Currently Browsing: Process
Project Friday: How To Deal with Crappy Days in Your Visual Journal
Here’s a question I’m asked frequently: How do you deal with crappy days in your journal? Not long ago a student explained to me that when she kept a written journal she would often write about the stress and frustration in that journal, but then never look back at it. She felt that her visual […]
In Contest—Paper Comparisons
If you are testing papers to see whether you like working on them then it is important that you test all your usual techniques to ensure that the paper will respond in ways that support those techniques. Since prepainting backgrounds is an important part of the play and puzzle aspect of my practice comparison tests […]
Simple Approaches for Backgrounds—A Five-Part Series: Part 4 Fold Outs
This is Part Four of a five-part series on simple approaches to backgrounds in the visual journal and paintings. See Part One here. Last December I was buried beneath the latest of the blog transfer issues. I didn’t get to post a number of images and posts I’d worked up. Today’s image falls well into discussion […]
Simple Approaches for Backgrounds—A Five-Part Series: Part 3 Patterns
This is Part Three of a five-part series on simple approaches to backgrounds in the visual journal and paintings. See Part One here. Today I wanted to look at pattern—it’s something that you can use to quickly fill up the background space around a subject. I’ve written about some of my favorite approaches numerous times […]
Simple Approaches for Backgrounds—A Five-Part Series: Part 2 Multi-color Backgrounds
This is Part Two of a five-part series on executing simple backgrounds in your journal or other artwork. Part One of this series can be found at this link. One of the simplest, yet most interesting approaches to a background, especially for a portrait, is to have broken color. This means that one or more […]
New Winsor & Newton Watercolor Paper Part 3: Professional Hot Press
This is the third and final part of my three part series on the new watercolor paper lines from Winsor & Newton: Professional, which is their wood-free fine-art line; and Classic which is their wood-pulp (but acid free) paper. See part one in the series here. Note that this is the NEW Winsor & Newton […]
Roz’s 2018 International Fake Journal Wrap Up
How can I post a wrap up today when IFJM is still not over? This year because of a pending surgery (happily not needed after all) and other factors you can read about in my wrap up I did my fake journal in March 2018. You can access the wrap up and gallery of my […]
Mixed Media—Working Loose When Your Ink Runs
It can easily happen to anyone at any time—you do a really cool ink sketch, get the watercolors (or other water-based medium) out, start to paint, and watch as the ink color dissolves from the line and spreads into your paint. This bothers a lot of my students. I’ve even heard them gasp, cry out, […]
Just Try It: Pushing a Drawing Beyond Finished
How do we make decisions, fast decisions, when sketching out in the field? By making decisions during practice, and comparing results. Some people can hold two versions of a piece in their mind and weigh what the future work will look like. For artists just starting out there might seem to be too many possibilities. […]
2018 Drawing Practice—Drawing Live Subjects in Public
All my life, one of the most exciting, energizing, and simply fun experiences I’ve enjoyed has been while I’m sketching live animals. It doesn’t matter if I’m at home with a dog visitor (we don’t have live in models any more) or out and about in the field checking out wild turkeys or walking around […]