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Adding Color Pencil to the Sketchbook
This month I am taking a dive into color pencils. I recently started a class with Cynthia Armstrong where we are learning the techniques of color pencil and the use of color pencil on various types of paper. The art color pencil was invented in 1924 by Faber Castell and Caren d’Ache. It is known…
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Color of Bird Feathers
As I continue lessons in watercolor painting of Shorebirds with Ian de Hoog, our bird subjects these past weeks brings color of feathers to mind. The colors in the feathers of a bird are formed in two different ways, from either pigments or from light refraction caused by the structure of the feather. www.allaboutbirds.org Of…
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Birds Eye
I am back in class with Ian de Hoog painting birds, specifically Shore Birds. I have found that Ian’s unrelenting focus in his bird painting process – on the bird head and specifically the birds ‘eye’ makes this class a wonderful learning platform for watercolor techniques.
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More Landscape Color
Progress has been made in my understanding of successful watercolor landscape. Sarah Hansen has kept us on track in learning techniques for sky, mid-ground, fore-ground and today total composition. Included are
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Landscape Color
Is watercolor landscape really that difficult? … YES! I am taking a class with Sarah Hansen- Watercolor Landscapes Deconstructed online via Winslow Art Center. Check our Sarah’s work here or Instagram here. My comment after the first session on clouds was that it’s going to take 1000 hours of practice to achieve that fresh painterly…
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Vegetable Color Wheel
This week’s watercolor sketching subjects quickly became a healthy meal. Before becoming a meal, the vegetables were a great way to revisit basic color mixing and elementary, easily overlooked watercolor practices – Keep your water clean. Keep your colors clean. Keep your highlights. The veggie motivation came courtesy of a Jean Mackay class via Winslow…
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Pollinators Choice
Walking through the garden on a pollinator survey I noticed that PURPLE is the bloom color where most bees were foraging – making Purple the subject this week!
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Finding North
Finding North became the focus this week as I was researching the history of the compass rose. First a little background. North on a map is a human construction that took hold in the early 1600s. Maps have always shown an up ‘direction’ but there have been variations – early Egyptian maps show South as…
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Art of Map Color
Color on maps has history ranging from aesthetic to symbolic, from decorative to the complex color theorems started in the 1800s to distinguish countries, states and bodies of water. In the 19th century before complexity set in and before maps were printed with color it was a popular hobby for society ladies to hand color…
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Too Brilliant Color
If you pause and look around the environment where you are right now, do you see much Orange? Orange, our color this week does not casually creep into our personal environment… possibly if we are outdoors in the fall foliage, or maybe if we work in an industrial site surrounded by safety messaging or drive…
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Yucca
The Yucca has become a smart plant for urban gardens. The plant is low maintenance, copes well in sun or shade and brings an interesting heritage. Seeing the flowering Yucca on my daily walk route and a family members visit to the Fremont Indian State Park & Museum has inspired this post.
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Getting Started
When starting the watercolor sketch for this post it was to explore the three watercolors that made it onto my palette when I first started watercolor. The plant I chose to sketch is – Akebia quinata or 5-Leaf Vine. Synchronicity set in … it was 5 years ago that I took my first ‘encore’ /…
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