Sketches from Boston - June

Back in June I visited Boston and managed a few pen sketches.

Courtyard of the Aloft Hotel Lexington

Citgo Sign - famous Boston Landmark

View of Harvard Bridge and Prudential Center from Memorial Drive

More mucking about with acrylics

Foil piece

Today Sue and I had another artistic get together to see what more we could do with our crazy acrylic pieces. We decided to utilize sketches we already had. I added a drawing of a deer to my foil piece. It was a challenge as there is a lot of rough texture on it so the form is still a little vague and the crackle paste I put on last time is a bit dominant yet.

Deer Hunters

On my other piece I had black gessoed over the initial trials and then put a washy layer of white gesso with cling film on that. Once that dried I sketched the deer in and started painting.  As it developed I began to see figures in the background and am in the process of bringing them out.  I added some foil to this piece.  It will get further layers of paint - and depending on how it comes out it may either be finished or gessoed again!
I like the foil technique a lot so I've been going around the house and garden taking foil impressions of anything I can find. All silly fun!

Vasona Hike and Sketch

A little walk in the park turned out to be more fun than I thought.  The weather was changeable, but that made for great skies and changing light. We saw a ton of birds - including goslings and quite a few small herons. We lunched at the foot of the dam - very atmospheric with the dam looming above us, water cascading in front of us and a wonderful metallic clanking sound coming from the roadworks nearby. You could imagine yourself in the War of the Worlds! Lots of people would have thought it terrible - but I enjoyed it enormously! Sadly had to leave early for an appointment so my dam sketch is unfinished and doesn't do it justice.

The dam at Vasona is 1000 feet long and 30 feet high. At the foot of this behemoth a small heron was fishing, two ducks sunbathed and a small group of artists had lunch

Dick Zunkel Demo at Los Gatos Plaza Park

The last sketch I did, using brush pens not the dip pen. My fountain looks more like a collection of ghosts!

Thursday's demo by Dick Zunkel was excellent. It reintroduced me to the joy of drawing with dip pens and ink - I had forgotten what wonderfully expressive lines you can get with them. The only problem was that the ink seemed to get everywhere! Dick's style is very loose and dynamic and looks deceptively easy. I had a hard time getting to grips with it - I think I should have been working on larger paper.

I caught the Western Wheelers having lunch right in front of us. Drawn directly with the pen.

Mucking about with acrylics

I was inspired by an SCVWS workshop I took with Jaya King recently. I've been trying to have more fun with my art and think outside the box a little.
My friend Sue, and I, decided we would try out some of the ideas for surface textures described in "Surface Treatment Workshop" a book by Darlene Olivia McElroy and Sandra Duran Wilson. So here are a couple of crazy experiments with acrylics and foil. I've no idea what I'll do with them, but we had a lot of fun just trying a few different things!

This piece is acrylic paint and rubbing alcohol, bleach pen spots, a few collaged bits, and some mark making.

This foil piece was interesting to create - trying to find different textures to rub the foil over. I was most impressed by the "moonscape" rubbings which are actually from the suckers on the back of a bathmat! The gel takes a long time to dry, so I won't get to paint it for some time. It needs a lot more work.

Emma Prusch Farm, Thursday April 5th

This is a great little spot to paint right off 101 and King St. It has chickens roaming around, rusty machinery and some birds and animals to sketch.

Jaya King Workshop

I'm on a high right now from an excellent SCVWS workshop with Jaya King. It was great fun and I learned some new techniques which I think are going to be very helpful to me. Thanks to Jaya and the SCVWS workshop team who created a great experience all round.
Here are photos of the progress of my piece;

I started out with some colorful gouache mud on my wood panel!

The next stage involves lifting the gouache to create highlights - and somehow a figure appears

 

More lifting and creating "clouds"

After spraying with fixative

Day 2 - application of acrylics and collage

End point - the collage was a challenge for me, but it was fun

A second piece I did to see if I could do a face using Jayas's reference photo

I did a little collage on this, but it's not finished. This is on gessoed matboard.