"Lud-in-the-Mist"

 

I'm just finishing Hope Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist, and I'm entirely enchanted by it! It's full of wisdom and humor. And I wonder how I got to be in my 50s without ever having heard of it, much less read it.

This is another pen-and-ink sketch, about 4 x 8".  

Willard and Sue • 1928


I recently inherited a boxful of old family photos, most of which I have never seen. This pen-and-ink sketch is based on a shot of my dad with his cousin on Christmas in Lansing, MI, in 1928. I cannot get over my dad's outfit, especially the boots (who needs that many eyelets?) and the hat!


Quaker Polly Felts


Polly Felts was my 4x great-grandaunt. In 1804, she and her husband Shadrack moved from their tobacco plantation in Virginia to Ohio. They, like many Quakers in their part of the tidewater, freed their slaves and could no longer maintain their agricultural endeavors without them; the result was a Quaker exodus into Stark, Columbiana and Mahoning Counties, Ohio.

I did this little sketch (5 x 8") using a #2 Ticonderoga pencil.

Fluid Enough?

I ran into Blick this weekend to pick up a brush pen. Once again, I was sucked down the watercolor isle (against my will — I don't know how this keeps happening)! This time I found a product I hadn't seen before: a Fluid 6 x 6 watercolor pad. It's fixed on two of its four sides, so not quite a block, though it works pretty much like one.


At just four bucks (it was on sale, and I get a discount), I had to give this a try.

And it worked pretty well! For four dollars, how could you go wrong? 

I tend to brutalize my watercolor paper because of the amount of glazing I do; the layering process breaks down the paper surface really quickly. I keep trying various papers, and I always return to Arches. But this Fluid paper is really nice. While the paper did start breaking down after about the fourth layer of wash, it held up pretty well.

When I was removing the tape from the edges of the paper, the adhesive tore up the surface of the paper. This would never happen with Arches. 

So while I will continue using this Fluid brand for easy, quick, no-risk pieces, I will return to Arches as my default paper.

Here's the piece I did:





Early Bo Peep


A few years ago I was doing a school talk in my hometown of Fremont, when a familiar face appeared in the back of the school library — Mrs. Tinkowitz's eyes still sparkled the way they did when I was a kid. She waved to me like any of the second graders she was seated behind.

After my talk, she came up to me and gave me this drawing of Little Bo Peep.

"You drew this at your kitchen table with a ball-point pen while I was having coffee with your mom," she recalled. I must have been five years old at the time. "You gave it to me, and I've kept it all these years. I thought you would like to have it."

I was tickled (and still am)! The instant I saw this, I remembered drawing it! Rather than giving Bo Peep a shepherdess's staff, I thought it would be more fun to give her a hobby horse. It's not well drawn, but -- hey -- I was only five!

This is the earliest of my drawings I have.

Thanks, Mrs. Tinkowitz, for hanging onto this for so many years!

Savannah Hammock


I went out hiking and sketching along the Savannah River. The bare trees make for wonderful patterns against the bright winter sky. The hammocks in the marshes are particularly interesting, the way their unexpected symmetry breaks the vast expanse of the spartina and cattails. I was lucky to glimpse a bobcat hunting at the edge of the marsh.

Fernandina Beach, FL



We just returned from a weekend on Amelia Island. The sunset over the docks at Fernandina Beach was super. I especially enjoyed the factory in the background.

Buh Tukrey Buzzud an de Rain


Buh Tukrey Buzzud, him yent hab no sense no how.

You watch um. Wen de rain duh po down, eh set on de fench an eh squinch up isself. Eh draw in he neck, an eh try fur hide he head, an he look dat pittyful you rale sorry for um. Eh duh half cry, an eh say to isself, “Nummine, wen dis rain ober me guine buil house right off. Me yent guine leh dis rain lick me dis way no mo.”

