No New Oil Painting This Week

 I'm waiting for art supplies to arrive before tackling more oil painting.  Every time I order supplies, which the company sends via FedEx, I get a message with a tracking number that says my package will arrive on a certain date, and then every single time, the package does not arrive on that date.  Instead, it suddenly vanishes into a black hole called "delivery information pending".  

And then it arrives the next day or the day after.  Go figure.  

So, in the meantime, as I await the supplies needed to try more oil painting, have a cute bird to look at:

This is a Horned Grebe, one of our regular Winter visitors, hanging out on the Columbia River.  Here it is again, preening those hard-to-reach spots:

And here it is giving me one of those What are you looking at expressions:

As for the group sketch sessions, I managed to do things that I liked well enough to share.  Yay.

The first is a geological formation known as Blackchurch Rock on the coast of county Devon, UK.  I used watercolor and water-soluble ink pens, and was pretty happy with the reflection:

The second one was a narrow street somewhere in France, with a lot of shop signs and a tricky drain pipe, not to mention a bit of challenging perspective.  I used ink and watercolor:

It's still warm enough for walking, and the Hounds and I got out to Columbia Point, where we haven't been for a while.  There was a bit of lovely autumnal color in the area where the fire swept through last Spring:

Pippin and Truman enjoyed the walk, even though Truman couldn't use his beloved stroller on the rocky path:

Not a terribly exciting week all in all, but these days, that is a fine thing indeed!

Have a good week out there, everyone!

In Which I Tackle da Vinci

This post will be solely about oil painting, and specifically about copying an angel painted by Leonardo da Vinci.  You see, when I decide to tackle something new, I tend not to make it easy on myself.  Perhaps this is not the best strategy, but once in a while it works out just fine.

The new thing (sort of) is water-mixable oil paints.  These have been around for a few decades now, and I dimly recall trying them in the early 1990s.  I hated them, though I don't remember clearly why. Recently, I tried using traditional oils with their troublesome solvents, which made me unhappy, too.  But then I heard some folks claim that water-mixable oils had improved greatly, so I opted to give them another try, with Holbein Duo Aqua paints.

Boy howdy, were those folks right!

What I tested them out on was an angel from this painting, da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks

Here's the close-up of the angel figure that I worked from:

Here I'm starting an underpainting after drawing the figure on an 11x14" hardboard panel (that I applied a layer of gesso to).

The drawing is not totally accurate but then, who can copy da Vinci?  The point was not to slavishly copy the figure, but to test out the oil paint by using traditional oil techniques, and who better to represent those than Leonardo?  

So one traditional oil painting technique is the underpainting, in which one figures out the range of light/dark values in the piece by rendering it in monochrome.  Most often this is done with grays or browns.  I chose to use burnt umber.

I liked the way the paint handled -- it blended easily with just water for thinning, though Holbein does make quite a few mediums to be used expressly with its water-mixable oils.  These can be added to increase transparency, glossiness, and/or ease of blending.  I've ordered some to try out next time.

Traditional oils take a long time to dry, but these water-mixable ones dry more quickly, and after just 24 hours, the underpainting was ready for color layers. I had not purchased many colors -- just primary red, yellow, blue, and two browns (burnt umber and burnt sienna), and white.  From these one ought to be able to make pretty much any color.  Luckily, the original painting was not all that colorful (at least, not the angel), so it wasn't difficult to mix what I needed.

I had the most trouble with the hair.  Da Vinci is known for his love of painting curls, and they were always incredibly complex in terms of shape and lighting, and there was no way I could match his skill in rendering them.  I opted to aim more for suggestion than detail.

The next day, a disaster occurred!  I tried to mix the facial colors by using the traditional method, which involves red + yellow + white for lighter values, with a touch of blue to tone down the vividness, and red + yellow + just a little blue for darker values.  The mixes looked fine on the palette but when I applied them to the painting, they looked awful.  By the time I realized how much I hated the colors, I'd covered the whole face.  Aiiee!

