random sketches & a recipe

Here, I was testing gouache and Pitt Artist brush pens on the paper that came with my card-size Traveler’s Notebook. Gouache seems to do better than watercolor; the marks made with the pens seemed uneven as if resisting the paper.

I drew the ingredients for sourdough granola as it was baking in the oven. This is the primary thing I make with the discard after baking bread. Recipe follows, if anyone is interested.

(I’m a bit loose with measurements . . . as in, I don’t!)

SOURDOUGH DISCARD GRANOLA

8 Tbsp butter, melted and slightly browned

scant 1/2 cup discard

1/4 cup honey (I use real maple syrup instead)

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. salt

2 2/3 cup rolled oats

1 cup chopped nuts and coconut 

1 cup dried fruit

Brown butter in saucepan over med. heat a few minutes; let cool a bit.

Preheat oven 325°.

Mix butter, discard, honey, vanilla, and salt until completely mixed. Stir in oats, nuts, and coconut.

Spread on parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake 20 minutes.

Turn with spatula, then bake 10 minutes more.

Let cool. Break up and stir in dried fruit.

succulents & prickly pear

I sketched these pots in our front garden on Monday — then non-art life stuff kept me from finishing until today. But then, I prefer my art slow and drawn out over time anyway . . .

The second photo shows only half of our mass of prickly pear cacti. All of this grew from three pots bought a couple of years ago.

some of the others

These are a few of the other mushrooms that have appeared in our pasture and back yard this past week.

Sailor Fude de Mannen fountain pen (De Atramentis Document brown ink), watercolor background, and gouache in a Seawhite Travel Journal.

sketchbook play

It began when I pulled my favorite fude nib pen (Duke 209) from the antique tool box where emptied & cleaned fountain pens sleep. I wondered how this very lightweight pen would work with the progressing tremor in my hands. I filled it with new-to-me Rohrer & Klingner Lotte Sketch Ink and drew some sketch tools.

My hand didn’t shake much, but the pen nib fought with me the whole time! I remember its lines as smooth and effortless, not skipping and dragging. Was the CP paper of the Seawhite Travel Journal to blame? Or the ink? I cleaned it and refilled with my old ink, De Atramentis Document Grey. Seems much smoother now, but I’ll try it on other papers to be sure.

As long as this mostly-gouache palette was out, I wondered if gouache could be used in ink & wash like watercolor. I had just baked another loaf of sourdough so I sketched it with the fude pen, then added thin layers of gouache over the dried ink. Seems to work fine.

We don’t actually eat that much bread, so I cut fresh loaves I bake in half and pop half in the freezer for later. 

camping at Cagle

This week we have been once again camping in the Sam Houston National Forest. Not too hot, not too cold — just right for leisurely walks on nearby trails. There are several items we forgot to pack or didn’t think we’d need and wish we had, but it’s been a relaxing, enjoyable time. Today, lots of new campers are coming in for the weekend just as we are getting ready to head home. Being retired means not needing to plan around working hours!

At the campsite next to ours, we found an arrow made of pine cones, leading up to a hidden painted rock that someone left as a surprise. I took a photo and left it for the next person to find.

the gulf, revisited

Two weeks ago I posted a 2” gouache sketch I did from a photo taken on Mustang Island. This past week I repainted the scene, this time using Japanese Gansai watercolors. These were purchased years ago but seldom used. Recently I replaced the brighter colors with muted ones that I’m preferring these days. After the initial painting, seen in the second photo, I added a bit of colored pencil. The previous tiny sketch is shown in the third photo.

back to my nature journal

Almost two weeks ago, as the recent cold snap arrived here with a drizzly sleet, Bill noticed an odd red mushroom and brought it inside for me to sketch, which I did in gouache. Then I set this small nature journal aside — until today.

After watching a recording of Art Toolkit’s workshop on garden journaling with Bethan Burton, I added some sketches from two of her garden photos. I like her style of an ink line drawing with only a small focused bit with color added.

I found James Gurney’s quote online; it seemed to fit the 2-page spread.

tiny bits of gouache

Today has been a cold, sleepy sort of day. I pulled up a photo I took on Mustang Island over ten years ago and tried to paint it in gouache in my 2” sketchbook. Warm memories, though I remember there was a cold October wind blowing.

the freeze is on the way

We have been having a strange winter season so far, even needing to run the air conditioner just a week ago! On Monday, there were new blossoms on the baby peach tree. The leaves of the Mexican sycamore we planted this autumn have not yet fallen; in fact there are fresh green ones!

But a freezing winter storm is streaming towards us — and across half of the country today. The confused trees are in for a shock.

a new brush pen

I just received a small order from jetpens.com which included a new Pentel Pocketbrush pen with sanguine ink. So I grabbed a couple of oak leaves as Butters and I walked back from the mailbox (our mailbox is about a block away — at least that’s how it feels sometimes) and sketched them, then added gouache and a smidgen of colored pencil.

