from Lake Raven

This week we are camping in Huntsville State Park, in a section of the Sam Houston National Forest. Though our reservation goes through Sunday, we had originally planned on leaving today with our daughter and son-in-law taking over the camper through the weekend. But an unforeseen problem at home meant they are not coming and our stay has been extended through the weekend.

Our first evening here, my old alligator friend showed up to greet us at the fishing pier — and hasn’t returned since. When we were here in November, he hung around all day long but the water was calm then. This week’s winds are strong enough to cause a burn ban (no campfire cooking, darn it!) and there are more people. He did hang around long enough to chase a much younger, smaller ‘gator away from his territory though.

I haven’t seen a sunset with much coral in it; I had been wanting to try out a new tube of quinacridone coral. But I snuck a tiny bit into this sketch anyway.

Texas gulf coast, prairies, & piney woods

Recently Austin artist Lisa Spangler, in preparation for teaching a workshop near Houston, put together a palette of colors especially for the Texas Gulf Coast & Prairies which is pretty close to where we live. Her blog post can be found HERE.

Lisa is very good at choosing just the right watercolors for specific environments; I especially love her sketches from Big Bend National Park! I was inspired to go through my own paints for near-matches to her selections, adding a dark cool green and cool brown for the Piney Woods — our little farm is a blend of Piney Woods and Prairie.

Next week we will once again be camping in a forest north of us so I’m testing out this palette, hoping to try a bit of landscape sketching. Many of the pigments are those I normally use. I seldom use orange so rather than buy a tube, I mixed quinacridone rose and hansa yellow medium together right in the pan, stirring with a toothpick. The only purchase I made was a small tube of quinacridone coral. Usually I only carry one cool red, adding a yellow when I need a warmer red, but Lisa’s choice of this coral intrigues me, especially in capturing sunsets. Hopefully there will be one over Lake Raven next week!

bluebonnets . . . and a new sketch pal!

This past week, after a 2-year delay, I was finally able to meet a new sketch friend in person and we drew bluebonnets! A. heard of me through this blog and contacted me 2 years ago to see if we might meet somewhere local to sketch. She and her husband live in a barndominium, as we do, just a short drive up a country road from our place.

But then Bill was hospitalized a week due to a cat bite infection — the same week that Covid-19 shut down the world. We have stayed in touch through email but didn’t meet in person while Covid numbers were still up. 

Covid cases are now pretty low in this area so A. invited me out to her place — a beautiful property with acres full of Texas bluebonnets and other wildflowers! Strong winds and high pollen levels made sketching outside difficult but I took photos, then we sketched these bluebonnets in the barn.

Maybe I’ll be able to do some more sketches from those photos I took . . .

Hedgehog Grill

I started this sketch last week after we went to the Hedgehog Grill in Waller for a late lunch / early dinner. We avoid crowds when we eat out by going during “off” hours, even though Covid-19 numbers are down in this area.

This interesting little place is part diner, part pub with a large selection of locally brewed craft beers that Bill enjoys. The “footprint” of building and parking lot show that an old Sonic drive in once operated here.

The drawing was only in pencil and that’s where it stayed as I busied myself with errands, dr. appointments, and planting my new containers. Until tonight when I suddenly remembered it . . .

never mind . . .

About that stolen herb container in my previous post that I was trying to replace . . . Never mind! I wanted one like it to plant hen & chicks and other succulents. But after all, we live in a barn! We were at a favorite antique shop in Giddings, TX and found these old metal pieces that we thought might look good in the herb garden at our front porch. And I even have room for more succulents! Sort of goes with the cacti we are wanting to plant nearby.

my favorite missing pot

If anyone has seen a pot for sale like this one, please let me know!

This past week Bill and I have been working on the planting beds in front of our barn-house. Before all the construction on the old pole barn began, these beds were overfilled with lantana, purple fountain grass, prickly pear cactus, agave, and some unknown plant we called the pokey plant for its very sharp needle-leaves that hurt anyone fool enough to touch them.

Much was trampled by carpenters, some was pulled out because of extreme overgrowth, and we lost the cacti in last year’s freak “snowmageddon”. As we replant fountain grass and prickly pear cactus, I am also moving my container herb garden to the front. It’s been next to the back patio but didn’t get enough sun there.

