Summer is over already and I’ve been very lazy – no paintings yet. Just a holiday drawing or two and more dog studies.
pen and ink, watercolour, pencil crayons
I rediscovered my fountain pens this summer and used them to draw Angus again.
pen and ink, pencil crayon
And now to my Nemesis, pastel. I keep trying to master pastels but I have a ways to go. I wasn’t going to post my latest effort because my technique still leaves much to be desired. Admittedly I’m using some old pastels that aren’t the greatest quality but that’s a bit of a lame excuse. I think though, I managed to get this little dog’s personality. I think.
I was scrolling through Instagram addictively, I mean, recently, and came across an artist (whose name I have forgotten, I’m so sorry) who wanders about doing little pen and ink sketches and it seemed like a really good idea for summer. So, two tiny drawings:
A couple of posts ago I included a drawing of Angus, a very large dog belonging to a friend of mine. I have a few more photos of this amazing animal that make me happy every time I look at them. I now have a file called “Angus Studies”. Here’s a recent one:
He’s still more or less a puppy, believe it or not.
In May I went out with the Urban Sketchers to a very wet and rainy Burnaby Blooms Festival. There were a lot of kids.
On a recent visit to the Sunshine Coast I became fascinated once again by all the different rocks on the beaches. I’m thinking of studying geology a bit more. (We’ll see how that goes.)
Hopefully with a bit of extra time over the summer you’ll see some more paintings, particularly of Nitobe Garden. Here’s what I would call “a watercolour study”.
Sunny Afternoon in Nitobe Garden, Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 10 in/50 x 20 cm
This was a struggle. If you look close, you can see a wild assortment of strokes, overpainting and confusion. I decided to post it anyway because the one thing that I think may have worked is the light. This has been on my easel for months and I spent a lot of time just staring at it wondering what to do next. It’s a painting that will never be finished but also one where I had to just stop and move on – which I guess means it’s finished.
On a lighter note, a friend just became a dog owner and sent a photo of their new family member snoozing on the couch. I am fond of other people’s dogs and just couldn’t keep myself from doing a quick sketch. Adorable, right? He’s just a puppy and is going to be Huge.
“Snoozin'”, watercolour and pencil drawing on paper
Around this time of year, I usually think up a little drawing for a few holiday cards. I couldn’t think of anything in particular for 2023 so I started playing around with bits of coloured paper. Four ideas emerged:
One of my sisters liked the “warm woolen mittens” design the best so I made a bunch of those. (I’m pretty sure the idea came from the last K1 art lesson where we drew mittens together.) The first thing I did was paint random red/green watercolour strokes on a piece of watercolour paper and when it was dry, cut it up into squares. Then I drew little mittens on each square (each card is “bespoke” haha), pasted them on coloured card stock and added a piece of wool (ok, acrylic yarn). Here’s one of the finished cards:
