Spring at Tilden Park
Earlier this week we hiked at Berkeley’s Tilden Park. From time to time our son-in-law would leave some of us behind and leap across boulders and waterfalls, and I admired his confidence and agility very much. Although I did not sketch it at the time, I wanted to capture the feelings of spring, leaping and youth.
This is a gouache and pastel sketch.
Chart of my Gouache Paints
I bought my gouache paints haphazardly, first a small mixing set, then a few individual tubes and finally a set of 18 small tubes. In all I ended up with 37 different tubes, some so similar to each other that I have to read the label to tell the colors apart. Thirty-seven is too many to use, so many stay unused inside my desk.
Today I got to wondering just what I have and decided to organize them into a chart that can be posted above my desk. I work on both black and white paper so the color samples are on both. The labels that are either above or below the sample give the color name and its pigment code. It also shows its permanency rating, and I was sad to see that a few of my favorite colors have low permanence.
I often mix colors and I wanted to show some of my common mixes on this chart as well. The labels to the left of each row indicate these mixes. All the basic color blotches show a range from the out-of-tube color to about half white. The row beneath the reds has both white and cobalt blue mixed in. The row beneath the blues has white and raw umber. The row above the greens has white and raw umber as well and the row just above that has white and permanent yellow.
The chart is inconsistent because I made changes to my plan as I went along. There are some misspellings and other oddities as well, but it is good enough to help me work towards selecting a smaller set of reliable paints for my everyday palette.
Evening Near Mendocino
I made many line sketches on our trip this week up California’s Highway 1 before I caught the flu. Now that I am home and recovering I am adding paint using reference photos that I took with my phone.
Perhaps due to the time gap between drawing and painting, I noticed that my original sketch was too complicated. It was full of small shapes that did not contribute to showing the movement of the sea and night sky. Today I erased some of the original lines before painting to emphasize the rhythm of the big shapes of the sky, sea, and hills.
This is a pastel, gouache and marker sketch on black paper.
We were making our way up Highway 1 in Northern California and stopped to take in the view and a few quick sketches.
The Internet is spotty in this area so I could not post this yesterday.
This is a gouache and pastel sketch on black paper.
We drove north on I-5 from San Diego and as we left the LA area behind I began to sketch. Live sketching in the car while the scenery flies past is invigorating, especially as you descend along the Grapevine. You have to work rapidly, accept input from the bumps on the road and make adjustments to the composition as you go along.
All three of these sketches are pastel and gouache on black paper.
People in a Coffee Shop
Although I have been very interested in drawing crowds lately, this is not a real sketch of a crowd. Rather it is a few seated figures at a coffee shop along with a series of people putting in their orders for coffee.
After I took a picture of my sketch I used the Snapseed app to darken and lighten parts of it in order to suggest movement from the left to the right hand side.
This is a pastel sketch on black Bristol paper.
Luke was such a good dog. He loved keeping us company, was always ready to help with the dishes, valiantly defended the house from the mailman, and was a terrific model for my sketches to boot. Funny how much you can love a dog.
Deliberate Sketching 