And I find myself missing this favorite herb pot more than ever. A gift from our daughter after she first moved to Texas, it grew many herbs as well as hens & chicks over the years. This sketch is from 2008, just a year after I began keeping sketchbook journals. Two years after this sketch, the much loved pot was stolen from our front garden by thieving orcs — and I have never found another quite like it. How I wish I could!

A couple of other sketches from this old sketchbook: my sweet Maine Coon cats, Beorn Bearcat and Dali, keeping watch out the front window, and The Church of the Savior, the small stone church in the Riverside district of Wichita, Kansas. It was here in 2005 that I first learned how to watercolor from a very talented artist, John Lokke. We called ourselves the Riverside Watercolor Society and had so much fun painting together! The group has now scattered all over the country but I often think of the good times we had.

more on that 19th century Demi Palette

The silver Demi Palette in yesterday’s blog post contains 5 colors inspired by a limited palette of colors used by landscape artists in the late 19th century. This page from one of my sketchbooks from several years ago show another variation — and the colors that can be mixed. I was using a vintage Winsor & Newton Bijou watercolor box back then, but still had room to add 3 convenience colors.

those other palettes . . .

I may have gone a bit nuts collecting my favorite palettes from Art Toolkit. I’ve pretty much stopped using any other palette design, loving how easy it is to swap pans in and out of these metal cases. The shallow pans allow even bigger brushes to pick up paint without damaging the bristles by digging deep into those plastic pans that I used to use.

Each are currently filled with a type of “special use” group of colors — easy to quickly grab just what I’m in the mood for! (all paints are Daniel Smith except a few marked W&N for Winsor and Newton)

The silver Pocket Palette, upper left, contains a CMYK palette with 2 convenience colors added: 

quinacridone magenta (W&N), hansa yellow medium, phthalo blue GS, Jane’s grey, green apatite, and burnt sienna.

The black Pocket Palette, upper right, holds my version of an extreme limited plus mostly neutrals palette, inspired by artists Róisín Cure and Suhita Shirodhar:

lunar red rock (a more transparent version of Indian red), monte amiata natural sienna, cerulean blue chromium, ultramarine, transparent red oxide, indigo, burnt umber, a mixed pan of transparent red oxide and indigo, and white gouache.

The black Demi Palette, lower left, holds a warm and a cool of black and white for working in gray tones. Great on toned paper!

buff titanium, grey titanium, lunar black, and Jane’s grey.

The coppery color Pocket Palette, lower center, holds earthy granulating pigments, especially great to use in autumn:

lunar red rock, monte amiata natural sienna, green apatite, cerulean blue chromium, lunar blue, lunar violet, buff titanium, transparent red oxide, burnt umber, and lunar black.

The silver Demi Palette, lower right, holds my version of a late 19th century limited palette plus 3 pans of convenience colors:

quinacridone burnt scarlet, quinacridone gold, ultramarine, sepia, and lunar black, plus raw umber violet, buff titanium, and undersea green.

And this huge Folio Palette lives on my art desk. I used to include space for a mixing pan but decided that since it stays on my desk, I'll just use this ceramic dish for paint mixing. Some regular-sized pans but mostly larger square pans to accommodate bigger brushes.

potter's pink (W&N), quinacridone red, quinacridone gold, hansa yellow medium, serpentine, green apatite, undersea green, cobalt turquoise light (W&N), cobalt turquoise, cerulean blue chromium, ultramarine blue, indanthrone blue, monte amiata natural sienna, transparent red oxide, piemontite or lunar red rock, buff titanium, titanium gray, lunar black, and Jane's grey.

tiny landscape

This tiny landscape is from a photo I took the last time we camped at Lake Raven near Huntsville, Texas. We’ll be heading back to that campsite in a few weeks. Below are a few photos I snapped as I painted this scene.

First I lightly sketched the scene in pencil. Working this small, I finally found a use for that ridiculously tiny paint brush that came with a Winsor & Newton watercolor set years ago!

I worked from a photo on my phone. This Demi Palette contains 4 colors inspired by the limited palettes used by late 19th century artists, plus 4 convenience colors in the smaller pans. More on my special-use palettes tomorrow.

walking a line

This drawing is from several days ago; I just forgot to post it. First I drew our travel trailer’s keys in one continuous ink line using my dependable Lamy Safari. Then I added a bit of text. The page still looked a bit bare so I drew a randomly silly border in another continuous line.