sketch with me: “new”

The theme for this month’s “Sketch With Me” virtual sketchcrawl group on Facebook is “NEW”. As in new beginnings, new ideas, new techniques, new locations, new attitudes, new insights . . .

I decided to keep it simple — and quite literal — and drew some recent purchases. Many things we wish to buy cannot be found locally in the small towns nearby, and we don’t like to shop in Houston or even College Station, which is more geared towards college kids. So for that reason as well as to save money, we do a lot of online shopping.

Except for that colorful spatula made of bamboo — We found that at Bu-cee’s when we stopped to buy gas. We needed a new spatula and couldn’t resist the patterns of natural dyes! It also has a vary narrow edge so it actually works better than our old worn-out one.

Oh, and the Irn-Bru was purchased in College Station. Just because I heard about it from Scottish books and our daughters’s trip to Scotland; it was an impulse-buy of curiosity.

And these are the final pages in this sketchbook, so on to a new one . . .

By the way, that skirt I just bought? It is sewn from discarded Indian silk saris by a company called DarnGoodYarn. They sell yarns that are made from discarded saris as well. Normally skirts sell for $69 and more, but the stock that hasn’t sold can be purchased for $20! You just let them know a range of colors you prefer and allow them to select for you.

tea and cat toys

When we first moved here, I could find a huge variety of teabags at our local H.E.B. grocery store. But the variety has diminished over recent years so I order my favorites online. I ordered this tin of Double Dark Chocolate Mate teabags from Amazon . . . and it came straight from the Republic of Tea company. Even more amusing, they sent us a box full of kitty toys!

The packing is made up of tri-folded cardboard puzzle pieces that Bardie and Scottie have had great fun batting around. Followed by Bill and me having great fun stepping on the abandoned toys all over the cabin floor.

Yerba Mate is a South American plant related to the holly family that has naturally occurring caffeine which energizes without the negative effects of other sources of caffeine. It also has several health benefits and tastes great with a bit of milk added to the brewed tea!

cheese & crackers

During our short shopping trip to Burton this week, Bill also picked up some pimento cheese spread. Crackers taste good to me when I have a cold, even though I seldom eat grains at other times. Burton Sausage & Market makes their own cheese and use it in this spread. It’s very good — but I still like my own recipe better, probably because I make it with extra sharp cheddar. Aging seems to give the flavor more depth than the fresh locally made cheese.

And here’s an older sketchbook entry of another “Cheese” and “Crackers” — mule and donkey pals belonging to friends of ours.

UPDATE:
For anyone interested, here’s my own recipe — using extra sharp cheddar is probably why we like it better.

a leftover palette

When I have no real inspiration for sketching, there’s always a palette or fountain pen laying around.

I had this business card case tucked away in my art supply chest . . . . I added self-stick business card magnets to both inside surfaces and began looking through leftover pans of paint. These metal pans from ExpeditionaryArt were already filled with watercolor but being unused at the moment, so I added them to the case, along with 3 empty pans for mixing. I’d rather have one empty square pan along with the longer rectangle but I’ve run out of the square pans, so 2 smaller rectangles it is.

The watercolors are a cool and a warm of the primaries and green, 4 neutrals, plus I added a pan of white gouache just because I had it. All watercolors are from Daniel Smith except for Prussian blue from Cheap Joe’s American Journey. The gouache is from M. Graham.

quinacridone rose & perylene scarlet
hansa yellow medium & quinacridone gold
jadeite genuine & serpentine genuine
Prussian blue & ultramarine blue
goethite, burnt sienna, & raw umber
mixed gray (ultramarine + burnt umber)
titanium white gouache

going stir-crazy

Neither one of us do “sick” very well. We were both going a bit stir-crazy from our colds (Bill is feeling much better so is probably not contagious) so we drove to Burton to buy some meat. He went inside while I stayed in the car.

Apparently Cold Ease helps fight colds a bit better than my Complete Care echinacea tea. Both have zinc and vitamin C but Cold Ease upsets my stomach. I think I’m a day or two behind him.

