Three Tiny Landscape Sketches

Actually, it's nine in all, but the 'tiny' bit is spot on.  Each of the foursomes is done in a 3.5"x5" sketchbook, making each vignette about 1.5"x2.25".  As usual, you can click on them to magnify my mistakes.  LOL

This first set was done with my trusty Lamy Safari fountain pen filled with Levenger's Empyrean ink, then the washes were teased out with a waterbrush.  On the bottom right, I know the shadows don't fit the light source.  :)

This next set is similar.  The blue, green and red were all done with Lamy Safaris filled with Levenger's Empyrean (again), MontBlanc British Racing Green (discontinued, dammit), and Noodler's Red-Black.  The lower left was done with a Pentel brush pen with their standard black ink.  Once again, careful use of the waterbrush makes for value shading.

This last one is pure watercolor, and is about 1"x2" (I think).  No particular scene in mind, I just had a bit of sketchbook page that was mocking me for leaving it blank.

Storm Clouds

From a book on painting techniques.

Two for Technique

A coworker who sees many of my sketches and paintings remarked upon how, more often than not, I'll refer to creating my art as 'playing'.  It's true, my default is "playing with paint" or "playing with composition", etc, rather than the more serious sounding "creating art" or even "drawing" or "painting". 

I'm ok with that.  To me, this is pure play.  I'm certainly not going to make a living at it (although everything here is for sale, contact me for prices!  LOL).  I sketch and paint and write for fun, for escape, for my own satisfaction.  In other words, I play.

You should try it.  Too many people have forgotten how.

Ok, these two were strictly to pla... practice with techniques that I'm not completely familiar with.  The first, "Tree and Rocks" (catchy, eh?) is where I practiced creating rock surfaces by scraping wet paint with the edge of a plastic card (in my case, an old library card).  For the tree foilage, I used the ol' sponge dipped in paint trick that we all learned in school.  It's not great art, but it was great practice.

This next one is "Snow Shadows", which is also a perfect description.  My wife gave me lots of good suggestions on how to make this work better, but I was concentrating on lifting the light spots out of the painted snow, to reveal the tree casting the shadows.  The technique is rather time consuming and I definitely need more practice, but that's why I play.

This is similart to what I did in Dappled.

Artist Trading Cards - Round 2

Did two more ATC's a while back and exchanged them.  These are the ones I sent out, and if you'll recall the actual size is 2.5"x3.5".

First up, an attempt (rather poor one, in my opinion) of rolling farm fields.  Titled "Heartland".

In "Shimmer", I tried to capture the Aurora Borealis, aka Northern Lights.  I was lucky enough to see them for myself when I was stationed in North Dakota with the USAF.  They can be spectacular.