should die. I joke around around buying a bee-bee gun and having squirrel stew for dinner, but that won’t ever happen.

But if I saw one of these purple squirrels, I’d wouldn’t be running for my gun. I’d be running for my camera.

Purple Squirrel (Image from MNN)

Sometime taking photos of tree branches includes Bald Eagles at Pohick Regional Park.

To me, beauty is meaningful.  As is the grotesque.  As is oddness.  And living things of all species.  So I am easily motivated to take photographs of things I find beautiful, grotesque, odd, or alive.  (Which encompasses almost everything, which accounts for the outrageous number of photos I take.)

And the grotesque includes the dead fish that eagles leave uneaten on the shore.

Humans are hard-wired to find meaning.  It’s part of our nature to puzzle out why things are, to learn about them, to find (or invent) meaning for them.  This is part of the intelligence that evolved along with creativity, language, art- and tool-making, and everything else that sets up apart from other animals.  Our curiosity about the world, our ability to figure out patterns, discover their meaning, and plan for the future – all this has made extremely adaptable and therefore successful.

I don’t believe that the universe as a whole has any meaning.  There is no absolute, over-riding purpose to anything… at least, not one we can be privy to.  (Although that doesn’t stop people from inventing them and trying to impose their invented meanings on others.)  But we each have the ability to decide or discover for ourselves what is meaningful to us, and to pursue that meaning.

And it is pursuing what is meaning to us that keeps us motivated to get up in the morning, to go out in the cold or the heat or the rain or the snow, to take photos, or make art, or plan for the future.  If you don’t find what you’re doing meaningful, then why bother?  Why are you doing it?  What is motivating you?

When we lose sight of what is meaningful in our own lives, though, we lose motivation.  We’re simply going through the motions.  And sometimes that’s unavoidable.  We all have to do things from time to time that seem pointless, but are required to get to some other goal we’re trying to achieve. But no one should live their whole life in pointlessness.

It is your responsibility – your duty to yourself – to find something that gives your life meaning.  What motivates you?  What makes you feel good about yourself and the work you’re doing?  What are you holding on to?  What are you protecting?  What are you creating?

My Mabef Easel & my assistant Lucky

However, one of the features I most wanted – the complete adjustability – also turned out to be a bit troublesome.  It stands up straight, or lays down flat, and holds any size support I may decide to work on.  But I found it to be tricky to quickly and easily get both sides of the easel adjusted to the same levels every time I changed from one position to another.

So this week I broke down and used a Sharpie to add markings to the slots where the bolts slide up and down to make it adjustable.  I had to overcome my reluctance to write on my ‘furniture,’ but I figured it has paint on it already, so I’m not really messing it up.

All I did was hold a ruler up to the slot and make 1″ marks along it.  You can also see that I made a longer mark at my preferred upright position on both the upper support and the lower leg.

I made the marks on both left and right sides, always beginning at the top of the slot and working my way down so that both sides would be the same.

It was a quick and easy fix to a nuisance problem and I no longer dread adjusting the position of my easel.

Lower leg of easel with markings

Upper support of easel with markings

I rely heavily on homemade swatch samples of all my oil pastels and colored pencils.

My homemade oil pastel swatches

I also use online tools such as this one based on website design.  (There are many more like these to be found through Google.)

Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green, by Michael Wilcox, brought me a long way toward a better understanding of using color when I’m painting.

It helped me understand why mixing my favorite red and my favorite blue created mud instead of purple. With the help of this book (to which I’m constantly referring), I have a lot less trial and error when trying to find the specific gray or brown I have in mind.

I also learned that the name on the paint label is almost meaningless. What matters is the pigment used in the compound. The pigment is designated by letters and numbers, like PY3 or PB27. The label names given by the manufacturers are not standardized and they can name the hue any fancy name that appeals to them. However, the pigment designations are regulated by the ASTM. It’s the pigment in the tube or stick that makes the hue.

As an example, I have these 2 containers of acrylic paint. Both are Liquitex Basics brand. Both call themselves Cadium Yellow, although the one in the jar is ‘medium’ hue and the one in the tube is ‘light hue.’ (And although actual cadium is no longer used in paints at all.)

Two Cadium Yellows

However, the problem came when I was trying to mix them with various blues and getting drastically different results. When I checked the pigments in the small print, the jar contained PY74 and PY83. The tube contained PY3, which is usually marketed as Hansa Yellow. And even I can tell a difference in the hues when I look at them side by side. But this is a clear example of misleading color names.

For a terrific reference to everything about this, check out the Color of Art Pigment Database. It was also invaluable to me in coming to better understanding paint and color and pigment.

Back to the book. Wilcox fills the book with color images depicting every possible combination an artist will ever need and a series of mixing exercises designed to help you learn the combinations that will yield the results you’re looking for. The book was recommended to me by my art teacher because it had helped her. It helped me. And if you struggle with mixing your paints in any medium, this book can help you, too.