We like buying meat locally; their smoked bacon is especially good, as is the homemade jerky and sausage. On the wall is a framed piece from John Wayne’s funeral — apparently the original owner must have been invited. Not sure if it’s a good wall decoration.

today’s sketch . . .

When that sad looking woman entered the elevator we were in at the Baylor, Scott & White clinic, I thought this might be trouble . . .

Yep, I was right. Both Bill and I now have bad colds this week. We would both prefer to take the stairs rather than the elevator but the stairwell seems to be hidden at this clinic in College Station.

a new-to-me book

I thought I already owned a large number of books by favorite artist/author/naturalist (and one of my dearest friends, known affectionately as Kate) Cathy Johnson. But recently I found another one that I had missed: originally published in 1986 and long out of print, The Local Wilderness has recently been reprinted by a new publishing company along with several other of Kate’s most popular books.

Yesterday I began reading this new-to-me book, then decided to take a break and sketch it. It’s the green one under my next sketchbook; the book on the bottom of the stack is a copy of the first book I read of Kate’s. I first read The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature as a library book in 2007 and it inspired me to begin a regular sketching habit. I had loved to draw as a child but had stopped after high school. Reading this book encouraged me to draw again on a regular basis. Reading the library book led to me finding Kate online, which lead to signing up for her newsletter. Which told me she actually lived within driving distance (about a 3-hour drive from our then-home in Kansas) and she used to invite readers to meet together for informal sketch crawls. Which led to our friendship, for which I’m very grateful.

My next sketchbook is an accordion-fold book made from leftover scraps of watercolor paper, slipped into a leather cover found on Amazon. After filling both sides of the book, I will glue on protective front and back covers, then refill this leather cover with new paper. More about this cover can be found here. I still have 8 more pages in my current Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook but I’m usually planning ahead towards the next one when I get near the end of the one I’m working in. Keeping a sketchbook is truly a long-standing habit now, though I seldom develop larger works from the drawings. They are more like illustrated diaries to me.

more limited lunar palette

I wasn’t sure how the limited palette I recently put together with Daniel Smith lunar watercolors would work so I made a color chart. These pigments are muted earthy granulating colors, which I love, but seeing the mixes obtained with them makes me think that they will work better if allowed to mingle together on the paper, not pre-mixed. I think this set would work best when adding a touch of color to an ink sketch rather than a direct watercolor piece. Especially a sketch in brown or sepia ink!

(There’s also a lunar earth but I prefer transparent red oxide for an earth orange.)

At first I added buff titanium to the empty space left, but the mixes show that there isn’t a noticeable difference between mixing with buff titanium or just using a thinner wash of the single paint. So when I put together a smaller version in a pocket palette, I switched this space to raw umber. I could mix a similar color with the transparent red oxide but it’s convenient.

beginnings

Apart from grade school attempts, the above sketch is my very first try at watercolor. Which is a bit weird given how many art classes I took in high school. My teacher, a sweet Japanese lady named Annie Lowry, taught in a self-driven style, heavy on abstract art (which I’ve never liked). This style seems to work wonderfully for those knowing what direction they wished to explore — I was totally lost, being afraid to try anything and not knowing what types of art-making were available out there. I remember doing tons of contour and blind-contour sketches!

Then in 2005, I was invited to join an informal group meeting together in a Wichita church to play with watercolor. Usually some type of subject was selected and everyone would paint it, then share each other’s work. It was fun to see our different styles! This metal bowl of fruit was the subject for my first visit; I borrowed paints from the leader, John Lokke, and worked so slow that I never actually got to the metal bowl which was the main challenge of the evening. But I became instantly fascinated with watercolor and continued to attend this group (we called ourselves the Riverside Watercolor Society) until it later disbanded as John began to teach classes for pay.

Another evening, John’s wife brought an aquarium filled with hatching butterflies for us to paint. Jill was a teacher for gifted grade school students and these were brought home from class.

In the autumn of 2007 I attended my first sketch crawl, driving to Excelsior Springs, MO. This is also the day I met my dear friend Kate (Cathy Johnson), who had invited people on her mailing list to come sketch together. This is the scene I sketched that day, the back of some downtown buildings as seen from the historic Hall of Waters. I only got the pencil part down on location, adding watercolor later at home. Did I mention I tend to work slow?

never too old . . .

