Some more Train and Lunch Sketches: Fruits and Flowers

I did these sketches a few weeks ago, but somehow never got round to post them here. Actually, I've been very bad at blogging in general recently. Either I haven't got time to edit the photos, or the light is too bad for taking photos and I just can't get it right, or I just simply never get round to write up a post. 

But hopefully, this will all change from next month on. Because next month, I'll start a new job, and with the new job comes a much shorter daily commute (from up to two hours to under an hour one way), and a whole day off a week, which all means: much more time and energy to put into my art. And my blog.

It will also mean the end of my little TrainSketches. Although I hope to keep up the occasional lunch sketches. There's a lovely park sourrounding my new place of work, which I think would be nice for some fresh air and sketching. At least during summer. But we'll see.

So, here are a few of my latest train and lunch sketches. Some delicious kiwis, sketched in my lunchtime...

... some paisley and flower doodles, sketched during a couple of morning train rides, ...

... and the lovely lilies of the valley along the the main road on my way to work (I so will not miss having to walk or cycle from the station to the library in wind and weather, after having already spent 1 1/2 hours in various trains), sketched again in one of my lunch breaks.

And another thing on my to-do list for when I'll have more time is to finally give my blog its long overdue makeover. Can't wait to see it all fresh and new. It'll be a right energy boost, I'm sure.

Patient owls, and some sketches waiting for colour

This week's a bit of a mad week, and there hasn't been much space for painting, or rather, none at all. And I'm so behind with colouring in my lunch- and trainsketches. And I've neglected them a bit too, to be honest. But that was mainly because I spent my train journeys and lunch breaks with reading Harold Speed's The Practice and Science of Drawing. Written in 1917, but still a fascinating read, and a most inspiring one too. 

But anyway. I did a couple of lunchsketches in the past few days, and I found a finished sketch which I haven't blogged about yet. So these will have to do for today's Paint Party Friday. I was thinking about giving the party a miss altogether today, but to be honest, I could do with the "company". So here I am, with my row of colourful owls patiently waiting for news,...

 ... and a few sketches patiently waiting for colour.

I hope to have some time, and inspiration, to colour these sketches, and to do some painting too, over the weekend. But we'll see. I'll definitely try to visit as many blogs as possible, but my mind's a bit preoccupied at the moment, so I apologise in advance if I'm not going to do a very good job with keeping up. But I'll do my best.

Happy Paint Party Friday!

Piglets' big day out

Spring, or rather summer, has come and gone, and the temperatures have dropped from the up to 25 degrees of the last days to a cool maximum of 8 degrees. And it's raining cats and dogs now, and it's not going to stop soon. Ah well, I'm certainly not happy about the grey and wet, but to honest, I wasn't too pleased about the hot and humid sunshine of the past few days either. I know, some people are hard to please.

But although it might be cold, and wet, and grey here, the piglets are enjoying their day out, and they are all so excited to go to the big party that is taking place every Friday - it is, of course, the fabulous Paint Party Friday they're heading off to. They have scrubbed themselves until they were all squeaky clean and shiny pink to make the best possible impression at the party.

 And the big spotted piglet has put on its brightest and cleanest necktie, and is hurrying across the grass as fast as his stubby little feet can go to catch up with the others. He's so excited to be part of the party, he doesn't want to miss a single minute of the fun.

Where's the time gone?

Can't believe we're already one third into April! Life's somehow quite busy, one way or another, and there's not so much time for painting or blogging. And the mad April weather is just sucking out all my energy. But it seems spring will at least make an appearance over the weekend. I have kept up my little train- and lunchsketches though, and today I'm just sharing my little owls, even though I haven't finished painting them yet. They were such fun to sketch, and they just make me smile. I've filled a few more pages in my sketchbook, and I hope to share more for Friday's Paint Party, and during my upcoming looooong, relaxing weekend. But we'll see. No pressure :)

Putting the paints to the test & Gel pen love

With my Sunday being taken over by formats, file copying, and too many computers on my desk, I decided to try and do a little Sunday sketch at least. To be honest, my new cheap paints, and the newly begun second sketchbook were just too irresistible, and so much more attractive than just watching files being copied. And so I ended up painting my new paints.

