Laurelines

2010, The Plan!*

It's time to shake it up, baby.

I'm not challenged by my normal sketching ways. I want more fluent, stronger linework than I can get with my Faber-Castell Ecco Pigment pen---my primary drawing instrument for the last two years. I want to sketch faster, I want to capture movement.

AND I've become even MORE eager to get on with painting paintings, after another year of getting off track on this front. Of course, life this year has put the squeeze in often distressing ways on my studio time, but I can't continue to accept that as an excuse. If not me (to paint my paintings), who? If not now, when?

So, here's the plan, broken into three parts, sketching, painting, travel:

Sketching:

The lines  I want are less scritchy-scratchy than my Faber-Castell lines and more like these from 2006:

or like these from the recent Norway trip: or like this Memory Brush and wash sketch from 2008:This means using the Cretacolor oil pencils I told you about last time. It means using Memory brush pens, Pentel pocket brush pens, Pitt artist brush pens, dip pens.

 I want to sketch more urban scenes and include more architectural aspects of the world, these desires a result of my participation in Gabi Campanario's  brilliant blog Urban Sketchers. If it weren't for Gabi and my fellow USk correspondents, this last goal would NOT be on my life To Do list, but they are and it most emphatically is! 

I'm going to follow another one of my self-created apprenticeships, this time to some of the the tips, techniques, and  prompts provided by David Rankin in his book 'Fast Sketching Techniques.' I'll tell you more about this as I go along. It should be lots of fun and VERY useful.

I'm also going to try again to take one of Veronica Lawlor and Margaret Hurst's reportage illustration workshops. Here's what happened last time. Their quick, dynamic, exquisite sketches are an unending source of inspiration.

Painting:

I'm continuing with my watery theme into this third year. I've got a whole logjam of koi paintings, for example, that are about to burst the dam. I want more texture, more layers, more transparency playing against opacity, bigger sizes, more movement, more fun, more, more, MORE! I'm sorry to be so greedy, but there you are.

Travel:

 Opening disclaimer: these are the major trips I WANT to take this year. We shall see if I am able to, what with ongoing family matters that require my presence here, the rotten economy, and so on. One can (and this one does) dream.

Trip to Turkey in April! Casey, Ippy, and I hope to visit a lovely friend of mine who lives in Ankara. We'd all four travel around a bit, sketching all the way! 

Trip to France in late May: this will be a relatively short trip to Normandy and Paris, to see gardens and friends. Of course, I'll be sketching all the way here, too!

Trip... to coastal Norway again in late December!! My husband and I were both absolutely smitten and we would dearly love to spend a bit more time in that area.   

So, those are my three heart's desires for trips in 2010. These are my plans for my art life. Of course,  I will have less time each week to make art, due to the aforementioned family obligations, but I'm not going to let that get me down! 

Let us go onward into the new year!

May you accomplish everything your heart desires!

* This is the fifth yearly art plan I've published on Laurelines. 

Here is 2006, the Plan.

Here is 2007, the Plan.

Here is the plan for 2008.

Here is 2009, the Plan.

Art supplies I loved in 2009!

Before I tell you what my plans are for my art in 2010, I wanted to tell you about a few of my favorite 2009 art supply discoveries!

  Favorite new paintbrushes: the Loew-Cornell ultra round series 7020 These amazing brushes are synthetic and super affordable! At one online store, the size 14 brush costs $11, while the size 14 round kolinsky sable at the same site costs $100!  The best part is, I far prefer them to my expensive sable brushes! They hold a wicked point forever, they allow you to control and understand the amount of water you have on your brush (which is, guess what, the whole key to watercolor painting) and they have long enough but not- too- long handles, so you can take them with you on your various jaunts, like I do! I feel so clever to have discovered them ;D. YOU'VE probably been using them for years, of course. 

  Favorite new paints: Daniel Smith Lunar Blue and Lunar Black.  I'm still a loyal Schmincke girl, but for that added bit of texture and pizazz, I look to the concoctions of Daniel Smith. I'm not crazy about many of their mineral- pigmented paints (often too pale or too lumpy or too contrived for my tastes) but with Lunar Blue and Lunar Black, they've got themselves some winners! I started using Lunar Black on some illustrations for a local food guide to my area. I love color, so it was hard to restrict myself to black and white, but Lunar Black is such an exuberant, granulating black, that you think you're painting in vibrant color! It also layers beautifully with itself, so you can get some very velvety, black, black blacks!

