WATERCOLOR TRAVEL KIT SET UP

Here are some photos of my drawing and painting kit that I take with me when I travel. One could have it with them at all times because of its' size but I save it for when I am on the road. Please note that my hand is not that fat!!! It is the camera angle. I wanted to show the size in relation to my hand. Hotels have miniature bottles of shampoo, mouthwash etc. for the guests. I use such a bottle cleaned out as a small water container. It fits in the kit nicely and doesn't leak. I have several Elegant Writer Pens in this kit, two regular travel brushes, one brush that holds water in the handle and a small mechanical pencil as well as a pen with permanent ink. A purse size packet of tissues complete the set.

WILLIE NELSON CENTER SEAT STEERAGE CLASS FROM DALLAS TO SAN FRAN

Here is the sketchbook page from my return flight from the Cedar Hills workshop in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area last week. I was crammed into my middle seat next to two big guys. I felt like a contortionist sketching and painting in the limited space but it passes the time and is a fun activity while flying. The first drawing was done with the Elegant Writer caligraphy pen. I started to put some color on it but the ink kept bleeding and I decided it wasn't a good decision to add color, so I started the second image drawn with a pencil and then full color applied. I love my little art kit. I still haven't put any paint in the second Altoids box but the clear plastic water bottle lids are in place so I will probably fill them before my next trip. I don't really need a second box but there is room in the small makeup case I have everything so I will take advantage of it. It just occurred to me that I should photograph the whole setup. I will take care of that tomorrow.

I heard that you can paint watercolor on regular gessoed canvas (not the "special watercolor canvas") so I am intrigued. I spent part of the day transferring one of my drawings onto a 10" square canvas and will start to paint it tomorrow. I suspect I will finish it in a few hours. This canvas has a gesso coating so I don't see why it wouldn't work as gesso accepts watercolor very nicely. I will post tomorrow the results of this experiment.

Speaking of experimenting, I just booked a workshop in Minneapolis for next year and they want a short version of the "Vern" series as the focus of the workshop. Ideas are flashing around in my head how to present this material in five days. I am looking for some "guinea pigs" in the Bay Area to try these ideas out on. If you are interested in such a class, send me a note and I will find a place and time.

DISCOVERIES ON THE WEB plus PLANE ART RETURN TRIP

Something was not working well with the Slide.com web site. My slide show was not loading properly. After 5 tries, I decided to forget it for tonight and try again tomorrow. I am posting the little color sketch I did on the return flight from New York. I found a black and white photograph in the newspaper to work with. I usually travel with some of my photos to work with. I didn't think to do that this trip.

I wanted to share some discoveries I made on the web recently. First is a website of a wire sculpture artist who does very original work, many of the pieces look like drawings. This kind of work requires seeing the image in simplified terms....what to leave out?...what to leave in? It's a great way to think about capturing the essence of your subject. Here is the web site for Spencer Little:
http://www.dirtyclean.net/ SPENCER LITTLE WIRE SCULPTURE

Google has a free service called Google Alerts. Whenever my name or web site appears on the Internet, I receive an e-mail from Google with the website. I received one of these alerts the other day and found myself on a website that had quite a few of my images from my web page. It was in a foreign language that looked somewhat like Spanish but turned out to be Portuguese. I was more than curious to discover why my work was there. A friend who had lived in Spain for a few years told me there were web sites that can translate other websites. Who knew! I Googled "Translate Website" and sure enough the first entry did the trick. It turns out that all the text was poetry by different people. You just put in the website url and then choose the language you want translated into English. The website with all my work on it appeared on my screen in English. WOW! This is an amazing service. I thought this was so special, I have added this service to my blog. The company is called Babble Fish.

Tomorrow is a new month, so look for a May Painting Challenge. It will involve another very special web site which I will reveal on my next post.

PLANE ART GOING TO NEW YORK

It was a long flight, so I entertained myself by painting in my sketch book. I took a small 6 x 9 Aquabee Super Deluxe sketch book with me on this trip. I love this paper for doing detailed graphite renderings and it works well with the Elegant Writer Pen but I wanted to see how it accepted watercolor. I'm still working with the same image. I saw a beautiful woven sculpture before I left that had heads divided down the middle with different color schemes. It was very interesting so I thought I would try it. Warm on one side, cool on the other. Awhile back, there was a terrific suggestion in Watercolor Magic magazine to make a small watercolor travel set by taking 6 plastic bottle caps from bottled water and glue them into an empty Altoid Mint tin. Load the caps with a warm and cool of red, yellow and blue. I used Cad Red Light and Alizarin Crimson, Quin Gold and Cad Yellow Light (wish I had used a less opaque yellow) and Thalo and Cobalt blue. The lid made a nice little mixing space. I like this set so much I want to load a second tin with some other colors. The paper takes the watercolor very nicely. I did some glazing and it held up. This is the same set I used to do the Central Park sketch.

I am still editing my photos from the trip but I posted a small slide show of a few pictures from the top of the Empire State Building (87th floor). We arrived at dusk and saw the sun setting over Manhattan....a beautiful site that is impossible to photograph perfectly...and we stayed until the lights of the city came on. It was the perfect way to start our stay in New York. Our hotel was a short walk away. I couldn't resist taking these photos though I usually leave the traditional photos to my husband while I am busy taking pictures of subjects for future paintings (translation: on the prowl for faces and figures). Tomorrow I will make a slide show of some of the interesting people of New York.

MORE PLANE ART!

I was dropped off at the Denver airport very early this morning as my sister had to go to work. My plane departure was supposed to be 11:45 but it was delayed an hour. Lots of time to get into trouble in the airport. What's a woman to do? Go shopping, of course!! There was a wonderful shop with beautiful hand made fine crafts and some art books I had never seen before. I bought one called "From Ordinary to Extraordinary" Art and Design Problem Solving. It is pubished by Davis Publications (www.davis-art.com) I plan to check out their web site for other interesting titles. It is written by a very talented secondary art teacher and has lots of great projects and assignments. This man, Ken Vieth, has received international recognition for his teaching ideas. I plan to incorporate some of them in the challenges. In fact, I shall publish a challenge tomorrow night from this book.

I did manage to paint two heads on one page in my sketch book while winging my way home. I had failed to put the Elegant Writer in my little art kit for the plane, so I drew with a pencil and then painted with my small watercolor set by Koi. It helps pass the time and keep my drawing skills from rusting. I found these images in a fashion section of the Sunday New York Times my sister gets. I thought these guys were pretty funny, actually, trying to look so sultry and sexy. It reminded me of "Zoolander" The lighting was excessively dramatic creating easy shadow shapes to draw and paint. So many faces to paint, so little time!

The deleted comment below is from a spammer. Do not go to his profile. There is no information but a blog listing where I'm sure he will capture your e-mail address. This is the second spam comment in a week, so I have changed the settings on the comment section. From now on I will review each comment before it gets posted and you will have to put in those weird letter combinations. I'm sorry for the inconvenience but it is for all our safety. There is always somebody out there trying t ruin it for the rest of us.