Yvonne's Sketchbook

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 5

Oops, epic fail on this one. The phrase "should have gone to Specsavers" comes to mind but i'm doing it and sharing it all the same. Acrylic paint on 6" x 6" card.

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 4

Another experimental painting, started with some random underpainting and went from there. Acrylics on 6" x 6" card.

Yes, I can see things wrong with it but the reason i'm doing the 30 days is to work on improving...

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 3

A quiet Sunday so I got my daily painting done early. Another experimental along the lines of yesterday - added some acrylic paint with a palette knife to some 6" x 6" card, let it dry then had a look to see what I could see - so, here is my Medieval Man Praying - inspired by Mel McCuddin

30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 3 - Medieval Man Praying

2016 is here!

Time to do my daily painting. I have to say here and now i'm not much of a painter but really want to improve, so here goes! I've signed up for the 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge as run by Leslie Saeta. As inspiration I have also been reading the book Daily Painting - Paint Small and Often to Become a More Creative, Productive and Successful Artist by Carol Marine. I'm enjoying the book a lot, haven't quite finished it yet.

I've decided that the first week will be devoted to experimental painting, I haven't decided yet on themes for the following weeks.

Today's painting is acrylic paint on 6" x 6" card and is really a kind of a loose sketch of something i'm working on that will be on a 20" x 16" canvas and in mixed media. It was me feeling my way into the work and trying different things. The final painting will no doubt be quite different but it was very useful to do a small version.

Day 1 - 30 Paintings in 30 Days

I was up early as always on the 1st January to spend the daylight hours birding, working on the year list. The weather was pretty grim, cold and windy but it has to be done. Ended the day on 53 species, the highlights being two Golden Eagles and three Snow Buntings.

Bit of a crummy phone pic - the waves looked way more impressive than this!

The crofter was busy on the beach collecting seaweed, it will be left in a big pile to rot then will be spread onto the crofter's plot on the machair to fertilise his crops. This time of year there is always massive piles of seaweed after the winter storms - i've seen it 10 or more feet deep.

Lorca to Villamajor de Monjardín

Walk: Lorca -> Villamajor de Monjardín (11.2 miles)

A long hot day with at least half of the walking being uphill! The free wine fountain at Irache actually had wine in it (it was empty when I arrived at it in 2013).

Not many beds left when arrived in Monjardín but the albergue offered us a private room with three beds in it, we were more than happy to share and the room was lovely, with a view out across the village and the surrounding countryside. 

The church tower in Monjardín. From my sketchbook. Watercolour.

Pamplona - Rest Day 2

Another warm sunny day but very very windy. We headed into the city centre on the bus and had morning coffee at Cafe Iruña - none of the sun umbrellas were up as the wind was gusting. Explored the shops, bought a lovely dress and chatted, in Spanish with the lady in the dress shop, when we found out that we were from the UK she told us about her sister who had lived in London and had died suddenly earlier this year. Told her we would pray for her sister when we got to Santiago (I'm not particularly religious but J has just qualified as a Deacon).

After wandering the city for a while we went for tapas at Okapi which is located on the "encierro" which is where the bull run takes place at the San Fermin festival in July. I left P and J sitting inside with their tapas and sat outside to sketch. Although I have a "proper" sketchbook with me i've been using my diary - I think I suffer from "blank page syndrome" with the sketchbook!

A little urban sketching

A fabulous sunset from the apartment this evening and a few bats flying around outside. Species unknown.

Saint Jean to Valcarlos

Walk: Saint Jean Pied de Port -> Valcarlos (7.01 miles)

It had been raining overnight but had stopped by first light. An early start for us. We're on our way!

We managed to navigate the various options which kept us off the main road. We rested and refreshed at Arneguy where we crossed the border into Spain. The last hill up to the albergue at Valcarlos is a total killer! Started to rain just as we arrived, lucky or what!?

Nice bunch of people in at the albergue and they plied us with iced water which was very welcome. Met Leo from Atlanta.

Massive spider running around in the shower with me - I think everyone must have heard me scream.

Me (left) and P leaving Saint Jean

Fantastic view from the municipal albergue at Valcarlos

And my watercolour of the scene...

The municipal albergue, Valcarlos

Cream-spot Tiger (Arctia villica) that I rescued from the doorway of the bar and put in a nearby plant pot.