Wen de rain done gone, an de win blow, an de sun shine, wuh Buh Tukrey Buzzud do? Eh set on de top er de dead pine tree way de sun kin wam um, an eh tretch out eh wing, an eh tun roun an roun so de win kin dry eh fedder, an eh laugh to isself, an eh say, “Dis rain done ober. Eh yent guine rain no mo. No use fur me fuh buil house now.”           

Caless man dis like Buh Tukrey Buzzud.



(Joel Chandler Harris transliterated dozens of Gullah tales from the Georgia coast in the late 1800s, among them this witty fable involving — what else? — vultures. If you have a hard time reading the Gullah text, this might help:
Bro' Turkey Buzzard, he has no sense, nohow!
You watch him. When the rain pours down, he sits on the fence and squishes himself up. He draws in his neck, and he tries to hide his head, and he looks so pitiful you're really sorry for him. He nearly cries, and he says to himself, "Never mind — when this rain is over I'm gonna build a house right away. I'm not gonna let this rain lick me like this any more."
When the rain is gone and the wind blows and the sun shines, what's Bro' Turkey Buzzard do? He sits on the top of the dead pine tree where the sun can warm him, and he stretches out his wings, and he turns 'round and 'round so the wind can dry his feathers, and he laughs and says to himself, "This rain is over. It's not gonna rain any more. No use in me building a house now."
'Tis a careless man like Bro' Turkey Buzzard.)



Playing with Vultures

My sister sent me a sketchbook for Christmas she picked up on a recent trip to China. It's a wonderful little book -- just the right size to carry in my computer bag -- and it's beautiful the way it's decorated and bound. Its cover will challenge me to fill it with jewels as lovely as the cover itself.


When I moved to coastal Georgia, I was amazed at the number of black vultures here. They have such great silhouettes! I'm fascinated with them. Naturally, this is the first thing I put in my new sketchbook:


When sketching though, I couldn't help but think that the shape of the vulture resembles a hunch-backed woman with a huge bustled skirt:

I began wondering what she might look like if she were fleshed out a bit more, so played around a bit with my watercolors:


One of the tricks for me when illustrating is making sure my work stays fresh, and I think my watercolor is a little overworked -- it lacks the spontaneous quality of the sketch that I like so much. I'll have to revisit this, and will keep posting.

It's great getting such wonderful Christmas presents. You never know where they'll take you, or who they'll introduce you to!

Curiosity


On November 26 I was fortunate enough to be at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch of the Atlas V rocket. Aboard was the Curiosity Rover, and it's now on its way to Mars, arriving there in August 2012.

The experience of watching the launch was great. Mobs of people crowded the shoreline in Titusville. The rocket launched exactly on schedule, and was up and out of sight within seconds! It happened so fast! The really phenomenal thing is that the launch itself was silent; but after the rocket had disappeared into the clouds, the sound waves finally reached us and we were blasted by the powerful thrusters!

This sketch was obviously done very quickly, and largely after the fact. (I'm fast, but I'm not THAT fast! Okay. I'm not fast at all. In fact, I usually paint very slowly.)

And finally, happy 241st birthday, Beethoven! And happy birthday to you, too, Reyn!

Ann Arbor in May

I spent the weekend in Ann Arbor celebrating my nephew's marriage to an incredible Turkish woman. Heading north from Savannah,  I was able to experience a second springtime. The apples and lilacs were blooming; bleeding heart sprouted everywhere; Solomon's seal lined walkways. I loved the textures of the sugar maples against the clapboard houses, the rain-soaked tree trunks against the sunny patches of sweet woodruff. It was an incredible weekend, all the way around!

The Beach at Tybee




I'm embarrassed that it's been so long since I last posted. Life has a way of getting between me and the things I'd rather be doing.

Nonetheless, we stole away to the beach yesterday where I was able to sketch for a couple of hours.

I love scratchboard, and have wondered about using it as a sketching surface. (Have you ever seen the scratchboard images Eyvind Earle created for his autobiography, Horizon Bound on a Bicycle? Those little sketches are what got me thinking about using this unlikely medium as a sketching surface. Earle's work is so much more elegant than my chunky attempt, however.) So inspired, I made a book with commercially produced scratchboard sheets, and headed out.

