Thursday, March 08, 2007

Watercolor crayons

Whatever it is that I’m supposed to be doing, clearly, I am not. [sigh] You know, if I were really procrastinating, I’d be doing something that I normally don’t do, like … dust! Right now, I’m … just finishing up my first cuppa coffee for the day and, um, dawdling.

I treated myself to some time outside to sketch and paint yesterday. It seems like forever since I drew outside, and could tell that that’s what my psyche really needed. I opened my travel watercolor kit and found a paper napkin that I’d used the last time I painted outside.

From Yosemite.

In November.

Yes, it’s been far too long since I’ve just dabbled with some color. So you can imagine that it felt really good to get out and paint.





Descanso Tea House (the roof, as seen from below the bridge)
Prismacolor sketch with Caran d’Ache watersoluble crayons

Artsy note:
I also took along some water-soluble crayons, a set of 30 made by Caran d’Ache, Neocolor 2. I’ve had the set for a while and love them. Worked dry, they are just so yummy in their application of color, such rich pigment. Worked and blended with water, the color intensifies so nicely. I scribble blocks of color onto another sheet of paper that I use as a palette, or pick up pigment directly from the crayons with my brush. This seems to be a nice work-around for me, to work outside - - I’m too messy and disorganized to have gotten around to schlepping my tubes of watercolor with me, and I’m not quite crazy about the travel kit watercolor pans… I have trouble getting very intense color with them. The only thing about the crayons is I might have to worry about leaving them in the car on those long, hot summer days here in Southern California.

I’m happy with how these turned out.

I’ll be trying to get my class started tonight with graphic markers, and grabbed some unconventional (in the world of product design, yes) sample objects for them to work from. I’ll have them set up little groupings to draw, looking at scale and proportion, perspective, look at the shadows, shade and highlights. My goal is to have them complete nice, accurate line drawings that they’ll use as underlays for monochromatic pencil renderings and also markers. They’ve been wanting to work with markers. I’m not sure they’ve gotten the sense of how wonderful it feels to just draw, to lay down pigment onto a sheet of paper with just a colored pencil, to work with the expressive quality of their lines. I don’t think they’ve gotten that, but at this point I’d be happy if we can accomplish clean, accurate line drawings. And then move onward!
I fully intend to sketch with them tonight, these little compositions, so in theory, I’ll have a few of my own sketches to noodle with when I get home, late late tonight. It’ll be fun to see.

Trust me.

Stay tuned.

2 comments:

Jane LaFazio said...

These are just lovely. So glad you got outside to draw and sketch. I too love the watersoluable crayons. Love how you used just a light touch with them.

Wendee said...

Thanks Jane. When I get it to work (you don't get to see the bad ones), I love the lightness of working w/ watercolors...