eller

No worries, this nice black-and-red locomotive is not in use anymore (I mean, you never know in Northern Germany, but... this is kind of old-fashioned even by local standards XD), it just... stands there as some kind of historical monument thingy. Also, nope, I can't draw technology, especially not when I have to be fast (there was nowhere to sit where I was sketching, and bright sunlight I was trying to avoid; indeed, I only did the black brush pen drawing there but had to do most of the shading and highlights later, at home) and I'm not doing a perspective sketch first. Flowers are easier - when you get a curve or the proportions slightly wrong, that's just nature, but you can't cheat like that with tech! XD I simplified quite a bit, too - only drew the largest shapes but left the smaller stuff out, though I don't doubt it's crucial for actually operating this machine. Hey, this is not supposed to be a technical blueprint... XD But, yeah, still having fun with that lovely chess sketchbook!

05-Lokomotive-kl

Materials:
- suuuper awesome sketchbook; a red page again - I'm really enjoying this bright red paper!
- Markers: Faber Castell Pitt big brush in Black and Cold Grey III (they don't sell the latter anymore, which is tragic); Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen brush in White (which SUCKS; the other brush pens from this line are all awesome but the white one is super transparent and does not cover anything - I deliberately only used it for shading here, which is why I needed two different white pens)
- Acrylic pen: Flysea Acrylic Painter Extra Fine in white (which you already know I love; despite being super-cheap it's my favorite white acrylic pen)

A very fast drawing today. I was busy playing a game of chess (online) and scribbled while thinking. :)

04-Springer-kl

Materials:
- suuuper awesome sketchbook; a light brown page this time
- Fineliner: Staedtler pigment liner, black, 0.4
- Markers: Faber Castell Pitt artist pen brush in Raw umber and Warm Grey III
- Acrylic pen: Flysea Acrylic Painter Extra Fine in white

Have a watermelon! It's summer (where I live, anyway), after all! XD

Skizze-03-kl

Completely with acrylic pens this time, partially diluted with water and paintbrush. The suuuper wide black acrylic pen was a gift from Emily Adams who sent me a very generous art supply care package (with some awesome things I still need to post!) a while ago. I like pens with wide tips, but drawing with this one (look at the picture...) turned out to be kind of extreme. XD Nothing wrong with it, though - it's a very nice pen, I just have to get used to it.

From a technical standpoint, the drawing was a failure: initially, I wanted to make this without any red paint, just the paper background color with white and black (and, obviously, green for the green parts), but it simply did not look right, so I had to use a red and a pink pen on the melon slice. Oh, and I learned the hard way that the paper doesn't like water - it buckled quite a bit. (So, no watercolor sketches in this book, I'm afraid...) I kind of like the end result, though: it's every bit as cliché-summery as intended.

Skizze-03-Material-kl

Materials:
- suuuper awesome sketchbook; a red page again
- Acrylic pens: Marabu Art Painter in black, Uni Posca PC-5M in white, Amsterdam Acrylic Markers in Yellowish Green, Permanent Green Light, Pyrrole Red and Permanent Red Violet Light

Another fast sketch in the new chess sketchbook from antaresnox! This morning, I was walking when I saw this very large flower growing from a crack in the asphalt! (I kind of regret not getting that crack into the picture, but the plant was too large to draw the whole thing while getting any level of detail.) Different pens this time: the very professional (LOL) art technique is called "grab some pens from the bottom of your bag". I don't use markers very often but I really enjoy these ones: they each have two sides with shades of the same color, one dark and one light, which makes shading and blending easy.

In case you were wondering: yes, of course I occasionally sketch on white paper, too! You know I'm mainly whining about the constant lack of sketchbooks with toned paper that is not brown or grey, but that's not because I dislike white paper. It's just that I can walk into any art supply store (and even most stationery shops) and get a very nice sketchbook with white paper (not as nice as a handmade one, obviously, but at least one I can use); no whining needed. I really like having a book with different paper colors for different occasions!

