California Poppies - Detail Click to Enlarge

If you've been reading Painted Thoughts blog for any time at all, you know that I worship at the altar of details. Love, LOVE, LOVE details! It is in my nature to sit down and paint the finest of details for hours on end.

It's also crazy making.

When I don't have the level of detail I think I "need" in a photo reference or worse, when half way through the painting, I'm done. Finished. O.V.E.R. I.T. And it makes me crazy.

Such gorgeous oranges, yellows and pinks! Click to Enlarge

Then I rush through to the end and invariably regret it afterwords.

One of the things that travel sketching as well as sketching on location has taught me is there is no time for detail-worship. You go for big shapes, smaller shapes in shapes and then a few well chosen details and you're off to the next location.

Yes, at first it bothered me to leave out those scrumptious details.

Until I realized that sometimes less is more. It's kinda fun to paint an image and leave just enough out that the viewer can and does interpret the work differently from me.

So easy to get lost in all that detail! Click to Enlarge

Now, with this said, my default position is to get into the details waaaay too soon in a sketch or painting. I've had to get fairly "inventive" to outsmart my detail-loving-self.

I painted this standing up with the sketchbook turned upside down with a number 10 round with one hand tied behind my back!

....oops, wait, no, just kidding. I didn't tie my hand back.

Once the entire painting was dry, I sat down and painted in a few of the details—still using the #10 brush. I had to restrain myself from putting in every crinkle and wrinkle in those sweet, happy flowers.

And yes, it was hard not to go overboard with the details given to my desire to paint every stamen, shadow, crinkle, and hair.

Full Spread of California Poppies 11 x 8.5 inches Click to Enlarge

I am so glad I didn't. These flowers were so beautiful swaying in the breeze with their bright happy faces lifted to the sun. We saw these all over San Francisco...in gardens, by utility poles, in sidewalk crevices. It didn't matter where they were, they were beautiful.

These are not as loose as some would paint, but for me, given my proclivity for painting every single detail, this is loose! I still fed my desire for detail by including "just enough" detail to balance out the loose. I'm a happy girl!

Join me in my happy dance, won't you?!

Texas Moose Watercolor and Ink Pineapple Journal 5.5 x 5.5 inches

Chris and I went to dinner at the Texas Roadhouse restaurant the other evening and I noticed this big guy hanging over the door where the customers come and go.

I turned to Chris and asked, "Do they have moose in Texas?"

He looked at me a bit odd, but shook his head and answered, "Hmmm, no. A bit too warm there would be my guess....why?"

"I was just wondering why there's a moose over the door in what is suppose to be an Texas restaurant if moose don't live in the state," I replied. "I dunno, it just seems kind of weird. They don't even have moose on the menu."

"They don't have jackalope on the menu either," he noted.

"Yeah, well, maybe because those don't exist? Just a guess" was my retort.

Ask anyone who knows me well and they'll tell you that patience is not my long suite. Case in point is this "lovely" sketch above. Everything was fine at the restaurant. I sketched out the moose between our salads and the arrival of our entrees. I added color during the meal.

Later after we were home, I decided to put in the text. Looking the page over, I decided it would look better if there was some indication of a wall behind Mr. Moose.

I failed to wait until the ink was dry. Before it was over, I even managed to smear some of the ink.

And why?! We were already home! It's not like we were keeping the table too long.

I suppose it's the same reason I often misspell words on my journal pages—I'm in creative mode and the left brain leaves for a little while.

Or maybe it's just standing back to see what kind of mess I'll get myself into so it can say, "See? See what kind of messes you get into when I'm not around to keep you in line!?!"

Oh, well. It was still fun and it was still nice having a break from an overactive left brain!

Are you a patient kind of person? Have you always been that way? If not, how did you get there???

Watercolor and Ink Pineapple Journal 5.5 x 5.5 inches

My parents have an avocado tree in their yard and the avocados are coming in fast and furious—my mom had 50(!!) avocados on the counter the evening we went over to have dinner with them!

The cool thing about them is they're small—very small.

Mom made sure I had at least a half dozen when I came home and the largest one is not much over 3 inches long. She also sent home some guacamole so I've just now needed to make some.

However, my intention was not to make the guacamole until after lunch. Instead, I was just going to slice one for my salad at lunch time. I sliced it open and set one of the halves down by the tomato. That's when Sam (my muse) sprang up in my mind and said, "Ummm, you're not eating that are you? Sketch it!"

Taking a second look to see what had gotten her so excited, I realized she was right. Again.

You see I sometimes forget I don't have to go to Paris or San Francisco to find something worthwhile to sketch.

