Daily Art Blog

Desert Triad

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 07:12:00 +0000

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In progress my attempt to paint the window in the book using the "desert triad" combo of cerulean blue, indian red, and yellow ochre. I used my little pans of cerulean hue, light red, and yellow ochre. It was instructive to see how many colors one can make from these three.

I soon became frustrated with the lack of intensit y and overworked areas.

Learning to use "cool" highlights and background to compliment warmer bodies and shadows. Using just raw sienna (warm) and cerulean blue (cool).

For the life of me that shadow would not cooperate! Watercolor is hard :D There is supposed to be a blend of the blue at the base to darken and 'cool' the shadow and then it warms as it extends and becomes lighter. I loved learning this, just annoyed I couldn't 'work it'. Maybe a wash tomorrow? The black line is india ink with my paints overlayed to see how opaque/transparent they are. Only the yellow was even remotely close to being semi-opaque.

Warm and Cool

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 05:03:00 +0000

I decided to start with the basics: colors. I like to jump right into things, so I never took the time to make up a chart of the colors from my Winsor & Newton Studio Set (24 pans). Now I'm learning that I really do need to start at square one: color mixing.

I've always been irritated with how bright and diluted these watercolors are--I tend to like more subdued and intense colors. These are inexpensive paints (Cotman) so I can't expect too much!

I learned I have problems consistently controlling the paint/water ratio to get nice squares. Watercolor is challenging!

There we are--all 24 paint colors for your pleasure, labeled "warm" "medium" and "cool". Learning about combining warm and cool colors was quite a revelation to me. I'd always gone about my business, mixing as I pleased making a nice big mess. In fact, look at how messy my squares are--I admire people who have a natural knack for the neat, not my strong suit, but there is something so beautiful about constraint and order.

It took a long ass time to do all of these little dots. But I'm green with pleasure because, well, look at all the greens I can make! On the left are my two "warm" blues, mixed with my yellows, and on the right are my "cool" and "medium" blues. Using cool blues you can get away with more green as you get deeper into the reds, but with the warm blues you can only get down to about cadium yellow before they start going olive/brown. I discovered I prefer the cool yellow + warm blues best, followed by warm yellows + cool blues. Cool + cool is too bright, while warm + warm is too muddied. Again, mind blowing!!

So messy.....but don't these remind you of those edible dot candies stuck on paper?

Art as healing therapy, one day a time

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 06:13:00 +0000

My health is finally stable enough, more or less, to give this daily art project another go. In fact, I consider it part of my healing process. At times over the past year I've felt absolutely no creativity at all, and fatigue aside it was the most frustrating thing. Now it's starting to nip at my heels and that's a clear sign I'm feeling better! Each idea deserves to be explored, or at least written down......now I need to learn techniques to realize their potential!

I think my first goal (aside from simply building the habit of daily art) will be to get through, cover to cover, three instruction books in watercolor. At the same time I'd like to start working on character sketches for some stories I've been working on, since I often get different ideas by drawing than by writing. For example, I started learning how to draw a hippo last year (see "older posts" at bottom of page) in preparing for a story about Gertrude, the hippo my parents owned in the 1970's.

This was done in October while trying to copy a sunset in a Claudia Nice book. Difficult, and needs a second go!

I'm working on a story that starts on a farm, and I've always been partial to chickens....
Let's see if I actually do something more than a doodle tomorrow....

Cat experiments

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:57:00 +0000

Just throwing up some old sketch plans to get myself going again--the first one was the bottom which somehow morphed a lot when refining it--old cartoon default kicked in for some reason. Hope to get to this project again this week to get a nice version of it. Just from having done a few book led exercises I feel like I'm learning a lot and can't wait to start implementing and improving!

Ray Hendershot

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:45:00 +0000

I found a wonderful book by Ray Hendershot called...hmmm...something about Watercolor Textures. Anyway, I love his classic painterly approach to watercolor--in fact he used to paint only with oils. I tried out a few of his techniques in one of his exercises...here is the result...I've got a lot of work to do on learning how to do trees...and snow...and skies...!

IKEA Alex "hack"

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:38:00 +0000

While not exactly a true "hack" this definitely spiced up IKEA's answer to affordable flat files. Where you see color was once an open space used in lieu of drawer pulls. I filled up the holes with watercolor scrap work in order to partially seal off the strong pressboard odor eminating from the interior materials. Since it's in my bedroom, a small room, the smell has been bothering me for months. Up until now I've kept this covered by a blanket and hopefully this will resolve the issue; otherwise I'll have to find a replacement.

