Mixing colours

Here is one of my blobby colour playing pages... it is loosely mapped out like a colour wheel... I am not going to tell you what the initials stand for...see if some clever person will be able to figure it out. (i probably should have listed them as pigments)


This contains a lot of my mixes. What is not shown on this is a more muted grey which I am experimenting with from raw sienna, cerulean blue and a mixed purple. Getting closer to a selection of colours that I am happy with...but not quite there yet.

BTW we will be looked at colour and how to get juicy and confident washes in this weeks sketching class in Manly. There are a few casual spots availabe if anyone is interested. (you do not need to be using 'my' colours) More details here
http://www.lizsteel.com/p/blog-page.html

BCN planning meeting

BCN planning meeting!!!
I am just SO excited that my two wonderful Sydney sketching friends Alissa and Chris are booked to go to the symposium as well this year. We had a catch up at T2 teahouse - Alissa was sketching in between the non stop talk… but I was taking it easy and didn't sketch (first time ever I think) But our sketchbooks still had to have a group photo shoot as well.

If you don't know their work - you should!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/92356712@N08/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alissaduke/

Both are wonderful artists… but more important they are very special friends - it is such a privilege to have these two as my friends!  We have lots of fun sharing our sketching adventures, talking about improving our skills and all other kind of things - today we had lots of travel talk to go through. I can't tell you how excited I am at the prospect of having them share the symposium experience with me. Also, missing from this meeting is 'Eza' from Edinburgh(but she is an honorary Sydney sider!) who will also be part of the gang from Sydney.

Friday night baroque????

Friday night Baroque… hold on a minute, it is only Thursday night!

Yes… I am a little confused and in need of a bit of splashing paint around, a bit of scraping and a bit of scribbling with ink and water colour pencil. THis is a delightful building in Rome that I sketched when i was there in 2010. Yes, it is from a photo… but I am experimenting with new techniques and trying something out for a upcoming project.

It might be a little laboured but I have to say that there is a special element of FUN when I combine watercolour pencil and watercolour. For some reason the act of switching to and fro between paint and pencil rapidly during the process of the painting makes me feel like a little kid and I get somewhat excited!

This was pure relaxation for me... but of course now I am pumped and not relaxed ready to get some sleep! Oh dear! will I never learn?

Manly Sketching Class- Week 3: Value

Week 3 - Value
We had another fun day today in Manly … with some very important concepts to get our head around. Achieving good values in your sketches is essential and training the eye to see colour as value and to make decisions on value when out on location is a lot of fun!!?! Isn't it!!!!

We started in the studio with some abstract exercises - reducing the scene before us into only 3 values- light, dark and mid tone and then secondly working with a 5 value scale. We also tried to make clear distinctions between whites - local colour - shade- cast shadow -blacks. Lots of brain stretching is needed to get a clear idea of these 5 distinct concepts - but it comes in so handy when painting in watercolour which we will see next week (in fact it is easier to understand with colour BUT it is important to be able to see colour as values first)

I was hoping desperately for a sunny day- but it was cold and grey. As we spent longer on the studio exercises today we only got out for a short period and sketched the subject building in lines. We then headed up for lunch at the Butchers Cafe (food was great!) and I explained how to do a value sketch of the building from my photo taken on a sunny day - showing how the workflow of preserving whites, looking at local colour, shade and then cast shadow works when out on location.


Here is my sketch of the building with my value study done with pitt brush pens. Having 4 pens - warm grey iii, iv, v and black - is perfect for doing 5 scale value studies. (you can use the cool grey versions instead…but I am a warm grey type of girl!)

Another fun day! ….thanks again to my totally amazing and dedicated class!!!!

next week COLOUR - I don't need to tell you all that I am really looking forward to that one!

Catching up pn my EdiM

Oops .. I have neglected my blog for a few days...so to catch up (from today backwards)

EdiM21
Sorry - another paint theme EDiM. The last thing I bought was food but it is all eaten… so I had to go back to Friday's visit to the Artscene!

This sketch started out as a controlled ink and pitt pen grey tonal study of my empty pans… (yes my current paint tin has a combination of half and full pans) but then I just realised that I haven't scraped or splashed for a while… and I sure was in the mood for it! SO MUCH FUN! Particularly the scraping part…

I think I need to make sure that I remember to scrape more regularly!

some random notes (thanks to Jenn for the new 'credit card' - this was its first use!) and I also had a wonderful few hours with Helen from Melbourne and some really special botanical artists. Was talking to Beth about making sure that their was joy in her work- look at this piece of hers http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0008/127268/McAnoy_Hydrangea_macrophylla.jpg
stunning!
 

EDiM 20 Your favourite Drink

Groan...another tea cup... but what I am supposed to do when the challenge for today is draw your favourite drink... I couldn't possibly draw anything else could i? So added some silly notes about what I was thinking about while I was drawing it. Actually this is quite a bit larger than my normal size in this sketchbook... every cuppa sketch is different!

 

 

EDiM 18 Palm of my right hand

EDiM 19 Something belonging to someone else

 Such a different thing to be doing commission work for others rather than such playing in my sketchbook… got to get in the mood and then START!
So just to warm up I quickly did today and tomorrows EDiM (I don't sketch on Sunday so need to get ahead) The blue fireplace detail in the background is part of what I am about to paint… ok here goes… sigh, deep breath, I can do it!

 

 

EdiM 17

my goal for the EDiM challenges this year is to try to make my subjects as relevant to my life at the moment as I can… ie. not draw random objects. So today's item form a first aid kit is some sport tape that is very much part of my life at the moment. It helps a lot! I get bored with drawing single objects (well unless it is a tea cup!) some a little bit of collage today as well!