I just have to open my eyes to what is around me....in my own kitchen!

Sure, it's much more alluring to go to Paris or San Francisco but without the necessary monetary means to go when I want, it becomes necessary to find inspiration close to hand (and it a lot less expensive!).

If you have any experience with avocados then you know they'll turn a sickly brown shortly after being cut open. You can put lemon on them to slow down the browning or you can sit down and sketch while you're eating lunch!

I'm not sure if it was a really good salad or the sketching, but lunch was very satisfying today!

What have you done to feed your artistic self lately?

English Sparrow's Nesting Material Pineapple Journal 5.5 x 5.5 Watercolor and Ink

As it turns out, I drew this quick sketch of a English Sparrow's nesting material back in early June. We were enjoying one last lunch outside at a nearby restaurant before the heat of Florida's summers makes it impossible to enjoy dining outside....unless you enjoy eating in a sauna.

Once our food arrived, I abandoned the page. Completely.

When I drew the sketch at the tea house, I drew on a blank page opposite this page. Not because I haven't sketched in this sketchbook since early June but because I tend to skip pages in my sketchbook if I want to do a full spread across both pages. This page happened to be blank for that reason.

One of the reasons why I'm not fanatical about dating my sketches is because I not only jump around  within the pages of my sketchbook, but I also jump from sketchbook to sketchbook. It becomes confusing when I date my sketches. Instead, I note when I began a sketchbook and when I filled the last page.

However, there's another reason I abandoned this page and then left it unfinished...from the very first mark I put down on the page, I had made a mistake on perspective.

That big black "I" beam? Yeah, that's the first thing I drew and it should have been at the same angle as the roof lines over the bricks on the left side of the sketch.

Would you have noticed if I had not pointed it out?

One of the things I say repeatedly on Imaginary Trips is that most people don't "see a mistake" until we point it out to them.

Chances are good that at least some of you did not notice the "mistake" until I pointed it out. Some of you may still not see it and yet others knew right away.

Is there a moral to the story? Yes, I think so.

Whereas this isn't an accurate sketch, I enjoyed finishing it—mistake and all. It was fun playing with pigments to get the look of the bricks. It also captures a memory of a lovely lunch we had this spring watching the birds build their nests. Lastly, the "mistake" is not "fatal" to the work.

They seldom are.

What are you avoiding working on or finishing because it's not perfect or even "mistake-free?"

Go ahead and get to work on finishing up...if you're anything like me, you'll find yourself enjoying it all the more because it's not perfect. There's freedom there to play and experiment.

The Tea Cup Tea Room Gray Copic Ink & Watercolor 5.5" x 5.5" Pineapple Sketchbook

I met my new business partner at a tea house for a business lunch today.

Since I arrived 10 minutes early, I checked email and with nothing else to do, dug out my sketchbook and drew the fountain sitting out in the garden. I was about half way through painting it when she arrived.

We were seated in a back corner table where we could to begin discussions on a new project—one that will involve art, beauty, encouragement, inspiration, traveling, writing and maybe some tea!

I had left the sketchbook open on the table so the page could dry. After lunch, I pulled the sketchbook over to finish the garden sketch and decided to add the lovely tea pot. We had two pots of tea, one was a white tea called Wedding Tea and smelled like wedding cake. The other was caramel.

Yummmm! Even better when we mixed them together! Double yummmm!

Before I could finish the teapot, our scones arrived with Devonshire cream. Just delicious! I couldn't leave them out, so on the page they went.

We also had a wonderful conversation with the proprietress of The Tea Cup about realizing dreams and enjoying the gifts of each day.

A most un-business like lunch that was a wonderful way to do business!

Because time was short, I drew directly on the page with a gray Copic multiliner pen. It reads a bit like pencil. I figured for china and pale, pastel colors, I wasn't sure I wanted to use black ink.

That fact that I captured a few quick sketches was the icing on a fun day.

What did you do fun today????!!

I have not drawn,
I have not sketched,
I've had no fun
In my sketch book

I have not painted,
I have not splashed,
No washes have escaped,
from my brush!

It makes me unhappy
It makes me sad,
It makes me grumpy,
Not to mention mad....

Technology wrangling is not for the faint of heart and I am currently embroiled in a techno-nightmare that started as a dream. I am keeping faith that this dream will right itself to fly swift and straight.

Until it does, my painting/sketching opportunities are limited.

However, I did do something for one of my classes that I thought might be of interest to you...pen tests on Arches watercolor paper. In particular Arches cold press paper.

Sketching with pen on Arches paper can be a challenge and I hear a lot of frustration from folks about getting a pen, any pen, that will draw without skipping....and I've found one!