Weekend away - Isle of Lewis

I travelled up to Lewis on Thursday - crossing the Sound of Harris on the ferry as a foot passenger. The hottest day of the year so far! 28'C Not too much fun on a stuffy bus on a windy road but that's what happens when you cheap out... A 20 minute stop in Tarbert between buses and I decided to go for it and sit and sketch the Tarbert Stores - this was also my homework for Koosje's Week 2 class of Sketchbook Skool. I plonked myself down on the pavement and drew. For my first taste of urban sketching it wasn't too bad at all - I got very few odd looks :-)

Tarbert Stores, Isle of Harris

I'd made a very quick pencil sketch and some notes the night before leaving as we'd had a beautiful sunset at home so during a quiet time later in the evening I committed it to paper.

Sunset, South Uist

Friday and I caught the bus over to Stornoway. The big metropolis. I visited An Lanntair, the arts centre firstly for a much needed coffee and afterwards to visit the latest exhibition called Tumadh: Immersion which was bird related. I'll write a dedicated post to the exhibition as part of my coursework. I must say that it was very different and I enjoyed it very much. Time for some more urban sketching...

An Lanntair, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis

My friend Jane runs the Blue Pig Studio in Carloway and she did a quick workshop on sketchbook making on Saturday afternoon, it was good fun and we swapped lots of ideas.

Mini-sketchbook

I also had my other sketchbook with me and over the few days visit I did an ink drawing a day for the 75 day ink sketch challenge that i'm doing. The rules are no pencil, black or blue ink only and 75 sketches to be completed in 75 days. I chose random objects belonging to my friends.

Fishing reel

A friend's stove

Old Singer sewing machine

Morning coffee

Headed back home on Monday morning - very very midgie and got eaten alive waiting for the bus!

Breakfast playtime...

My new Derwent Inktense pencils arrived yesterday but I didn't have time to unpack them. Over breakfast this morning - I'm no use to anyone before coffee - I unpacked them and had a little play.

Test page in my sketchbook - Derwent Inktense pencils

I had heard good things about the Inktense pencils from friends, easy to use, vibrant colours, easy and clean to travel with. I used a waterbrush to wet the pencil marks after colouring in the squares and the colours were indeed bright and vibrant. My only wish was that I had ordered a bigger box than the 12 crayons! This led me to try mixing the colours on the page before adding the water and that seemed to work out OK. As these are ink pencils, once dry the colours are permanent. They can also be used on fabrics (oops don't get on clothes unintentionally!). While drinking my coffee I drew a shell and added a light touch of Inktense pencil. I told Ian I was doing my morning meditation drawing... I wasn't that happy with the drawing it was the wrong shape so I will return to the same shell in a few weeks and see if my skills have improved - I quite like the idea of re-visiting the same objects and seeing how i've progressed.

Shell

The "Day 4" on the page indicates that this is one of the drawings towards the sketch challenge Brenda set us in this week's Sketchbook Skool, it's "75 Days of Sketching with Pen." The rules are simple do a drawing, in any type of pen every day for 75 days. I just noticed that it says blue or black ink only and I used some brown on this one but I did the outline in black Uni Pin so hopefully that counts. As for drawing technique and subject - anything goes but NO pencil under-drawings! Brenda suggests using a separate sketchbook purely for the challenge sketches. The one I started using (a Derwent one) was pretty awful for anything other than the Uni Pin pens - with fountain pen or dip pen the ink instantly "bleeds" into the paper. I searched around the cupboards and shelves for another sketchbook and found an A5 size Winsor & Newton one that was, so far, unused. I chopped out the three pages that i'd already done and stuck them into the new book. My only problem with the new sketchbook is that the very edges of some of the sheets were stuck together, where it is ring-bound. I think it must have got damp either in storage (in the warehouse not here!) or in transit. Oh, and before I transferred I checked I would have enough pages! Right ho, now I need to go and make myself a schedule of work for the OCA Drawing 1 course as i've heard from my tutor...  

Moths...

One of my interests in life is moths and on dry, relatively wind-free nights I put a moth trap out in the garden. It has a mercury vapour bulb which attracts moths. The trap is lined with egg boxes and the moths go into the trap and roost up under the egg boxes. In the morning I go through the trap and count and identify all the different species. the results go off, at the end of the year, to the local Biological Recording Group and they in turn send them to the National Biodiversity network. Until I became interested in moths I never realised how beautiful some of them are. I sketched the Garden Tiger (Arctia caja) that was in the trap last night.

Garden Tiger

No moths were harmed in the making of this sketch - all the moths are released, un-harmed, back to the wild after being identified and counted :-)

Moth trap at dusk