I wound up lifting off that paint layer with paper towels.  The dampness of the paint and the subsequent harsh removal adversely affected the underpainting, and I lost quite a bit of the facial features, which I then had to reconstruct to the best of my ability.  The portrait now strayed farther from da Vinci's, but I wasn't unhappy with it -- in fact, I rather liked how the angel looked slightly more androgynous in my version.  Angels are, after all, supposed to be genderless, spiritual beings, and this seemed quite appropriate.  

Here is the newer, reconstructed face, with new color added using my own mixture of burnt umber, burnt sienna, and white:

Another traditional technique I tried out was sfumato, which was pretty much invented by da Vinci.  This is a blending of edges -- a softening of the changes in value from one plane to another.  For this I used a mop brush, which is a full and fluffy brush that looks like the ones some people use to apply makeup foundation/powder.  It worked brilliantly, and I was able to get quite subtle gradations in value across the face.

All in all, I'm extremely impressed with these paints.  I suspect the surface also had a lot to do with my success -- I've not been happy painting on canvas in the past, as I don't like the texture showing through.  This hardboard, manufactured by Richeson, is very smooth.  I loved how easily the paint glided onto this surface, and how smoothly the paint blended.  A very enjoyable exercise!  

Here is the finished piece:

Now I just need to figure out what to paint next....Hm.....

Have a lovely week out there, everyone!

When in Doubt, Post Cute Dachshund Pics

 It was a relatively quiet week, with walking and drawing and hanging around with wiener dogs, thusly:

There were a few nice birds now and then on our riverside walks, including Common Loons, who are Winter visitors:

And there were plenty of gulls, including this Ring-billed Gull who gave me the stink-eye:

The sketching was so-so, and seemed overly heavy on trees and other green stuff.  I did this fence with moss-covered rocks piece in ink and watercolor:

For this picture of aspens against a very dark background, I opted to use the Adobe Fresco digital drawing program on the iPad:

The weather cooperated for walking, especially one day when it was mild and sunny and I just couldn't seem to get enough walks in -- I just kept going and going, until I broke my old daily steps/mileage record:

Whee!  Ten miles!!!   In one day!  I was pretty chuffed about that.  And just a little tired at the end of the day -- I slept very well that night.

And now for more cute dachshund pics!  We had a delivery one day, and Pippin was eager to know what was coming:

What was coming was a new recliner!  Hooray!  Now the living room looks cozier, and if two people come to visit me, as they do from time to time, each will have their very own chair and won't be forced (shudder) to share the sofa with me:

Naturally, because this is my house, the chair could not remain unembellished.  Within minutes of its arrival, it somehow acquired a decorative throw, and Pippin approved:

That's all for now.  We have colder weather on the way, even a minor threat of snow, so there may not be much to report next time!

Have a great week out there, everyone!

Squirrel!

 We are not walking as often or as far now that the chillier weather has arrived.  The Hounds and I still get out when we can -- for me, that means sunny and over 45 degrees.  Unfortunately, this is more likely to occur later in the day, and I am a morning person.  Sigh.

When we do get out, though, it's quite lovely, as usual, by the riverside.

There's an island in the middle of the river, and at the end of it there was a group of pelicans:

I thought they went south for the Winter, but perhaps they are sturdier than I am and can handle temps of less than 45 degrees for a while longer.

Here is Pippin exploring the riverbank:

And here is Truman getting his leash stuck on this dock ramp:

Our most exciting wildlife sighting for that morning was this rather plump squirrel, who was ever so concerned about our presence, despite being a good six feet up in the safety of the tree:

There are always plenty of squirrels in this park, which drives Pippin nuts because they often stand around on the ground within five feet of him, and he can never catch them, being attached to me by his leash and all.  But he tries.  And fails.  Truman, on the other hand, who I often let walk freely, and who could chase squirrels to his heart's content, completely ignores them.  I wonder if this perturbs poor Pippin?  Truman!  What are doing?!??  There are SQUIRRELS right in front of you!!!  GO GET THEM!!!  