Click to Enlarge

For some reason my scanner had a very difficult time scanning the pen tests that I did. I've left the file size a bit larger than normal in the hopes you'll be able to read it and I've also added close-ups below.

Click to Enlarge

The group above is the "waterproof/water resistant" group of pens I had on hand. I love Copic Multiliners as they are refillable, but at best, you get a dry brush effect on the Arches paper. The same thing happens with the Faber Castell Pitt Pen in a Fine Tip. Knowing that I can get this dry brush effect, if I needed that type of effect, is useful, but not helpful when I want a pen that draws without skips!

One of things I have noted is that the larger the pen tip, the better results I seem to have. The 05 pen tip (and larger) offered the best results. I tried Micron Pigma 05 in black and green with the same scratchy, skippy results.

I also tried my Lamy fountain pen with an extra fine nib. The ink was Carbon Black. The tip was much too fine and the ink also lifted when I washed it with water. Not enough to cause a problem, but not 100% waterproof.

The Zig Millennium 05 wrote quite well. There were no skips and no additional fuzzing of the ink as it crept into the paper fibers. Oddly enough, when I ran water over the ink, I got a very light bleed. Not enough to cause a problem, but enough to let me know it's not 100% waterproof.

My next test was of Non-Waterproof type pens. All of them are classified as "gel ink" or roller-ball type pens.

Click to Enlarge

Imagine my surprise when ALL of them not only wrote better than the "waterproof ink pens" but bled no more than those in the waterproof category!

The Pilot Frixion 07 bled and faded to a lighter gray. It did NOT lift enough to make me think it would be a problem with sketching in a journal*. I would be a little more concerned if I were doing artwork outside of my sketchbook.

There was very slight bleeding with all of these pens, but not so much that it caused a concern of muddy or grayed watercolors, but something to be aware of if I need a very clean sketch.

The other thing to note here is that ink behaves very differently on various paper types. Just because you test it on Arches doesn't mean the same pen will work well on Fabriano or Strathmore.

To avoid surprises, I usually dedicate the back page of any new journal to test out pens, especially if I am not familiar with the paper.

Click to Enlarge

The list of inks above was created on the last page of a journal I picked up while I was in San Francisco (unfortunately, there is no information on the paper content). The inks are identical to the list on the Arches paper, but if you enlarge the image, you'll note that many of them bled and they bled worse than on the Arches paper regardless of whether they were waterproof or not.

Sometimes, we get "happy" accidents when we try new mediums in a different way, but the time to be finding out a pen bleeds is usually not if the field! I hope this will encourage you to do your own tests and save yourself the aggravation of temperamental, bleeding pens!

*I would strongly suggest a light test in a southern facing window to see if the ink is lightfast if longevity is a concern for you. Create two lists of pens to be tested on the paper you intend to use it on most. Add water to part of the line work. Cut the page in half and post one half in the southern-facing window. Place the other half in a closed book.

After two weeks, check for fading by comparing the two pages in good light. Check again at three, four and six weeks. The color may fade or simply shift from a true black to a purple, brown or green.

We picked up the rental car on Friday morning at the airport. We even managed to get on and off the BART System without incident....getting the tickets to ride the BART was an entirely different matter. Let's just say it's not an intuitive process.

We figured once we had the car, we'd really start covering some ground. So what did we do? We parked the car and walked around for 5 hours!
We started off in the Japanese Tea Garden and what a treat this place is to all of your senses! There was a calmness there that made it hard to leave even though we were sharing the garden with a host of other folks.
Some much was in bloom and there were so many cool lanterns to see...it seemed there was another secret garden around every curve of the path. The koi were rather lazy with some basking in the warm sun.
In the two pages above, I chose to go with a grid pattern of small boxes on my two pages. I limited myself to 20 minutes per block. I hand-drew the blocks and then decided what to put in them. This allowed me to capture a lot of different views in a short period of time. Because of the time limit, I didn't get caught up in the details (too much).

This type of sketching is a great way to capture a day's outing when you don't have much time at each location. Do a quick sketch in either pen or pencil, snap a photo ref and add color later as time allows if you don't have time on location. Try limiting yourself to just 5 minutes and see what you get—you'll be surprised at what you can capture!

You'll note that some of the structures are cut off by the edges of the boxes. Because I chose to stick with my 20 minute time frame, I knew I wouldn't have time to erase and start over, so I left them as they were. Setting a timeframe and sticking to it (no matter what) is a great way to "train" yourself for working live on location.

