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Showing posts with the label painting

More Art Supplies

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O ver the past couple of weeks, I purchased some better art supplies.  The brushes I had weren't all that great, the paper was kind of lousy when using it for painting with watercolors, and I quickly realized that I could use a few different sizes of drawing boards. I had been doing my sketching and painting on a table which wasn't ideal.  Sometimes I kept the paper loose so I could turn it and angle it but then it seemed to buckle and warp more.  Other times I taped the paper down to the table which helped with the buckling and warping but I lost some control in positioning the paper just right.  There are advantages and disadvantages to each method but I decided to purchase a couple of pieces of acrylic to use as drawing boards. This way I can still mount loose sheets of paper for sketching or painting while still allowing full control over positioning and angling the paper as needed. I purchased two 16" x 20" pieces of 1/4" thick acrylic to use as drawing boar

Ink and Watercolor Pencils

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I was sitting on the couch in the living room yesterday evening before starting on cooking dinner and picked up my notebook.  I write thoughts and ideas in this notebook everyday (I now have a whole library of notebooks tucked in all sorts of places around the house) and, quite often, add some sketches of some of my ideas or thoughts.  Yesterday, I was thinking about Christmas and the lake house. Every year of my life, in the few months preceding Christmas, my mind always drifts to spending Christmas in an Adirondack lodge-type of home or lake house setting.  I have not had the opportunity to do this just yet but I do plan to do this at least once before I have no Christmases left.   The closest I have come to living this annual dream of spending Christmas in an Adirondack-type lodge or lake house has been a few Christmases spent on various air bases.  Back in my earlier years of my Air Force career, the Airman's Club was typically the hub of social life on every base.  For variou

Another Watercolor Painting

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I 'm still trying to figure out how to paint with watercolors.  I'm making some progress but I am still needing more practice. Although I am learning and making some headway after the few paintings I did in the past week or two, I am slowly changing my painting supplies too which also causes a need for adjusting technique.  For instance, I purchased a different brand of warercolor paper, different brushes, and a few other supplies.  Each of these changes requires some practice to get used to the new characteristics of the new supplies.  I seem to be learning fairly quickly though. Here is my latest painting from yesterday... I need to start with having a specific plan for each of these paintings.  That is definitely a problem that is making things a bit difficult.  I'm sort of winging each painting with not much of a plan in mind.  Also, I really should be working on just one part of these paintings at a time.  Once I get a handle on each part, then I should attempt a compl

Watercolors

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I recently started getting back into sketching and that has been going well.  I've never really stopped sketching throughout my entire life so I wouldn't expect to have any problems with refining my sketching abilities again.  Painting, however, is something I haven't done much of in many decades.  Watercolor painting is actually something I've never been comfortable with even when I was an active artist in school as well as college.  In college, every art-related class I took was sketching, engineering drawing and architectural renderings in graphite only and then blueprinted.  Back then, we didn't have all large format color printers using today's printer technology.  We only had large format blueprinting available.  Consequently, it made no sense to render any original drawings/sketches in color. Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us for the long holiday weekend last weekend and they also did some sketching but I noticed that they were very reluctant to use t

Hell Week of Health

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A week ago, I had written about having screwed up my prescription refills. One of my medications... one which is a mast cell stabilizer and an H1 blocker...  and one which is not yet FDA-approved... had fallen through the cracks of my record-keeping and memory which means I forgot to order a refill before I had run out of this medication.  For most prescriptions, people can just run to the local pharmacy to pick up a last minute prescription. I actually do this with any acute problems I am having. I bite the bullet (taking a serious hit in cost) and I buy the prescription locally so that I can start on the medication immediately.  Unfortunately, most of my medications are absurdly expensive and going to our local retail pharmacy is not financially possible for me. For instance, one of my medications, by itself, costs upwards of $40,000 annually. If I bought this medication locally rather than through my insurance plan's mail order program there would be two problems... 1. The c

Art Project While Sick

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The title of this blog entry is almost meaningless since art projects are about the only thing I accomplish since developing Systemic Mastocytosis. Art has many forms and I do try to stay active in many... drawing, painting, photography, videography, music and even designing and building things like models and renovating our home.  In this case, the illness I am referring to is this miserable lingering cold (12 days at this point). I occasionally have periods of clear thinking that are driving me crazy because I am so bored (I need to stay productive and creative) but I'm still not well enough to tackle anything of significance. During these fleeting periods of clear thinking over the past few days, I've been trying to draw and paint. This particular art project is a sketch of the Empire State Building. I already created a matching piece  of the Chrysler Building   a few months ago and it is now hanging on a wall in our newly renovated bedroom. I plan to hang this new sk

Adding Some Color

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I've spent some time painting the doll townhouse the past few days. What I've been envisioning in my mind has been taking form in real life... and now, in color! I'm really liking this paint scheme and I think it favors the Georgetown Townhouse style I was envisioning.  The traditional yellow walls with a nice (but non-traditional) stucco texture... the clean lines of white trim... contrasting black window shutters... and a welcoming red front entry door... this is all coming together very nicely and is very reminiscent of the traditional Georgetown style. I'm actually getting excited as this homemade dollhouse comes together. The yellow exterior paint has been a major problem though... I think I now have about six or seven coats of yellow paint on this dollhouse due to some errors in choosing the correct shade of yellow. The first shade of yellow I chose was a bit dull. The second shade of yellow I chose was so bright that it had a bit of a fluorescent tint

More Practice with my Digital Pen and Tablet

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I've been trying to hone my skills with my digital pen and graphics tablet over the past couple of days. I have to say, this is not helping me get any rest though! Last night I started on what I thought would be a little test project. It is something I've always wanted to draw and paint... an old rural gas station... some dramatic lighting. By 3am, I knew I bit off more than I could chew for a "little test project". My intention was to just sketch out some ideas. The sketches developed quickly and then I was adding background and foreground (although, for me, the foreground could use something more)... and filling with color. Before long, I was having difficulty keeping my eyes open! The problem with a project like this is that I've learned that once I get my creativity flowing, I really need to allow that flow to continue for as long as possible. Coming back to an art project later rarely works well for me.  The next time I sit down and try to start that

Some Latest Artwork

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I've managed to get out of the house for a few short periods in the past few days... and that was really nice... today, however, I'm back indoors and I'm not so sure I'll be wandering outside today. I'm really worn out today... exhausted... and my spinal injuries are really bothering me. The pain started yesterday after overdoing my physical therapy the previous day. I knew I had overdone it while I was still doing my physical therapy! By nightfall, I was in considerable pain throughout my spine as well as having bone pain in my legs. Yesterday was a bit brutal so the only thing I accomplished was preparing and cooking baked ziti with garlic bread for the kids. Needless to say, sleeping is not going all that well. Last night, my sleeping problems due to spinal and bone pain were compounded by being cold all night long. Although the room probably was slightly chillier last night than usual (I removed the air conditioner from one of two windows in the room so we h