The book I made is small (out of necessity — if it were any larger, I'd never get any sketches finished) — the image area is 6 x 5 inches; I used screw posts to bind it (which is what I do with all of the sketchbooks I make).

When I work in scratchboard, I normally use Ampersand's smooth clayboard panels, and ink them myself. The quality of these boards has spoiled me, and my standard for materials has become high. The unfortunate result of this is that I find the commercially produced sheets stubborn to work with — the ink chips away in chunks when I want to smoothly slice away a fluid line. But it works for the beach, and I enjoyed working this way despite the challenges of inferior materials.

Here are a couple of shot of the scratchboard sketchbook I made.









Sean O'Halloran: More Color Details

Part of my delay in regularly posting this process work is that I have no time to paint! My posts are coming along as fast as my painting! Here are more details from the couple of hours I carved out yesterday to paint.
 
Close-up of Sean O'Halloran

Close-up of Sean O'Halloran (again)

Faeries in front of the cross

Close-up of O'Halloran's wife (but does she have a name?)

O'Halloran reaching for his wife

Sean O'Halloran: Color Details

(I should start this post, faithful followers, by saying that I apologize for taking so long to upload a follow-up to my previous post. It's been the start of yet another busy quarter at school, and I find that my blog has once again fallen by the wayside. Thanks for hanging in there, all! Sorry, Andrew, that your watercolor surface has cracked, and dried, and turned to dust, and blown away while you've been patiently awaiting this follow-up.) 
Here are a few details from my previous process. If you recall, I used primarily a medium to light wash of Payne's grey throughout the piece, warming the foreground with the addition of burn sienna. I added more saturated washes to areas where I needed deeper values. As these washes began to dry, the pigment migrated across the surface of the paper, and any irregularities of pigment distribution resolved themselves; the result was very even gradations of value and color. But before the surface was entirely dry, when the surface of the paper was barely glistening, I dropped in areas of clear water to create blossoms, which give the faeries and the enchanted characters a luminous quality.

This is a detail of one of the faeries in the foreground, which is indicated by the hint of burnt sienna bleeding in from the lower edge of the shot; the blossom was achieved by simply applying clear water to a nearly dry surface already covered with a medium wash. The relative differences in viscosities allow the clear water to push the pigment aside, resulting in a radial build-up of Payne's grey as the clear water moves away from the point at which it was applied to the paper.

Here you can see a similar treatment of the face of Sean O'Halloran.
 
 
 This is a detail of O'Halloran's enchanted wife,
who was  abducted by faeries, as Sean tries to rescue her.

This is a long shot of nearly the entire image.

 Here you can see some of the detail I've added to the faeries,
who, according to the text, are rather ferocious. (I can't help but think about Barrie's Tinker Bell versus Disney's; Barrie's is so much more loveable, precisely because she is so spiteful [and human]!)


Sean O'Halloran: Initial Wash

Once I have completed the drawing, I begin laying in color. Initially I wet the entire surface of my paper, then apply color using broad swaths of Prussian blue and Payne's gray. While I want this wash to be relatively dark, I am careful not to get particular details too dark. I carefully manipulate the fluid quality of the watercolor, creating blossoms and bleeds very deliberately at this early stage of the painting.




Sean O'Halloran: One Mark at a Time

After blacking the back of my enlarged, digital drawing with a piece of 6B graphite, I tape the enlarged image to my stretched sheet of Arches, making sure that the piece is appropriately positioned and that there is plenty of white space around the image area.

I use a colored pencil (green, in this case) to draw over the enlarged image, pressing hard enough to transfer the soft graphite from the back of the sheet to the front of the watercolor paper, but not pressing so hard as to emboss the surface of the paper. I use colored pencil so I can see what I have retraced versus what still remains. (Using a normal graphite pencil would certainly do the same job, but it's impossible to see what's been transferred.)


I've taped together a four-piece digital output of my revised sketch,
blackened its reverse side with 6B graphite, and taped
the resulting "transfer sheet" to my stretched watercolor paper. 