Which on top of it being quite a good exercise in perspective (I challenged myself not to do the simple view straight from above this time) also serves as a reference for how the colours look on paper.

I first put some water down in the black area of the box to get an even layer of paint, but I didn't use that much, so I wasn't that surprised when no paint bled through (and I checked about every 5 seconds!). But rather pleased, nevertheless. But I wanted to put them to a test. A real test. I soaked the page with lots of water, and then added several layers of black, to get a really dark background. And guess what: no bleeding through, at all!

I was also very pleased about how beautifully opaque the black became after three or four layers. A perfect background for what I had in mind. Which was trying out my new funky gel pens. I already couldn't live with my white gel pen(s), and I only discovered more colours at the local stationer's the day before.

I spent both my train journeys on Monday, morning and evening, with adding all the flowery details, first white, then with a range of metallic pink, red, purple and green. It was a bit of a challenge for me, as I like the safety of the pencil to start a sketch with. But I really like the result. And I've alreay got a new background prepared. I wonder how many colours they have in their gel pen range?

Unfortunately, I'll have to give tomorrow's Paint Party Friday a miss, as when this (scheduled) post appears on my blog, I'm already in England, for a long relaxing weekend of beach walks, picturesque villages, and cream teas. I just hope that the weatherpeople got it wrong, and it's not going to rain the entire 5 days, as they forecast.

Have a terrific weekend!

Cheap paint and FAT32

Last week, I finished my little sketchbook with TrainSketches. Of course, I've already started working in a new one straight away. I hope that they are going to develop into a nice little series of sketchbooks, filled with inspiration I can go back to when looking for some ideas for a painting.

I used my good artists quality watercolour paints for colouring my sketches, but while the paper definitely takes the paint a whole lot well better than a Moleskine sketchbook, I had some problems with the paint bleeding through and ruining the sketches on the other pages all over the place. I also thought that my good, expensive paints were just a little bit too good and expensive to use for these little sketches. Cheaper paints would do more than enough here. So I went shopping on Friday, and bought a little box of cheap paints. The whole box cost me less than one single pan of my good watercolours.

The disadvantage of course is that the colour range is somewhat limited. Only 12 colours, as opposed to the the luxury of my total of 55 gorgeous artists watercolours, which include such favourites of mine as Prussian Green, Indigo and Cobalt Turquoise. The colours in my cheap little new set don't even seem to have names at all.

But so far, they seem to be doing what they are supposed to do - adding (much more) vibrant colour to my little sketches without ruining any of the others - rather well. So far, anyway. I've only done one sketch so far, so we'll have to wait and see about the bleeding through issue when I do the next.

And as to the problem of the limited colour range, I bought an individual pan of a differnt brand to try out, a lovely dark turquoise. It seems to be pretty much the same as the paints in the set, and even mixes perfectly well with the them, so I've ordered an additional box, with 24 colours. They're a little bit more expensive, but still a whole lot cheaper than my good ones.

I was planning to spend a great part of Sunday with some 'proper' painting, after what seems an eternity. I soon realised, however, that that was not going to happen. The thing is, I bought a new computer about three or four weeks ago. Now I guess most of you know what a boring, time consuming business it is to copy files from an old computer to a new one. And if you also happen to be a keen photographer on top of everything else, and easily take 300+ photos on a day out, and keep them as both RAW and JPEG files, the former easily reaching file sizes of 20MB and more, just in case you'll ever want to do some more serious editing than with the lower quality JPEG, once you've got Lightroom installed, like in a million years or so. But you never know. Better save(d) than sorry. But it makes for a lot of file copying, and it takes ages.

