Follow Friday: Kong Wee Pang

Kong Wee Pang is another artist whose creativity blows me away. Take a look at her work and just marvel at it.

Studio Night Last Night: Tiny Paintings and Spanish Sheep

 Posted this from last week on Etsy.

Made another tiny painting of London. I think this is part of Westminster Abbey? Hard to tell when it's so tiny.

Finished my sheep painting from last week. I call it La Oveja de Robledillo. (Not tiny - it's 30" x 22")

I started gessoing another piece of paper to make more of these. (BTW, gessoing paper is a ridiculous endeavor.)

Here's an Idea: Lisa's Lunchbox

Here's an idea: go get a nice lunch at Lisa's Lunchbox, 5885 Ridgeway Center Parkway #101.

Take the first left in the Ridgeway Loop, then turn left into the first parking lot. Go into the building on the right, and there it is! Easy peasy.

Tell them I said hi!

Memphis Monday: Food Truck Friday

The Dixon Gallery and Gardens has Food Truck Fridays in their courtyard. I stopped by there recently and enjoyed a delicious grilled chicken and shrimp salad from StickEm Food Truck.

But first, I sketched it!

(click images for more detail)

Happy Birthday to my Mom

Around the House

Follow Friday: Inma Serrano

One of the most creative sketchers I've met through the Urban Sketchers is Inma Serrano. Her sketches have so much life and energy. I get to take her workshop at the Symposium in Barcelona!

Playing with Pens

Isn't that what I'm always doing?

Studio Night Last Night Part Two: Tiny Painting

After messing around with my new Gamblin paints on a big piece of gessoed paper (30" x 22"), I needed to try them on a tiny painting, so I made this. I really enjoyed using the new paints to make this tiny painting - some of the colors are so perfectly muted, but all of the greens have just enough of a bright hue to make them stand out. I feel like I'm missing one good dark (out of the self-limited palette I'm playing with), but I do like the effect of how close the colors are to each other.

I also got a better sense of how the Solvent Free Gel works, and found I was using too much with the tiny brushes, compared with wanting to use more with the bigger brushes in the first painting. It'll take a while to get used to, but I love how it is almost the consistency of paint, so that I can dab my brush into it, then dab it into the paint and play with it until I like the consistency. Dang I love oil paint!

Here's my newest tiny painting: Art Opening.

Studio Night Last Night: Gamblin Paints

I met the good folks at Gamblin Artist Oil's Colors at the NAMTA trade show (took a brief break from looking for Urban Sketchers sponsors to visit my favorite paint company) earlier this month. They showed me all of their new colors, talked me into switching to Gamsol and Galkyd Lite (easy!), and then sent me their new colors and their new Solvent Free Gel.

Last night was Studio Night, so I grabbed my favorite palette knife and went to work.

This is Cadmium Chartreuse, Nickel Titanate Yellow and Green Gold.

Titanium Buff, Portland Warm Grey and Portland Cool Grey.

Warm White and Cool White on the bottom, with my regular Titanium White up top.

The Titanium Buff is yellowish, the Portland Warm Grey is reddish and the Portland Cool Grey is blueish, so I mixed up an orange, purple and green. Lovely muted colors!

I mixed the Warm White and Cool White with Ultramarine Blue - look at the difference!

The bottom right is Ultramarine Blue and Titanium White for comparison.

Then I mixed the Ultramarine Blue + Warm White with the orangey color to get this beautiful grey. Normally I would mix up a regular orange with ultramarine to get a nice brown, then mix more ultramarine to get a nice black (no, I can't just mix orange and lots of ultramarine, I have to do it twice), then I would mix a little of it into Titanium White to get a grey like this.

Below this is the Solvent Free Gel.

Here's the whole shebang.

I had a big piece of gessoed paper tinted with a bit of acrylic sitting around, so I started playing with an image from Spain that I've been toying with. I used that grey first, then started in with the orangey color.