This image demonstrates how I revise my sketches using Photoshop.
I build the sketch in layers: Sean O'Halloran on one layer,
his wife and horse on another, fairies on a third. This way
I can manipulate the individual characters independently
of one another. You saw in a previous post how I enlarged
Sean O'Halloran in relation to his surroundings.
The resulting transfer is typically very light, as you can see—or almost see—here.
The transferred graphite line in barely perceptible
on the watercolor paper; you can just make out the cross
on the left, and the horse head in the upper center of the image.
Depending on the look I have in mind for the finished artwork, I might begin painting immediately after transferring the drawing, or I might work up the drawing with more detail than in the original. In this case, I used an HB pencil to complete details not present in my original sketches. (Working with watercolor, it's a good idea for me to have a pretty complete drawing in place before I begin painting.)

 I redraw the transferred image using an HB pencil, adding detail
not present in the original sketch.
 Here you can see Sean O'Halloran fumbling for his wife,
whom he is not able to see.
This is a detail from above.
Here is the nearly complete pencil rendering
on my stretched watercolor paper.


Sean O'Halloran: Getting Started

The first step for me when beginning a new painting is to stretch my paper. I work pretty exclusively on 140# Arches cold press. I'm a process person, which translates into my enjoying the process of stretching paper. (When I teach, a vast majority of my students groan when I tell them to stretch their paper; they prefer buying 400# stock to avoid having to stretch it. Me? I get a lot of satisfaction from it.)

I first start by cutting down a 22 x 30" sheet to 22 x 15".  I make sure to mark the backs of the cut-down sheets, so I know which side is front and which is back. The side from which you can read the watermark is the front. With the exception of Hahn papers, every watermark has verbiage of some sort, which allows you to know which side is the front; Hahn has an image of a rooster with no verbiage, so when I work with their papers, I have to log onto their website to see which direction the rooster needs to face in order to determine which side is the front. But I digress.

I then fill the bathtub with six inches of tepid water. (I make sure that the tub's free of any sort of soap residue, since soap will adversely affect how my washes will lay on the surface. [I also need to make sure there aren't any stray pet hairs in the tub.])

I place the sheet into the water, right-side-up, and carefully submerge it, making certain all of the air bubbles are removed from the underside of the sheet, and that the piece has been completely submerged. (Trapped air pockets will cause irregularities in the sizing that remains in the paper, and this, too, will adversely affect the way my washes lay on the surface.) I let the paper float in the water for fifteen to twenty minutes.

While the paper's soaking up the water and expanding, I collect a piece of 24 x 36" particle board and a staple gun, and return to the tub.

I lay the particle board on the counter, and carefully remove the limp sheet from the tub, picking it up by one corner, removing it from the water on a diagonal, allowing the water to run off easily, all the while supporting it from another corner, preventing the wet, fragile sheet from folding over on itself. (Good watercolor sheets with high rag content can take a lot of tear, but I'm still very careful not to bend or mar the paper, especially while it's this wet.)

I lay the wet sheet on the particle board, grab my staple gun, and attack! I shoot staples into the sheet, all the way around, every 1-1/2 to 2", about 3/8" from the paper's edge.

The cat and dog both hate the racket of the staple gun, and high-tail it out of the house.

When I've finished stapling, I place the board on a flat surface and let it dry. Any wrinkles in the wet paper will flatten out as the surface dries and shrinks. When we lived in New Mexico, the drying process took about ten seconds; here in Savannah, it takes a little longer.


When the paper is dry, I have a beautifully flat sheet of Arches, ready for the deluge of washes I'm about to apply.

In the photo, situated above the stretched sheet are four digital printouts of my revised sketch. I enlarged the image using Photoshop, and output it to letter-sized paper, which I subsequently tape together into a single image. After the taping is complete, I use a stick of 6B graphite to blacken the back of the pieced-together sketch. Then I'm ready to transfer the drawing to the watercolor paper.