And if you then switch from an old, slow paintcovered Windows laptop to a shiny, new iMac, things really get complicated. Because on top of all the copying from one machine to the other, there's also the format issue. At least I now got that second backup hard drive I've been wanting to buy for quite some time. So now I've got a 3TB drive, formatted for my new Mac, and my old 2TB drive, formatted for my laptop, which means that, although I can actually access my photos from my Mac, I can't move them or add to them with it. Luckily, I also have a handy little portable 500GB drive, which works like a simple memory stick for all formats. Perfect for copying stuff from one computer to the other. So I thought. Until I discovered that it seemed to be broken, and refused to have anything moved or deleted from it. I tried using my little 32GB stick, but soon realised that that was not going to work at all. Not if I wanted to get my stuff on to my new computer in anything like under 5 years. So I did some googling, and actually managed to reformat my little 500GB drive in a FAT32 format, which, as I learned, means that it works with both Mac and Windows. And it's now working perfectly again, a fact of which I'm rather proud of, to be honest.

So file copying is now my first priority, and I ended up spending the whole of Sunday with two computers on my desk, trying to copy the files in a somewhat more organised and efficient way than what I've been doing in the past 3 weeks (which is a complete mess). And then I'll just have to reformat the old 2TB drive as FAT32, and I'll have two back ups at last. And then I'll be finally back at my easel.

And in the meantime, I'll just continue with my sketches :)

38 sketches - The first little sketchbook is already full

Yesterday, I posted my Project365 collage of the photos I took in February, but it wasn't just the only thing I completed - my first sketchbook is full too. 38 mostly Train-, a few Lunch-, and the odd SundaySketches.

I totally enjoyed doing these sketches these past 1 1/2 months. Drawing the outlines on the train early in the morning on the way to work, when I'm usually not yet fully awake enough to read, then adding colour in the evenings or weekends, and then adding more details with various pens the following morning on the train, or occasionally in the evenings, when the train wasn't too wobbly and/or crowded (I don't really like people watching me sketch).

I sketched different subject and designs. Flowers, patterns, objects that were lying around me... Sometimes I'd just draw something from imagination, sometimes from memory, sometimes I'd look for an image on the internet, and sometimes I copied something I came across in a book. The main purpose of these sketches was to get into the habit of sketching every day. I'd love to say that they are just quick little sketches, but they were actually a lot more time consuming that I thought they would be. But they are perfect exercises, and on top of that, give me a whole book, or books soon, of ideas to use as reference for bigger paintings.

The only downside was that, as the paper isn't watercolour paper, the paint would sometimes bleed through, ruining the paintings on the other side. But then again, these are just little sketches, not masterpieces, so they don't need to be perfect.

Of course I already begun working in a new sketchbook. If I go on like this, I'll have to order new sketchbooks again soon!

Linking up to the fabulous Paint Party Friday. Have a wonderful, creative weekend!

In my sketchbook: Commuters, flowers, glasses, and lots of pages waiting for colour

I seem to have a bit of a painting low at the moment. I just don't seem to find the time to spend a day, or even half a day at my desk or easel to get the acrylic paints out and do some 'proper' painting. Too much work, too much commuting, and a day trip up a mountain last Saturday sort of got in the way. But I've been keeping up my trainsketches, and even found a spare half hour on some evenings to add some colour. There's always time, even if it's just half an hour here and there.

With my long commute to work, almost 4 hours both ways, I spend a lot of time in trains. Those train journeys can be very relaxing, at times. Most of the days, I quite like my early morning journey. There aren't too many people on the train, so that I usually get a little compartment on my own, and it's usually dead quiet, because everyone's asleep. Outside the window, night changes into day, and I've got time and quiet to do my little sketches. But occasionally, my fellow travellers are just a pain, getting on my nerves big time. And the best outlet for one's frustrations is, of course - one's sketchbook.

I'd like to do a lot more sketching in my lunch break too, but working out in nowhere, in a small team, where everyone eats their lunch at the same time and at same table, I don't feel comfortable enough to do so. But occasionally, there's a day when I'm all on my own, and then I draw and use whatever is lying around on and around my desk, such as my glasses and some stencils we use to label boxes. Although I'm a winter girl, I'm looking forward to some warmer temperatures now, so that I can go outside for some sketching in my breaks.