This time, I actually managed to destroy the paper: it takes acrylic pens fine, it takes the markers themselves fine as well, but the spots where I used the white Posca to draw highlights over the marker-colored areas kind of dissolved. Interesting! XD (No matter how nice the paper, there's always some way to damage it, and I usually find it very quickly. LOL)

02-Alcea-kl

Materials:
- suuuper awesome sketchbook; a white page this time
- Copic Multiliner, black, 1.0
- Markers: Kuretake ZIG Brushables in spring green and hyacinth
- Acrylic pen: Uni Posca PC-5M in white

The first page in the new chess sketchbook bound by antaresnox! :D I saw these lovely dark red lilies by the side of the road and simply had to draw them. How very fortunate that the sketchbook contains some bright red drawing paper that's thick enough to work with acrylic markers, too! :D

01-Lilie-kl

Materials:
- the PHENOMENAL sketchbook I showed you all earlier; bright red page
- Copic Multiliner, black, 1.0
- Acrylic pens: Liquitex acrylic markers in Hooker's Green Hue Permanent and Cadmium Red Deep Hue, Amsterdam Acrylic Marker in Yellowish Green, Uni Posca PC-5M in white

Just something quick I drew for someone on Postcrossing - the person likes hippos, but unfortunately, I didn't have a hippo card in my collection, so I made one. I had to use lots of references for the animal because I simply don't see them very often. (Fortunately. I don't particularly want to encounter one...)

I'm mainly posting this because I (finally) took the opportunity to use one of the Schmincke supergranulating watercolors I was posting about a few days ago. All that grainy dark blue that brings out the paper texture is done with layers of Tundra Blue (PB29, PBr7) over the other colors. I think it's especially noticeable when you compare the earthy shore (no supergranulating layer, just ochre - ironically, my favorite ochre is a very cheap one but I love the tone - and some purplish PR102) to its mirror image in the water (same paints, but with a layer of Tundra Blue over it).

hippo-postcard-kl

Materials I used:
JAXON watercolor postcard paper (approx. A6 size)
Copic Multiliner in 0.4 and BM (brush)
Watercolors: BLOCKX Blockx Red (PR254), Michael Harding Yellow Lake (PY180), Phoenix Yellow Ochre (PY42), Nila Colori Armenian Violet Ochre (PR102), Mijello Bamboo Green (PG36), Daniel Smith Jadeite Genuine, Daler Rowney Manganese Blue Hue, Schmincke Horadam Tundra Blue (PB29, PBr7), Rembrandt Spinel Grey (PBk26)
FlySea Acrylic pen, white, fine

Fern, and fun with backlighting. So much fun!

Licht-im-Farn-kl

Materials I used:
Stillman&Birn Zeta Series sketchbook (270 g/m²)
Watercolors: Turner Permanent Lemon (PY109), Mijello Bamboo Green (PG36), Daniel Smith Jadeite Genuine, Schmincke Horadam YInMn-Blue
White gel pens (Pentel and Sakura)

How aggressive can botanical illustration get? YES! (It's all in the composition: triangles for the win.) Plus, of course, the most important design element are the thorns. :)

Materials I used:
Stillman&Birn Zeta Series sketchbook (270 g/m²)
Watercolors: Michael Harding Yellow Lake (PY180), Winsor&Newton Transparent Orange (DPP), Blockx Blockx Red (PR254), ROSA Gallery Magenta Rose PR(122), MaimeriBlu Faience Blue (PB60), Mijello Bamboo Green (PG36), White Nights Burnt Umber (PBr7), Rembrandt Spinel Grey (PBk26)
White gel pen (Pentel)

I was not actually trying to produce an ATC in primary colors only - it just happened, and I only noticed when I was going to start coloring the branches (I do dark colors last so they don't smudge and ruin the whole painting) and said to myself, no, I'm not going to add another pigment in the last minute... Instead, I followed the Second Law of Watercolors: anything you mix will sooner or later turn into muddy brown. This time, the principle actually proved useful.

Materials I used:
Stillman&Birn Zeta Series sketchbook (270 g/m²)
Watercolors: Turner Permanent Lemon (PY109), ROSA Gallery Magenta Rose (PR122), ShinHan PWC Cerulean Blue (PB35)
White gel pen (Pentel)

A few days ago, I got this set of ten lovely handmade watercolor dots (second picture in that post) from Nil - of course, I immediately had to try them out! So, yesterday, I used a watercolor sketchbook (near A5 size) that was a gift from Glitzermond (and, for that matter, fineliners I got from Risto) for the very pragmatic reason that it has a plastic folder in the back where I can safely store the dot card with the paints.

