A bunch of drawings from my holiday, where I tried to draw daily and succeeded mostly. I’ll post them here with or without comments, whatever makes sense and in order of creation.
We arrived on the 2nd and on the 3rd I did not draw (much). This is a hospital at a lovely courtyard in Colmar.When spending time at the pool, I drew the pool and instantly hated this paper. Saunders Waterford 190 gsm sucks up the water and paint like a sponge making blending and wet on wet very difficult. Do not buy, it bled through the page! This is the worst cotton paper I ever had my hands on and totally misplaced in this fancy sketchbook.
Weirdly tho, the reviews all over the internet were raving so something must have gone wrong with the sketchbook, shipping or this batch. I decided to try again with much less water.
The 5th, my birthday. I was gifted Lego and made this on the same paper. When going very easy on the wetness, it worked reasonably well.Some more time at the pool looking after the kids.
Went from a lined journal to a sketch type of journal that takes watercolors well.
Back at the poolAt night in the trailer we rented, I agonized over my inability to draw faces and just let the pencil wander and do the work.A lot of other campground people dropped by to comment, most amusing was the bubbly mom to a bored kid, explaining everything that was there and trying to interest him into art that was happening in front of their faces! He just wanted to throw rocks in the water.Cars have nice lines.I went for an early run and this is the cold grey sky behind a mountain ridge lines with spruce trees. It was a good run.A few more bottles added, how does one spell “functional alcoholics”?Then I took some time off alone and wandered around into some graveyard as I wanted to draw the church in the town center, managed to capture this view.And this in the wc journal. I had to sit on the wall of the graveyard to be able to view the tower between trees, it drew far less attention than I feared.We got more and more bored with the campground and surroundings so we drove an hour to a small town called Epinal where we got slammed with the heat as we left the mountainous area called “Les Vosges”. We ate some very good pizza and pasta, the SO went shopping, the boys chased lizards and I arted this art. Good times were had.In the afternoon, more time at the pool. Running out of shit to draw there.The 11th was special sort of, this is the morning at the pool once more. Then we had lunch and she looked at me and asked “How about we just go home?” So we threw everything in the car and drove 7h to be able to sleep in our own beds again. As a result, no WC journal entry.
And now that I wrote all this down, I realize that instead of drawing shapes, a chair or umbrella, the poolside would have been great for practicing super fast gesture drawings. Ah well, there is always a next time.
Some time ago I got the book “Watercolour with Love: 50 modern motifs to paint in 5 easy steps” from the library, I just asked for all books that had “Watercolour” in the title and this came in the pile. Most of these books I just leafed through but this one seemed doable so I grabbed an HB5 Khadi cotton rag paper book I had lying around and went to work. It took me close to two months and ended up with 48 watercolor paintings. Filling a sketchbook with simple paintings is a satisfying thing to do.
Some days or weeks, the creative juices will just not flow. The past few weeks have been really busy with work and trying to find another role or job and it completely drained me from any urge I had to create. A lot of video games were played and that never helps either.
So when I came back to this piece, of which I only did the rough sketch in red pencil, I was worried I would not know how to work on it. Out of pure insecurity on my ability to ink it properly, I warmed up with my fountain pen for two pages in my sketchbook and then had a go at this Fuji view. It was inked in about 15 minutes and I do not recall what my fear was.
Similar to the coloring, using my Daniel Smith paints, I did this view side by side with a few smaller projects so that while the one was drying, I could work on the other. My dream house, the house I’ll build when winning the lottery, has a big room that is my art studio and that studio has multiple desks and ample room for easels so I can work on multiple pieces all at the same time and I only have to move from one desk to another. Or maybe a long table and a chair with wheels, although I already have that in one of the rooms here in the house so writing this opens a window in my head.
The biggest success of this piece is that it showed me that it will be fine and that I should not give up on myself or my already acquired skills.
The eighth already and this project rested for about a month. There is not that much to go into detail about on this view, other than that the western reader should keep in mind to read from the top right to the bottom left. Made with mostly Daniel smith paints, only the Prussian blue at the top was Mijello but a tube of DS Prussian Blue has been acquired and will be used for these skies in the future.
Kōshū inume-tōge / 甲州犬目峠
As a minor aside, I should not leave a sketchbook open for a month in my room, there were little dust particles that were really in my way when going for the green of the hill in the foreground.
Again in the series of meh-pril where I draw simple stuff to keep going, this is a little success I wanted to share.
Amstelveen station
As part of the Haarlemmermeer spoorlijnen, this station was build in 1915 and operated for 35 years as part of a steam train network for passengers and up until 1970 for cargo.
The super fast painting took no more than 30 minutes including sketch, ink and paint.
The building has a special place in my heart as we held our wedding reception there.
For the 12th of Mehpril the prompt was to draw a car and the quintessential car is the Ford Model T. It came out so nice for a simple drawing of a car, it was rewarded with a post here.
