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I Need To Draw More Cats
I rarely draw cats. Most don’t seem to like me staring at them. (Dogs never seem to mind.) And the heads are so different from canine heads. Let’s face it. If you can draw a dog you can, with adjustment, draw all bears, raccoons, fishers, martins, foxes, wolves, hyenas, and hundreds of species I’m just […]
A Quick Portrait Sketch: Watercolor on Toned Paper
Read about the sketch in the caption. I was having a lot of fun working on this tan-toned paper from Strathmore. It’s their 400 Series Mixed Media Toned paper. At 184 lbs. it’s a great weight also for collage. In the detail you can see I’m able to get streaky strokes […]
The Piecemeal Portrait Tutorial That Wasn’t
To keep myself drawing while I’m working out what my post-cataract eyesight will be I’ve been videotaping my sketching sessions. I find that the resultant videos allow me to look again at my process and ask myself questions about the progress I’m making with my eyesight. It also takes the focus off of whether or […]
Roz Is So Gross—Making Art By Any Means Available
I think it’s important to make art every day, by any means necessary—or in this case available. The other day I went to my massage therapy session. Dick dropped me off because I can’t drive with my right foot in a cast. I sat in the waiting area. Since there was no one else there […]
Notes to Yourself in Your Journal
I find the practice of making even brief notes during or at the end of a sketching session help me focus where I want to go next. If something turns out too elongated I try again, often with a different pen or tool, as I did here. And I might even make a small diagram […]
Upgrading Your Paper Choices for Sketchbooks, Visual Journals, and Art
To get the best results when sketching and painting it makes sense to use the best quality materials that you can afford. Then upgrade those materials as your budget allows. Recently a blog reader wrote in saying that she had upgraded her art supplies to artist level watercolors (mostly Daniel Smith), purchased some quality […]
Another Watercolor Sketch in an Arteza Watercolor Book
I’m still working my way through an Arteza Watercolor book. It’s 8.3 x 11.7 inches. I wrote a review of this journal and paper in a ninepart series (I think it was only nine). You can enter the words “Arteza Watercolor Book” in my blog’s search engine and all the posts will […]
In Context: Looking at the Arteza Watercolor Book Part 4
Since there is no writing on this page in my Arteza Watercolor Book—direct brush painting with watercolor. I used a 5/8 inch flat wash brush and also a size 10 watercolor round for some of this. I should have worked a little harder to make enough wash for the background to not […]
Project Friday: Go Ahead, Paint on Lightweight Drawing Paper
If there is one thing I would like to communicate to blog readers it’s that you need to go ahead and paint on whatever paper you have at hand. Simply because in the process of making the paint stick to paper that isn’t meant to have wet media on it you learn something about the […]
Using Watercolor Flats and a Bit on Back-Runs
In this experiment on Canson Heritage Hot Press 140 lb. watercolor paper from the end of 2018 I used only a 1 inch large flat watercolor brush. I’ve written other posts about how you can use the edge of the brush to do more linear bits, like the creases in the forehead, but in the […]