 As for Lunar Blue, it's just sheer magic. It's a combination of pthalo blue and mars black, but the way Daniel Smith puts them together, the effect is much greater than the sum of these two parts. It's like painting with kaleidoscopic pigments: you put them down and they form into wonderfully crazed crystals! I often add sparkly texture by spraying water on the washes as they dry. And, for trying to quickly convey the winter land- and seascapes above the Arctic Circle, you can't do better than these blacks and blues!   

Favorite new pens: Memory brush pens I really started with these on my trip to Barcelona last year. They make you draw like a wizard! The point is more supple than that of my longtime fave, the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, more sensitive to pressure and speed. I just love them, even if they aren't waterproof---and maybe not lightfast, either, but what the heck. You've got to live life with gusto, and these pens have gusto! I used them again in Brittany for some of my watery sketches and also in Norway. You brush on some water to the drawn lines, and, presto, you've got yourself a cool gray wash!

 Favorite new pencils: Cretacolor oil pencils What a great discovery these are!!! They're charcoal pencils, fixed with oil, so they don't smudge (much) when you add watercolor washes and you can take them traveling without turning your entire self and every article of clothing you own dirty black. I found them in an art shop in Auray, France. There you can buy them separately. In the US, you have to buy a set of them, with white, sepia, and brown thrown in. More expensive that way, of course. Guess we'll all have to go to France and get them cheaper ;D. 

Here's a sketch using these: And, finally, here are some of the last Norway sketches, done very quickly, from a moving ship. I've used all of the above in these. See you Thursday----I'll be here with my plans and schemes for a (better, we hope) year!

Norway sketches, part two!

More scenes from that FABULOUS journey---the current me is envious of the past me who got to be there, looking, sketching in total wonderment. I have more sketches from Norway to share and many thoughts about my 2010 art plan, as well. I will eke out time in the next few days to do just that! Happy holidays, one and all!

Norway sketches, part one

Many of our fellow human beings adore the exuberantly green and steamy tropics. For yet others, the wide open African savannah is all that matters.  It would be churlish to deny the majesty of the Grand Canyon and I don't. But I had a week in coastal Norway and while it wasn't a lifetime, it was important to me.  The coast of Norway, along with Iceland, appeals to every idea I have of beauty and sublimity. 

Of course, there was lots  to see and draw and I did both. These dragons of the deep displayed at the Bergen fishmarket were really just monkfish. Who knew that that mild-tasting white fish flesh came in such a scary package? I can personally attest to the fact that little children will cry when held up to see these ferocious faces. I have more to share with you, all sorts of sketches and thoughts. I'll do it, too, very soon. Come back and see.

Off to the 'glorious, forbidding north!'

Thanksgiving with my mother and brothers and their families was a whirl, with no time for sketching. I left her yesterday, all manicured, pedicured, massaged, read to, fed, and now installed in a private room in her nursing home. She's in the tender and capable hands of my sister-in-law, my nephew, and my brothers, so I'm going to stick to my year-long plan to make a  6-day trip to the Arctic Circle, on a working ship's voyage up the Norwegian coast. (Is that enough prepositions for you?) My husband and I leave Thursday.

I fell HARD for the idea of this voyage when I first read about it last February in a New York Times travel article by Paul Schneider. If Paul's compelling story featuring northern lights, arctic hurricanes, and broodingly beautiful coastline doesn't get your wanderlust all riled up, then I don't know what would. Of course, you may find your pleasure basking under sunny skies. Me, I was born in the middle of the Bering Sea, in a blizzard, on an extinct volcano, at home. This Norwegian coastal voyage will be luxurious compared to my ragged entrance in this world.

Here's Paul's article, from which the title of this post is drawn.

And click here to visit his website. He's a wonderful writer, as you'll soon see.

And here are some photos by Florian Seiffert of Germany, of scenes from his October Hurtigruten voyage:
 

I will spend many hours onboard our ship, drawing, painting the scenes laid out before me in the dark and wintry days ahead. See you soon!