Nature's one of my biggest sources for inspiration, and I like sketching flowers. Realistic flowers, imaginary flowers, doodle flowers - flowers in every form. These are more realistic, though I'm not sure what exactly they are supposed to be. They could be tulips, I guess. Sometimes, the boundaries between realistic and imaginary isn't that clear.

I've had more time for sketching in the morning than for adding colour to them these past 10 days, so I've now got a whole bunch of sketches that are waiting for colour. And I can't wait for the weekend to begin so that I can get the watercolour paints out. And hopefully there'll even be some time for the acrylics to come out on Sunday.

After having had to give it a miss last week, I'm linking up to the wonderful Paint Party Friday again today. Have a wonderful, creative weekend!

Happy Valentine's Day

Even though we don't really have a Valentine's Day tradition here, I've been busy drawing and painting hearts during my train commute. Tradition or not, hearts are just too fun to sketch, and love is always worth celebrating.

I especially loved doing my little tree full of lovebirds, adding layer after layer. They just made me smile.

Unfortunately, when I painted a couple of lovebirds on the following pages, it all went terribly wrong. I painted one of the birds yellow, and when I wanted to add another layer of orange and red, the paint disappeared right in front of my eyes. It went straight through the paper, staining my little lovebirdtree painting.

I tried to add some more paint to my yellow page once I had dried the pages with a hairdryer, but the paint kept disappearing. I really don't know what happened here. Was it the because of the water? But then, it wasn't the first page I had covered competely with very wet paint, and then painted on the other side of the page, without the paint disappearing.

It's a complete mystery to me. And it's quite a pity, because I really liked my little tree full of lovebirds. Luckily, I have taken more than enough pictures of the pre-stained version, and this is, after all, just a little sketchbook. I see it as a collection of ideas I can refer to later. So I might just paint another tree full of lovebirds on a sheet of proper watercolour paper. And I already know what I want to change to improve it.

Happy Valentine's Day, I hope you spend a terrific day with your loved one.

TrainSketches || More leaves and a few feathers

More trainsketches, and more leaves. Nature never ceases to inspire me, I love trees and leaves, and leaves are just so fun and easy to draw and paint. As it's all grey and white outside, I wanted to fill my pages with an extra colour burst. And leaves are just perfect for that.

I'm learning to get to know my watercolours, thanks to my trainsketches, and I'm getting fonder and fonder of them. And it's a quick and easy way to add some colour in the evening, when I don't have the time and energy to get out my acrylics. I just love the vibrancy of the wet colour on the page...

... but am always slightly disappointed about how mucht the colour fades once the paint is dry, I must admit. Of course you can just add layer and layer of more colour, but I usually end up covering up all those little white spaces, which I try to leave out. I think it might be the paper of the sketchbook, though. While it takes watercolours pretty well, it's not proper watercolour paper. I found some watercolour sketches done on proper watercolour paper the other day, and the colours seemed much richer. But I'm not complaining. I love my little sketchbook, and it serves its purpose beautifully.

Sometimes I add the background colour first and then decide what colour I want my subjects to be, if I don't already know what I want. Here, I did the leaves first. I know I wanted them to be colourful. I wasn't sure what colour to choose for the background, and I even considered just leaving it white. But I prefer colour, so decided on a neutral blue. Just a few brush strokes in a darker shade to add some shadows to make the leaves pop off the page. I love how little it often takes to achieve a great effect.

I added the finishing touches the following morning, in the train. Some broader pen lines, and a few touches of white here and there. I love adding dots and things like that all over the place, like I did with my other leave sketch, but here it wouldn't really have fit.

And of course I've already begun my next sketck, again inspired by nature: feathers. The pencil and pen sketches have been completed, now they're waiting to get some colour over the weekend.

Linking up to the fabulous Paint Party Friday. Make sure to pop over and have a look at all the other talented artists sharing their work. It's always worth a visit.