So, uh, this is a place in Hamburg, near Beim Schlump. Not one of the important sights, merely one of the old pretty houses - some of those are left. What else was I going to do with an earth tone palette but paint some yellow and red clinker, right? XDD

2024-04-Beim-Schlump-kl

Okay, okay, I never draw architecture, and there's a reason for that. F*ck perspective, f*ck straight lines... XD But, I mean, it was fun. It's very different from what I usually do, and I typically don't use colors that are not psychedelic levels of bright, either. It was an interesting experience (and everything shimmers, because clearly, the world needs glittering earth tones.) The paints are actually very good, it's just that I'm not used to these pigments.

...aka the rodent repellent, needed in every garden. XD (It stinks of fox, which sucks, but sucks even more for rabbits and mice.)

Materials I used:
Stillman&Birn Zeta Series sketchbook (270 g/m²)
Watercolors: Michael Harding Yellow Lake (PY180), Winsor&Newton Transparent Orange (DPP), ROSA Gallery Magenta Rose (PR122), Schmincke Horadam YInMn-Blue, Mijello Bamboo Green (PG36)
White gel pen (Pentel)

These things look almost too kitschy to be real. I love them. XD

Materials I used:
Stillman&Birn Zeta Series sketchbook (270 g/m²)
Watercolors: Turner Permanent Lemon (PY109), ROSA Gallery Magenta Rose (PR122), Daniel Smith Jadeite Genuine, Renesans Orange Ochre PY42
White gel pen (Pentel)

The long weekend over Easter was artistically active. :) This one is completely with pigments that belong to my 'standard' set - nothing out of the ordinary. Weird tulips found, of course, in the Rhododendronpark Bremen.

Materials I used:
Stillman&Birn Zeta Series sketchbook (270 g/m²)
Watercolors: Mijello Bamboo Green (PG36), Blockx Blockx Red (PR254), MaimeriBlu Faience Blue (PB60)
White gel pen (Pentel)

...because I needed to do something with that PV15 (a color I don't use very often), and not many flowers come in this muted pink color. In German, this plant is called 'Nieswurz' (sneeze root) because powder made from the subterranen parts of the plant makes people sneeze. With words like this, I always wonder who the f*ck tried that for the first time. It's all for the science?!?

Materials I used:
Stillman&Birn Zeta Series sketchbook (270 g/m²)
Watercolors: Turner Permanent Lemon (PY109), Mijello Bamboo Green (PG36), QoR Ultramarine Pink (PV15), ShinHan PWC Cerulean Blue (PB35), Rembrandt Spinel Grey (PBk26)
White gel pen (Pentel)

North Germany's weirdest invasive species. Bremen has the world's largest rhododendron collection, which is a quite fascinating scientific project (it's not just a very pretty garden - though it is - but also a gene bank and everything, so, the 3000 species of rhododendron are not purely there for decorative reasons) but does horrible things to the local ecosystem. When I was a kid, people were like, "oh, we'll plant rhododendron because the bugs won't eat it". This used to be correct, except these days, we don't just get all the invasive bugs that come with what's essentially a monoculture of invasive bushes, but also, some local bug species have evolved to eat rhododendron. I've seen a maybug eat a rhododendron leaf, and you have no idea how weird that is! (Evolution in progress, I suppose.) Anyway, whatever I may think about the ecological impact of this weird gardening project, the view in spring is spectacular. They also have other plants (including some really fascinating ones) and I enjoy going there with my sketchbook and colors! So, uh, have some rhododendron...

