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WordPrompt May STRONG
This month ‘Strong’ is the WordPress monthly prompt and an opportunity for me to share how sketching makes ‘strong memories’. For those who are not WordPress publishers the monthly prompt challenge is to help writers with a creative topic, a ‘monthly word to inspire a new post whatever you publish’. So here is my May […]
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Lettering Lesson
Adding words to a sketch is a good practice to understand so Jean Mackay provided us with a few tips for hand-lettering during the Nature Sketching workshop in Italy. I am not much for adding phrases into my work but some simple steps for making lettering look polished were welcome. We spent about 20 minutes […]
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Italian Earth Colors
Raw Sienna. Burnt Sienna. These earth colors are associated with the Italian landscape and essential for a palette used for nature sketching in Italy – our color topic today. Jean Mackay is leading a Winslow Art Center workshop in Italy where I hope to up my skills in composition and page refinement while sketching outdoors.
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Fresh vs Dried
As I am preparing to go off on a nature sketching excursion next month now is a good time to explore the merits of fresh vs dried watercolor on the palette. Freshly squeezed paint on a palette is nice for painting in the studio. Paint from the tube squeezed into a pan and dried is […]
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WordPrompt April GREEN
For someone who blogs about color each week I welcome ‘Green’ as the WordPress monthly prompt. For those who are not WordPress publishers the monthly prompt challenge is to help writers with a creative topic, a ‘monthly word to inspire a new post whatever you publish’. Recently I have participated in online classes offered by […]
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Negative Painting
For the past few weeks my ‘Fast & Loose’ classes with Cynthia Armstrong have focused on the technique of negative painting – one of the ways to create light and color in a watercolor sketch. There are 2 important concepts to have an understanding of to accomplish negative painting. Wet into Wet: Painting on a […]
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Paint and Paper
The difficulty in watercolor painting is almost entirely in how to anticipate and leverage the behavior of water, but paint and paper are important factors in getting great results. To gather more skills in using water I recently started a class, ‘Fast and Loose Watercolor” with Cynthia Armstrong. Her focus for the class is teaching […]
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Green Heron
[of green] “The beholder has neither the wish nor the power to imagine a state beyond it.” Goethe in Theory of Colours
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Green Birds
I am back in a Winslow Art Center online class – Birds! Delving Deeper with Ian de Hoog. We are focusing on green birds and mixing beautiful and illusive green hues. Our green bird this week is the Violet-Green Swallow – a small sleek bird with long pointed wings and slightly forked tails. Length 4.7 […]
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Color of Food
Recently I heard Sanjay Gupta MD talking about his book Keep Sharp Build a Better Brain at Any Age so I put a copy in my audible library and started to listen this week. Gupta narrates his book and in Chapter 7 ‘Food for Thought’ he mentions ‘color’ … the color of food. His statement […]
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Sunlit Foliage
When out on a trail a quick photo and a sketch are a great way to capture the scene and create a lasting memory. While the trail sketch allows the scene to be edited and put in perspective, final color tends to be a studio practice. In a recent class with Molly Hashimoto she shared […]