My original Pocketbrush pen with black ink is probably about 18 years old now, purchased in Kansas City on my way to sketching with a buddy in Excelsior Springs, MO. And it is still going strong with a great brush tip!

my Monday, SRO

Just a quick scribble sketch done while waiting through early jury selection process . . . All seats were taken, all hallways filled, standing room only.

We are now on lunch break; I live too far from the county seat to go home so I’m eating a snack in my car and posting this until time to return to the courtroom.

So much fun. (Not!)
 

just because . . .

Technically, this small sketchbook is for nature or botanical sketches. But sometimes I just want to play. Our daughter brought over a plate of goodies on one of her new dishes and I love the color and pattern. So I drew some of the design, slightly scrunched up to fit a rectangular spread instead of a round plate.

— fountain pen, pencil and gouache —

Merry Christmas!

I hope y’all are having a lovely and blessed Christmas! Today I did a quick ink & wash sketch between baking tasks. We saw this truck at our veterinarian’s when we took the wee beasties in for nail trims; I snapped a quick photo to sketch from later.

(Yes, the tree top was really tilted like this.)

Ink, watercolor, and gouache in a 140mm square Seawhite travel journal.

something different

Last week Bill took our corgi, Butters, outside to play ball. Across the yard and driveway, he saw this Great Egret over by the swimming pool. Not wishing to startle it, he took a quick photo from where he stood — a very distant, out-of-focus photo. 

I’ve been wanting to try less “representational” sketching anyway, so I painted this page using that fuzzy photo as a basis. Mostly granulating watercolors with some gouache patterning added on top. Not quite as I expected it to turn out, but an interesting direction to take my sketching while still capturing daily memories.

a bit of late autumn color

Just over the west fenceline there grows one tree with leaves that actually turn red in the autumn. At least, I thought it was a tree, being nearly 12’ tall. Apparently it is an oversized Red Chokeberry shrub.

(gouache and a touch of colored pencil on toned watercolor paper, hand sewn sketchbook)

tweaked yet again

One could say that I’m obsessed with the flexibility of these palettes. After using two separate pocket palettes in my mini Sendak, one watercolor and one gouache,  I decided that one large folio works better for me. But how to combine watercolor and gouache in a useable way?

This is what I came up with upon returning home from our camping trip yesterday. The watercolor pans are placed horizontally and gouache pans are vertical — all except that perylene black gouache but its placement was unavoidable. I’m trying to keep color groups together.

UPDATE: the Transparent Red Oxide watercolor was supposed to be a brownish color but it was too similar to the Venetian Red. So I replaced it with Lunar Earth. Being transparent, I was able to lift it with a wet stiff brush and tissue before applying the new paint choice.

starting a new sketchbook journal

This week we are camping and I planned on beginning my new sketchbook when we arrived. But it was cold and Very Windy here next to the lake, so I sat inside the RV and painted this. (It’s supposed to warm up the rest of the week.) These pebbles are a combination of watercolor and gouache. I’ve been watching Natasha Newton swatching her colors in pebble form on YouTube — Love her style! 

This sketchbook is a Seawhite Travel Journal with 200 gsm cold-press watercolor paper that I pulled from my shelf. It’s been there so long that the elastic band was stretched out (how curious!) so I cut it off. Instead, I have a heavy stretch band that holds a pencil or pen. Don’t remember where it came from.

next to the last page

Today I finished the next to the last page of this journal (after posting the last page yesterday). It didn’t turn out quite like what I had in mind — seems a bit stiff and not enough contrast in values. But I’m calling it done and moving on.

What drew me to sketch the scene were the lavender-shadowed clouds. But they seemed to fade away in the sketch. This is the view from the front of our small converted barn house looking towards our daughter’s farmhouse. I added those shrubs in the lower right corner where our barn-red house corner would be.

last page of this sketchbook

Though this is the last page of my current sketchbook, it is not the last page to be worked on. The previous page, an evening landscape, was started and is not yet finished. But today I just felt like painting something from scratch so I did this from a photo taken during a clinic visit on Monday. The pumpkins had a velvet surface.

This is sort of the direction I’d like my sketching to go: directly painting with a combination of gouache and watercolor with touches of colored pencil or Neocolor II crayons . . . maybe even a bit of ink, who knows? But working looser without so much niggling the details. Letting go of perfectionistic tendencies.

There are two other sketched pages in this book waiting for me to continue a Marty Burnham workshop I began in October. The first of those turned out to be a disaster and I haven’t taken time to get back to the course as yet. I do plan to finish the 2nd and 3rd sketches, but will probably not post those since they are not my own original work. Even the one that turned out badly has taught me a lot.

a mini hike

Yesterday as I waited during Bill’s appointment with the hygienist, I painted a quick sketch in my old mini (2”) sketchbook using gouache thinly as watercolor. I used an old photo saved on my phone but made a bit up as well. Things seemed to go fine — until I added the people. My brush tip was too large, the paint too dark, proportions all wrong . . .