I sketched our friends Billie and Macy from a photo I recently snuck of them at church. 16 year old Macy, at about 6 ft. tall, is never too old to sit in her mama’s lap for a snuggle!

I only wish I had done better with the skin tones, and the ink began running a bit in Macy’s face and hand. Oh, well . . . It’s just a simple sketch.

my favorite pine

My favorite childhood book was Heidi. On my tenth birthday, I was sitting outside on our apartment porch reading it as another gift was given to me: a baby toy poodle which I immediately named “Heidi”. After all, they both had curly black hair!

In the book, Heidi loved the tall fir trees behind Grandfather’s shack that seemed to dance. I “befriended” some tall evergreen trees on the side of my grandmother’s house on the outskirts of Wichita — I often climbed in the branches of one to hide and read.

We have several evergreen trees on our property, my favorite of which is this pine standing at least 55’ tall, behind a shorter cedar tree. Earlier this week, I woke up to a sky full of pink and purple wispy clouds behind the tree, which I tried painting on this journal page —- along with a quote from Heidi. After 55 years, I decided to read the story once more.

a bat-sickle and a flat-bat

It seems we have “bats in our belfry” . . . or at least bats in the crawl space above the ceiling at church. Sometimes we can hear them up there. Our church is located in a couple of very old side-by-side downtown buildings in Somerville, TX.

Recently we had a bit of unusually cold weather for south-central Texas. And that’s when we noticed a flattened bat corpse on the sidewalk in front of church. Later, a young member, Kathleen, also found one frozen, still clinging to the brick outside. She was upset, being a nature lover.

I took photos to sketch them but I’m not going anywhere near them — interesting but so creepy!

Reece’s as a wee kitten

Sometimes I just want to draw something but have no real “inspiration” . . . whatever that is. Such was the case last night after I filled this Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen with De Atramentis Document Brown ink.

Looking through some old photos on my iPad, I came across this one of Reece’s, our granddaughter Mikala’s street rescue kitten, when she just barely weighed  2 lbs. — still too tiny for shots so she was isolated in our daughter’s library, away from the two other resident cats. Reece’s is now a full grown, healthy cat living with the Maine Coons, Mocha and Pumpkin.

a teabag charm

Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good cup of freshly brewed tea. Even better is a cup of tea brewed from loose leaf tea, not tea bags. But I do buy tea bags as well for their convenience to use at church or when eating out.

But how can I enjoy my favorite loose leaf teas when away from home?

I have this box of empty tea bags that I can fill with tea leaves but wasn’t sure how to keep the bag closed (besides the obvious stapling). And a string would be needed to remove the bag easily. I did some searching on Etsy and found these beaded teabag clips — perfect answer!

a new-ish iPhone case

When I upgraded to my current phone, I saw lots of cases for them online. Everyone seems to have a black phone and I wanted my black phone to stand out. But I couldn’t decide between a case with watercolor paints or one with a cool scripture. And I didn’t want to spend the higher price.

So I chose a plain clear case.

Yesterday, I decided to change that. On a scrap of watercolor paper, I painted a palette and added a scripture — and I love the results!

I wasn’t sure if the watercolor paper would be too thick, so I also made one from my granulating pigments on a thinner scrap of paper from India. Haven’t picked a scripture for it yet . . .

a humongous teapot

Trying to take a photo of my sketchbook after the daylight is gone can be a bit challenging — not very clear or bright!

* What a huge difference a sunny day makes for taking photos!

Today we needed to pay a few bills and drop a bank deposit off in Brenham before heading to College Station for Bill’s cardio rehab. (Yeah, he’s still in rehab, paid n full by Medicare.) Normally we head out from Somerville, which is closer to where we live, but this time we went by way of Navasota on Highway 6.

Along the highway, we passed this very LARGE teapot — actually an old silo owned by a home & garden store. It made me thirst for a freshly brewed cup of tea!