From the Japanese Tea Garden we went over to Shakespeare's Garden, the Ancient Garden, Rhododendron Garden and then on to the Fragrant Garden.
We sat down on a bench for a while only to find we were annoying the squirrels as we didn't have any peanuts for them!
After all the gardens, we were a bit lost until we discovered the path to Stow Lake...up 979 steps...okay, not quite that many, but it sure felt like it! Almost immediately, we spotted an empty bench, and it didn't take us long to claim it.

We decided to do some sketching since we were too tired to keep walking, but there was a problem with this bright idea of ours...it was bright. Too bright. As in we were looking straight into the setting sun as we attempted to sketch. However, we'd decided it was just too bad because we weren't moving!
You can see from the glare in the photo this was not the best of places to be sketching, but it worked out.
As I mentioned before, the object of the trip was not to sketch but to visit as many different locations as possible. I'm thrilled that I was even able to sketch the two I did as that's two more than I did in NOLA.

After finding dinner and collapsing back at the cottage, we both discovered we had a slight sunburn for our efforts of the day!

Next up, a different kind of mission....

Last evening when Chris and I came home from dinner with my father-in-law, I heard a very strange noise when I opened my car door. Trying to place the noise, I started out of the garage onto the driveway.

As soon as I stepped out I identified the source. We have a large population of Northern Cardinals that live around our house and they were highly agitated. In fact, I've never heard them put up this kind of racket.

We have two huge Maple trees in our front yard and almost immediately, I saw something move—a baby owl!

Between the darkness, the rain and my rush, the image turned out fuzzy

Then, as my eyes adjusted to the dark and the rain, I spotted a second baby! I decided it was time to run for the camera.

Back out in the yard, I tried to focus on the two babies and the flash clicked up startling one of the owlets into flight. As I refocused another one that I had not noticed took off—three babies!

The one who remained seemed far more curious than afraid, twisting his/her head around as if trying to get a better look at me and the big black thing in my hands.

"Hey, guys, where ya goin'?! Don't leave me by myself with this crazy woman standing in the rain!"

Within minutes the three had regrouped over in some trees in the side yard, however, I was only ever able to get two in a shot.

There are two owlets in the image one on the right that's easy to see and one on the far left, near the top—see him? He's peeking out at the camera from behind the vines!

I know there were three for sure. There may have been 4. We never saw them all together as two were rather shy. The babies weren't more than six or seven inches tall. If it's the same type of owls we've seen around before, they're baby Screech owls. 

I have spent a very long week in "technology" and haven't had the brain cells left over to do any sketching at the end of the day.

However, when I was at the grocery this week, my heart did a little happy dance to see Rainier Cherries were back in season! Yummmm! Love those cherries! And almost (but not quite) as much as I love to eat them, I love to paint them.

So this morning, before I could burn out the last few brain cells I have left, I decided to get busy and sketch some of the juicy gems of goodness! I literally tossed a handful on the counter and started straight in with my brush—no sketching, no ink. Just paint.

Just getting started

I did this in part because I was short on time and second because there is something quite freeing about going into a page with just paint. I wasn't too worried about the making the cherries look just like the cherries on the counter because they're organic. No one's going to revoke my artistic license if they're not identical.

A few more on the page

The other reason I did this was because I wanted to play with my pigments and see what kind of mixes I could used to render the cherries convincingly.

Stems and Shadows Added

I wanted to find a good pigment combination that would make the cherries look real. I tried Azo Yellow, Hansa Yellow, Isoindoline Yellow, Quin. Gold and Raw Sienna. For reds, I tried Perylene Red,  Perylene Maroon, Anthraquinoid Red and Alizarin Crimson.*

Title added

I found that a mixed of Azo or Hansa Yellow with Quin Gold on the paper really made the best yellow for the cherries. Perylene red and Anthraquinoid Red made the best reds. The Perylene Maroon made a super dark for the cherries.

Tracing paper overlay with the pigment names and mixes used

But how was I going to remember that tomorrow let alone months down the road? By making notes. I just didn't want to make them on my artwork. So I made my color mixing notations on a piece of tracing paper.

The page taped in at the middle of the sketchbook. I still have to trim down the edge.

I've taped it to the page near the middle of the page and will be able to enjoy the artwork without the notes.

Final Page - Watercolor Only

Now, I could have made color charts and experimented with the different pigments that way, but isn't this more fun?!

*Alizarin Crimson is a extremely fugitive paint pigment. The replacement available on the market today is called Permanent Alizarin Crimson, but it isn't much more light fast than it's predecessor. However, in my sketchbook, which is my playground, I will use less than permanent paints to see the various effects and colors they make in mixtures.

If I create something wonderful that I don't want to lose, I take a high-resolution scan of it.