Daily Painter Week Six

We've been traveling--to Virginia and to Connecticut--and it's a challenge to keep up with daily painting and drawing.  Here's one I did before we left....

"Old Tree on River Road"

6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

And, below are four little daffodil paintings just finished....

"Little Daffodils"

4" x 6" - watercolor and marker

The flowers are finally starting to bloom here and so I did some little studies....

"Bleeding Heart Study

6" x 8" - watercolor

"Flowering Quince Study"

6" x 8" - watercolor

Daily Painter Week Five

I'm a bit late with my blog for this week--we just got home from traveling to Virginia, visiting with friends, and I didn't have access to my computer until now.

Below is a drawing I did at Mink Brook Nature Preserve.

"Birdhouse in the Woods"

6" x 9" - soft pencil

Route 14 north of Bethel is a great place to find old farms and weathered outbuildings like the one below.  I definitely will be going back there!

"Old Farm, Route 14"

6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

Here are a few close up photos of barns, silos and outbuildings that I took that same day.

I thought I might use these photos for paintings or drawing but when I looked at them I decided they needed to stand alone as photos.  

Daily Painter Week Four

I've been doing a drawing or painting every day now for a month.  I am amazed at this since I wasn't getting into the studio very much earlier this year.
I started the week with two drawings of studio objects.  The first is my canvas stretching stapler.

"Red Stapler"

6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper with colored pencil and watercolor

I liked the black, white and red colors together and so I decided to draw the hammer I use for hanging pictures and banging on staples that don't go all the way into the stretcher frames.

"Red Hammer"

6" x 10" - soft pencil with watercolor

This next series of small abstracts is done in the same manner as last week's "Tulips".  These also look good connecting to one another in a horizontal format.  

"Moving Fractures"

4" x 6" - watercolor with collage

Below is a marker drawing I did last Thursday at Mink Brook Nature Preserve in Hanover, New Hampshire with the Odanaksis Artists who have been painting plein aire together for the past eleven years.

"Ancient Tree"

6" x 9" - Sharpie Marker

I was fortunate to be able to work plein aire two days this past week and now have two drawings plus lots of photos to work from.  More next week....

Daily Painter Week Three

I spent a lot of time in the studio this week and created seven new pieces....

"Sap Bucket #2"

6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

"Barn on the Hill"

6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

The flowers below will be mounted horizontally into one frame....

"Tulips"

 4" x 6" - watercolor with collage

The watercolor below is the second painting inspired by a snowy day on Calendar Hill....

"Shadow Ribbons II"

9" x 12" - watercolor

This Daily Painter adventure goes on.  I wonder what next week will bring?

Daily Painter Week Two

Well, I just finished week two of daily drawing and painting.  I am finding the daily exercise to be exciting and invigorating.  

A quick sketch with added watercolor at the Quechee covered bridge.

Since there isn't a lot of time to devote to each one I skip studies and the work becomes more spontaneous.  On the sap bucket drawings, I just found an interesting place to begin, worked out to the edge of the little paper--maybe 5" x 7"--and if the composition didn't work I just lopped off the uninteresting part--a kind of "flying by the seat of your pants" approach. 

"Sap Buckets" done in marker

"Sap Buckets #2"

5 1/2" x 7 1/2" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

"Sap Bucket #1"
6" x 8" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

"Shadow Ribbons I"

9" x 12" - watercolor

I am very happy with the last three pieces and consider them frame worthy.  And I haven't spent so much time in my studio in ages....

Daily Painter Week One

On April 13th I began what is to be a year long adventure.  I committed to creating and posting on flickr's Daily Painters, a private ArtisTree sponsored site, one piece of artwork each day for the next year.  It can be a drawing, a painting, a collage, a photograph or whatever I feel inspired to do.  In my first week of work I decided to used gessoed paper and soft Ticonderoga black pencil.  The first three drawings are studies of little still life objects...

Pear

Apple

Morning Coffee

The next drawings focus on sap buckets, trying to capture the endless variety of values the winter and mud season landscape requires....

Sap Buckets I

Sap Buckets II

"Sap Buckets #1"

5 1/2" x 7 1/2" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

"Sap Buckets #3"
5 1/2" x 7 1/2" - soft pencil on gessoed paper

It has been an interesting challenge, working quickly and intuitively, sometimes starting with a focal point and building outward from there, cropping paper when it looked to be necessary, sometimes being a bit more planned in approach.  I'm enjoying the process so far.  And I'm trying not to think too much about the fifty-one weeks to go.

An Experiment

Yesterday I started an experimental drawing with soft carbon sketch pencils on gessoed watercolor paper.  The quote I did at Artistree last month used basically the same materials, but doing a rather realistic drawing was a larger challenge  It quickly became clear that I needed to work from left to right since the pencil smudges so easily.  Smudging is fun when and where you want it but not so much when  and where you don't!

"Sap Bucket Drawing"

carbon pencil on gessoed paper - 9" x 12"

A kneaded eraser and blender came in handy.  I just finished it and sprayed it with fixative so it won't smudge anymore.  Hopefully....