It will be fun to change up the colors over time! I can still open the drawers since there is still a small ledge, although it's not as convenient. I rather wish IKEA designed this so images could be inserted into a clear plastic holder (I had to tape the paper to the inside of each drawer).

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:46:00 +0000

First attempt at the technique Gennine uses in her artwork--it's actually kind of difficult to
get the white acrylic ink to cooperate and I think it's
partially because of how rough my paper is, and finding the correct
ink nib...I have a great admiration for her skill!

Also, I am just not as neat and tidy...somehow I can't stick to
the plan...I guess I've just got to roll with that! But I'd like to
copy her use of postcard/illustration to make some stuff
tailored to my locale.

What matters most to me is that something seems animated,
believable, and has a life of its own, and as long as I can
convey that spirit that is what matters most.

getting back to it

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:42:00 +0000

Ok, trying to get back on the wagon! Orchids..done before they died a few months ago.

greens

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:40:00 +0000

Ok, so painting this in proved to be a bit of a challenge....I'm getting to know my materials and the greens are really hard to mix--this was a good exercise in color blending and trying out some of the craran d'ache pastel/watercolor sticks. The right side ended up badly as there was no plan for it, so I've learned that I need to plot things out better. This was a hard one to do overall given the lack of contrast..I guess I could've created more...that's for next time!

I had a cold this weekend....and felt drained and overwhelmed from the heat/pollen wave, which is still not and excuse for not having done more work!!

Succulents

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:48:00 +0000

So this is a base for a watercolor I'm going to try tomorrow..I've never done perspective before like this so it'll be a learning experience. I took a lot of pictures of our lovely garden..I'll post some of them next time--many exotic succulents!

Thank you mom, for the pair of lovely curly tailed doves!

A doormat I got --mom do you think you can do a sampler like this for me? It's similar to the design I had Carolyn do as a sort of 'wedding' sampler.

I took this in really low light....by the time I'd adjusted the ISO he had woken up and become a little frisky!

5. Hippo Periscope

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 07:16:00 +0000

More hippos! Over the weekend I started a study of Pico, which I plan to work on this week. I didn't post it because, well.....I was busy with Lorie being in town! Yeah. Anyway, here are two little Gertrudes! I realize how much I have to learn, time to check out a book from the library!

4. Hippo Doodles

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:08:00 +0000

I'm just starting to get a sense of how to draw a hippo...many more hippos to come. I'm learning how to do less-is-more, but it's actually a lot of work to do less! You have to boil things down to their essence. Or learn how to stylize them. I don't know how to come up with a 'style' I guess that will evolve with time? I really envy how neat and tidy Geninne's work is...

3. Owlie

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:47:00 +0000

Well, things don't always turn out as you envision them, but this is what this daily art thing is all about. I started this very late at night, and didn't realize how long it takes to do a tree trunk, so just got a little lazy with the branches. Then I spilled waterproof black ink all over the place , but decided to keep on trucking. The owl I think ended up looking like a little cat, and I ran out of time to finish him before I went to bed....oh well!

2. the happy hippo

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:28:00 +0000

I sent a thank you letter to Carolyn for the camera I purchased with the money she gave me. I drew my camera and put a mini-print of a picture we took at Thanksgiving inside the lens, and smacked the whole thing on the front of the envelope.

This Black-Bellied Plover was cute, but I thought he might be destined for greater things. At the last minute I added the top-hat and spotlight...it probably would've looked better had I conceived it from the start, but I like the idea.

Ok, so it's time to gear up for the hippo story about Gertrude, thus I'm going to have to start learning how to draw hippos!! They are difficult to draw and especially to give color to....I'm going to have to do a thousand of these guys!

Peer said this one looks like a Buffalo-Hippo--I was also surprised at the little mustachio growing! I LOVE hippo ears, they are so cute and stubby. They also have nice eyelashes.

1 of 365

noreply@blogger.com (Who is Blue Hippo Baby?) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:56:00 +0000

My New Year's Plan is to engage in art-making every day this year. I am making myself accountable by posting my daily 'art' on this blog. The ugly and the beautiful, they all get posted! I hope to see improvement over the year, since I am sorely out of practice. This is drawing #1--done yesterday--eyeballed from a book of birds. At first I will probably be doing a lot of bird drawings because I'm kind of crazy about them, it is easy at first for me to look to photographs as inspiration rather than using my rusty-imagination, and I am also totally inspired by Geninne's Art Blog. Birds are the theme of my new apartment, as I live on a tree lined street that is filled with birds! Well, mostly swarms of blackbirds!

My hope is that this daily practice will eventually help me get back into doing my children's books ideas (several have been suspended for a very long time, while I have dealt with life's hardballs by hiding my head in the sand!).