Titanium Buff is a great color for sheep! It's hard to make out, but the Warm White is to the lower left of the sheep butt.

Look at the difference in the greys and blues. That one bit of warm grey in the center: blam!

I enjoyed using the Solvent Free Gel, but I wasn't sure if I was using too much or too little. I tended to want to use more. I liked it more when I also used a touch of solvent (Gamsol) with the gel because I could get more coverage and movement out of the paint. But alone it made the paint so creamy and lovely. I even used just the solvent to blur the edges of some of the paint.

This is how I left the painting for the night, because I wanted to try these paints on a tiny painting. Not sure where I want to take this, as it's a bit different than what I've been doing lately. But I've been wanting to make a series about my last trip to Spain before my next trip to Spain, so I think these paints might help.

Memphis Monday: Crescent Center

Because it's shaped like a crescent.

Supply Sunday: Pens

I love pens. These are the pens I carry with me everyday for sketching. One of each color.

Follow Friday: Urban Sketching Symposium 2013

Here's something fun to follow: the blog for the 2013 Urban Sketching Symposium. The local organizers are posting about the venues for the event, and the participants are starting to introduce themselves. During the Symposium we'll all post, including two correspondents who will be documenting every bit of the event. Follow and have fun!

Circle and Trees and Notes

Studio Night Last Night: Watercolor Graphite

I spent Studio Night experimenting, trying to get the images that are living in my head onto paper. After trying s e v e r a l materials, I went back to the watercolor graphite I was playing with recently. It's really neat. It's graphite that you paint with. Ca-razy. I think this might work.

Testing. Testing.

Testing a new product: Viarco watercolor graphite. So far so good.

Memphis Monday: Eastgate Shopping Center

Sitting in my car outside of the Easy Way listening to NPR.

Supply Sunday: Dr. Ph. Martin's Hydrus Fine Art Watercolor

You know what I like to do? I like to put Dr. Ph. Martin's Hydrus Fine Art Watercolor in a Pentel Aquash water brush pen and sketch with it. See the results below.

Minneapolis Trip Part 2

After taking care of some business at the NAMTA conference, I wandered around downtown Minneapolis in the freezing rain. First, I went to Eddington's because my friend Andria Insisted that I do so, and that I get wild rice soup, breadsticks and a homemade Rice Krispie treat. I did as I was told, and it was good - especially the breadsticks. The girl working there was so sweet - she asked me a lot of questions and gave me the RK treat for free.

I drew this building out the window, but I don't know what it is.

Then I tried to navigate the habitrail that is the Minneapolis skyway, but ended up back out in the freezing rain to find the right bus stop to the Walker Art Center.

Found it! What a great museum.

Sketched this in the cafe while my phone charged, and I listened to a conversation at the next table about art in Minneapolis.

After that I walked in the freezing rain Again, braved the skyway again but felt trapped, and ate dinner by myself at a Mexican restaurant. I think I disturbed the date of the guys at the next table, as one of them paid more attention to what I was drawing than to his date.

Last day - headed home.

Follow Friday: Melissa Dunn

Check out Melissa Dunn. She is a really good painter, and she's funny! "You Are Corn" is her piece from the recent Unicorn show at Marshall Arts.

Sometimes she comes out and sketches with Memphis Urban Sketchers, and she and I end up talking more than sketching.

Minneapolis Trip Part 1

Last week I went to Minneapolis for a couple of days and I had the opportunity to hang out with some sketchers! First, Ken Avidor and Don Colley and I took the bus to the Bell Museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota.

At the museum we looked at gorgeous dioramas with murals by the great Francis Lee Jaques, who also did a lot of the diorama murals for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I will look at the more closely the next time I go there.

We were joined by two more sketchers, Amber Sausen and Daniel Green, and we just sketched and sketched nests and skeletons and coral and each other.

Then we went to dinner and tested a number of Don's pens. We loved the Pelikano Jr. - see the exclamation point!