Friday 20 May 2016

Some food sketching, and learning how to paint skies

I was really looking forward to this week's Sketchbook Skool class with Matthew Midgley on drawing food. I didn't know Matthew and his work before the class, I have to admit, but I totally enjoyed it, and it certainly inspired me to try and draw some food. I love fennel, and cook it a lot, so there's usually some in my fridge. 


I'm trying out different sketchbooks to find one that works well for me. The first one is a Seawhite A5 hardcover sketchbook with 140gsm all-media cartridge paper, the second one a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook with heavy watercolour paper. The Seawhite does take the watercolour well enough, but as with other brands of sketchbooks, it's just not the same as proper watercolour paper. So I think it's nice to have both. Even if it means carrying around even more stuff.


Following Matthew's example, I tried to sketch some cooked food before eating it. I fried an egg, and this time used two different mediums, watercolour and coloured pencil, in the same sketchbook. The sketching was more enjoyable than my cold fried egg for dinner, that's for sure.


After sketching the fennel and eggs, I wanted to draw a whole meal too, and this week's weekly special at the canteen - hamburger - was just perfect. I have to admit, though, that I didn't draw it there and then, but instead took a photo of it. A packed university canteen at lunch time is definitely way out my comfort zone. So after my lunch, I went to find a quiet corner in one of the many buildings on the campus and made an ink sketch from my photo reference, and then added watercolour later at home. But I'm planning to do some 'life sketching' of my food next month, when I'm in England. In a quiet corner of our local Wetherspoon's, at a time when most people are not having lunch...


There are quite a few sketchbook artists that I admire, and of my absolute top favourites is no doubt Shari Blaukopf. I admire her strong shapes and colours, and I was overjoyed when I saw that she was now teaching on Craftsy. One of my goals for this year is to get to grips with watercolour, and I want to do some sketching when I'm on my holiday next month. So I started to work through Shari's Landscape class, working through the first lessons on how to paint different skies. My skies all look a complete mess, but then I'm well aware that it takes a lot more than a handful of sketches to master watercolours. And I enjoyed painting them and learned a lot about what colours to use and about tehcniques and the medium in general. By the end of the course I'll hopefully have finished all four of these sketches, and I'm looking forward to looking back at them in a few weeks/months' time and seeing some progress.


And last but not least, there's a new addition to my palette - Naples yellow. A quite interesting colour, great for mixing muted colours - and as it turns out, useful for skies too.


I used a different scanner for this post. For my last post, I scanned my watercolour pages at work, on one of those big machines. I like how it turns the paper completely white, blending the page into the blog background and making the drawings and sketches pop out. But it doesn't handle watercolour, or coloured pencils, very well, leaving areas of paint out completely and not being able to distinct between two different colors of coloured pencils. The images here were scanned on my own cheap printer/scanner at home. It handles the mediums much better but turn makes the paper look strangely yellow. I usually edit photos in Lightroom, which has an excellent white balance tool, but for these scans I used Photoshop, and I've never been able to find the white balance tool there. Although I'm sure it must be somewhere. I know I should take some time to figure out both Photoshop white balance and the settings on my scanner, but it's just so boring...

18 comments:

  1. Beautiful work, great idea to sketch and paint your food. Happy PPF, hugs, Valerie

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  2. You paint so wellk, I'm hungry now;)
    Happy PPF ♥

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  3. I love these sketches. I have been playing around with sketches in my personal journal, but mine are not even in the same league as yours. Happy PPF. And happy weekend.

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  4. I love these sketches. I have been playing around with sketches in my personal journal, but mine are not even in the same league as yours. Happy PPF. And happy weekend.

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  5. Interesting...I would not have thought of using touches of naples yellow in a sky. Love your beautiful fennel sketches.
    Happy PPF ♥♥

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  6. Wonderful! Your watercolor food sketches are fabulous and I really love the style! Yum! :)

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  7. AMAZING watercolor- art! I am impressed!
    Love every single piece!
    Happy PPF!

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  8. Hahaha, isn't that typical for an artist: getting carried away sketching and then in the end having to eat a cold meal :-D But your paintings came out great!

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  9. you are creating such marvelous watercolor art!! Those skies are looking pretty good to me too:) Keep up the practice and wonderful painting!

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  10. I am really loving the food art. I can see how this would make you hungry. Have a great weekend.

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  11. OMGosh! These are marvelous! You can see that you are really having fun, too. Enjoy!! Have a great weekend. :)

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  12. your work is beautiful,, I love to paint my food too ,, your sky practices are lovely, I love sky paintings, I have quite a few framed in our home, just sky,, some with just a bird,

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  13. Beautiful work. You draw some great food! I like your drawings too! Happy PPF! Have a wonderful weekend!

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  14. Ooooooh! And, Aaaaaahhhh! Beautiful!!

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  15. EGAD! What wonderful artwork, and what a great inspiration you are to me.

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  16. Love the vegie drawings. They would look great in a kitchen.

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  17. Your sketches are gorgeous!! And if you like sketching food, you might want to check out Tracey Fletcher-King's blog at: http://www.traceyfletcherkingblog.com/

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  18. Wonderful post! I loved all your sketches regardless of medium. I also did Shari's Landscape class on Craftsy and thoroughly enjoyed it! I'm a huge fan of Craftsy.

    On a side note, you asked about my Schmincke travel set so I thought I'd answer here in case you don't get back to check my post comments. Yes, I took out the removable pan holder and then, put in two strips of Blutack and then pushed my chosen pans onto the Blutack which holds them all firmly in place. I find this works great because I can opt to mix full pans with half pans as well.

    Enjoy the rest of your week. :)

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