...I have to admit I have no idea which of the 3000 species it is. Theoretically, all their plants are properly labeled, so, the bush should have had a tag somewhere with its name, except of course it was not visible because all those leaves get in the way. Some Rhododendron it is. ;)

Materials I used:
Stillman&Birn Zeta Series sketchbook (270 g/m²)
Watercolors: Turner Permanent Lemon (PY109), ROSA Gallery Magenta Rose (PR122), Mijello Bamboo Green (PG36), Daniel Smith Jadeite Genuine, Holbein Shadow Green (PBk31)
White gel pen (Pentel)

I mean, these things are everywhere, too. Can't avoid them. XD

Osterglocke-zu-Ostern-kl

Materials I used:
Stillman&Birn Zeta Series sketchbook (270 g/m²)
Watercolors: Turner Permanent Lemon (PY109), Michael Harding Yellow Lake (PY180), Mijello Bamboo Green (PG36), Nila Colori Armenian Violet Ochre (PR102)
White gel pen (Pentel)

I almost never use blue... Except today I did. This ATC shows a typical spring flower that's everywhere these days: Scilla, sometimes in German also called 'Blaustern' (blue star). It also happens to be one of my mother's favorite flowers. :) I had a lot of fun with the composition.

01-Blaustern-kl

Materials I used:
Stillman&Birn Zeta Series sketchbook (270 g/m²)
Watercolors: Schmincke Horadam YInMn-Blau, LUKAS Türkis (PB16), White Nights Burnt Umber (PBr7), Phoenix Yellow Ochre (PY42), Turner Permanent Lemon (PY109), ROSA Gallery Magenta Rose (PR122)
White gel pen (Pentel)

A page in a black sketchbook that was a gift from CaitlynMurphy. In case you're wondering why I work with art supplies I got from other people so often: I'm such a ridiculous level of 'social learner' I'm not just more motivated but literally learn more art when the stuff I'm using has some connection to another human being. So, sending stuff back and forth it is. XD (I'm not actually gaining anything financially because I also send stuff to others. I'm learning to draw better this way, though. Buying the same sketchbook for myself would be useless.)

In this case, the white Posca blotched. Badly. I used the large ink blots to create large sunlit areas so it looks kinda-sorta intentional. (I hope.) XDD

...aaaand the third ATC made with the help of the craft materials sent to me by Up-Quark.

I still had a large clock sticker and two metallic pens I had not used yet at all, soooo, I had to use them on this card! The materials used are:

Newly used materials:

- Clock sticker (cut up; scale of the balance and paper under the jewelry box at the bottom right)

- Dark gold gel pen (for metallic shine on the scale)

- Dark pink metallic marker (ribbons on the lady's outfit; partially painted with the brush)

- Wire (for the piece of jewelry the lady is holding)

- green tracing paper (three gemstones: in the lady's hand, at the bottom next to the jewelry box, and at the back in the display)

- dark green felt (cushion of the jewelry box)

(Plus a Faber Castell PITT brush in warm grey III and some acrylic pens abused as acrylic colors with a a paintbrush.)

By the way, I'm sure the jeweler doesn't just make jewelry: he also has tools for much rougher work out, and the scales seem a bit big for small stones... All this sparkly stuff has to be a front. The question is what the lady REALLY wants in the store! Presumably, it's not purely for, uh, fashionable purposes... XD

This fairy is again made with the help of the craft materials sent to me by Up-Quark.

Stuff I used:

- Flower nail stickers

- Felt (as the fairy's dress)

- Pressed clover

- Hexagonal nail glitter

- Wire (for the fairy's belt and jewelry)

- Green tracing paper (for fairy jewelry and butterflies)

I just couldn't resist the pressed clover and had to make a meadow scene! The nail sticker flowers were also a good fit - of course I added a lot of flowers in the same style. The coloring was mainly done with acrylic paints and acrylic pens.

The card is decidedly 3D: the fairy is cut out and glued to the background, as are the small transparent paper butterflies and the slightly larger flower on the right. And the dress is naturally a bit thicker anyway. So the wire decoration is almost no longer noticeable... XD I sealed the whole thing with acrylic spray varnish to protect it, otherwise the delicate pressed plant material wouldn't stand a chance.

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Entries tagged with art

Locomotive

knight scribble

Watermelon

Alcea

Lily in the new chess sketchbook :)

hippo postcard

Fern :)

Aggro Chaenomeles

Magnolia in Primary Colors

Hamburg sketch

Fritillaria imperialis

Camellia japonica

Greig's Tulips

Hellebore

Rhododendron

Daffodil... again

Scilla

Daffodil Accident

The Jeweler... or not?!?

very sparkly fairy