But Truman just ambles along, sniffing the grass and hiding behind me whenever a person comes near us and wondering, no doubt, when we are ever going to get back to the car and go home, which is always his fondest wish.  Squirrels?  We have those in our own yard.  I can chase them there.  Leave me alone!

Or something to that effect.

In other News of the Week, we did our usual two drawing sessions via Zoom, and the first one was okay but not that inspiring.  It's a view from somewhere or other in France:

I liked the picture we chose for the second session much better -- a delightful red panda.  I did a pencil sketch, then a light and loose watercolor painting, over which I drew details using colored pencils.  

Quite nice, I think!

Finally, I shall leave you with the very first photo released from the set of Good Omens Series 2.  It is from Aziraphale's bookshop, and the only thing we know is that he and Crowley are talking to someone.  No idea who.  Fans have, of course, carefully studied the reflections in Crowley's glasses and have derived all sorts of theories about who is in there but to me it's just meaningless blobs.  It's still nice to see them together again!

Three weeks of filming have been completed...with another 15 projected weeks to go.  Not counting a 2-3 week break over Christmas/New Year's.  Sigh.  And then another year or so of post-production...it's going to be a long wait.  Hopefully we will get more photos and maybe even some clips to keep us happy in the meantime!

That's all for now.  Have a great week out there!

A Bit of This and That -- the Usual Stuff

 The Hounds and I have been enjoying the autumn colors on our walks of late:

And we're enjoying seeing some of the Wintering Waterfowl arrive -- these are American Wigeons:

And we've just enjoying our daily strolls along the river:

I'm not sure how much longer these strolls will last, though, as it's getting colder out there, especially in the mornings, which is my favorite time to walk.  It may soon be time to hunker down, and come up with more and more creative things to do.

Speaking of creative things, remember my 34,340-stitch needlepoint version of the Good Omens Series 2 promo pic?  Well, I framed it!  All by myself!  Okay, with a little help from the friendly customer service person at framedestination.com, but still, this was quite an accomplishment, for I had never framed needlepoint before and it can be tricky.  Everything turned out beautifully, if I say so myself:

It's now hanging in the living room, and I am best pleased. 

As for other creative endeavors, I liked both the drawings we did during our Zoom sessions.  The first was a snake against a dramatically dark background, and I decided it needed to be drawn digitally using the Adobe Fresco program on my iPad.  Haven't done that in a while, and it turned out fine:

The second scene was Mount Fuji in autumn, for which I used watercolor:

Another thing I enjoyed this past week was storm cloud watching -- we have relentlessly sunny clear blue skies here a great deal of the time, and I get excited whenever good clouds arrive.  We had a couple of rainstorms this past week, and after the rain stopped, I went out for walks and drives to capture the clouds:

There were no more new birds to see on any of my adventures of late, but I did get some pics of our common birds.  This is a White-crowned Sparrow:

And here is a cooperative California Quail (they usually scurry off into the brush long before I can get a photo):

Here is a Spotted Towhee, which come here only in colder months of the year:

And I also spotted this female White-crowned Sparrow taking a bath in the one of the puddles left by the rainstorm:

But wait, there's more!  In home decorating news, I splurged on a new area rug for the living room:

You might notice something about the coffee table...yes, those are skeins of embroidery floss.  Yes, I'm starting another needlepoint...oh dear.  Check back in four or five months when I might be finished with it.

Truman approved of the new rug:

And so did Pippin:

Truman and Pippin also approved of the Hallowiener party we attended on this past Saturday, hosted by the wiener walking group we belong to.

The group organizers set up a nice fenced area for the wieners to romp around in, and meet and greet:

Truman and Pippin wore their matching Jedi hoodies:

I liked this sharkwiener costume:

I have no idea what these two are supposed to be, but the costumes were handmade and quite well done:

These two reminded me of Truman and his Seattle buddy Winston:

This person got mobbed when he offered some dog treats:

We had a little costume parade:

Good fun all round!

Okay, that's it for now.  Whew.  

Happy Celtic New Year!