Painting a Florida Sunset

On a trip to Florida, I took lots of photos.  Part of the delight of travel is thumbing back through your photos and remembering the fun you had.  You can deepen your travel experiences by painting some of your favorite scenes.

This is the sunrise that inspired my painting.

One way to approach something as complex as this sunset scene is to create an artwork inspired by the photo rather than a photorealistic copy.

I started with an Arches cold press watercolor block, and wet the surface with a mop brush dunked in clear water. 

I loaded my brush with a mixture of  French Ultramarine Blue mixed & Phthalo Blue, and touched it to the wet paper, letting the paints bloom and spread.  This technique is called wet in wet.

I quickly added in Permanent Blue Violet with the blues. Then Permanent Rose.  I touched in Cadmium Yellow mixed with Cadmium Red to create the orange clouds, and Cadmium Yellow for the bright yellow areas near the horizon.  

I used Raw Umber and Yellow Ochre at the bottom of the scene, where the ocean clouds were.

Then I left the first layer to dry completely.

I worked in more layers of French Ultramarine Blue, Phthalo Blue and Permanent Blue Violet up towards the top of the sky, trying to create areas of shadowed clouds behind the brighter, rosier clouds. 

I carefully softened the edges of most of the clouds, preventing the hard lines that come when the paint dries without feathering.

I used Caran D'Ache Neocolor II watercolor crayons to pop a little more contrast into some of the clouds. 

 When you're painting with color compliments right next to each other like the purple and yellow here, you have to be very careful not to let the two colors mix.  They contrast beautifully next to each other, but when they mix together, they create muddy brown.

Neocolor II crayons are opaque, and they move and blend when you touch them with a wet brush.  They gave me more control, and were ideal for my project.

I continued adding more details, more layers, and richer colors,

working my way down to the dark clouds sitting on the ocean (at the bottom of the scene)

A few more details, a few more marks with the Neocolor II watercolor crayons, and it was ready to be signed and dated.

I decided to leave out surface level details like the palm trees.  I wanted the focus to be on the sky itself.

Remember, you are the artist.  You get to pick what you want to paint and how you want to portray it!

I hope you'll look through your photos and find something that calls out to you to be painted or sketched.  

Happy creating!

Copyright Betsy Bangley 2024.  All rights reserved.

Nature Journaling: Welcome Spring!

Today marked the return of Red-Winged Blackbirds to my corner of Pennsylvania.  I'll always be grateful for the burry, brash call of the male Red-winged Blackbird as they lift my spirits at the end of winter when I'm ready for any sign of spring.

The males migrate north to us ahead of the females, and set up breeding territories.  On cold, rainy days like today, I least expect them, and am always surprised in the most pleasant way.  

A small flock descended from the gray sky to perch in a little mulberry tree that stands next to my birdfeeders.  They brightened my day on this rainy, mizzly day.

After I had finished my admin. chores for the day, I rewarded myself with this sketch, made from a  reference photo.

What's your favorite bird?  

A great way to celebrate your wild friend is to find a photo in a book or online to use as a reference, and make a sketch.  Then write about a memorable encounter. 

Happy creating!  
 

A Mixed Media Face with the Unexpected Gypsy

As one of the Patreons of the British artist Wendy Robinson, The Unexpected Gypsy, we get monthly videos showing us how Wendy creates her art step-by-step.

They're instructive and inspiring, and feel like a cozy visit with The Unexpected Gypsy herself.  You can find out more about The Unexpected Gypsy's Patreon, follow this link:

patreon.com/theunexpectedgypsy

I created this face by following along with Wendy's latest video.  She started the process with a loose watercolor sketch.

We added in skin tones and shadows.

Deepened some of the shadows,

and layered on more skin tones.

We let our faces dry, and began adding Prismacolor colored pencils to define the features.

Having the control of a sharpened colored pencil allowed me to fix problems I had with the tip of this imaginary woman's nose.

The Prismacolors were easy to blend.

Creating rich, layered colors, like the complexities of the lips.

Taking your time with a project like this allows you to relax into the process.

And when you're done, you've expressed a part of yourself.  You can give your person a name, and ask them if they have any messages to share with you.

I hope you give this process a try!

Happy creating!

Copyright 2024 Betsy Bangley.  All rights reserved.

Valentines Wrap-Up

I created a block print in January to use as my Valentine's Day card artwork, and printed up a stack. You can find that post here:https://betsyblissart.blogspot.com/2024/01/a-valentine-print.html

The only step remaining was to glue each artwork to a blank card, inscribe it and pop it in the mail.

I set up a work station on the floor, cranked up my favorite music, and got to work.

A basket of hand-painted papers, that I created earlier, caught my eye, so I started incorporating them into the cards.  You can find photos of the papers here:

https://betsyblissart.blogspot.com/2023/12/painted-collage-papers-for-care-december.html

My original plan was simply to glue the prints directly to cards, but the painted papers added so much more life to the final card.

A recent visit to the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse turned up four bottles of Higgins permanent ink in shades of pink, magenta, green and purple, perfect for Valentine's cards!

Dropping the cards into the mail lifted my spirits, thinking of my friends and family who would receive them.

Handmade greeting cards are a great way to share your art and show your love for someone.  I hope you give card-making a try!

Copyright Betsy Bangley 2024. All right reserved.

Drawing in the Museum

I'm teaching a course for Osher at CMU called Drawing in the Museum.  We meet in the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History each week and tour one of the exhibit halls, making sketches of the artworks and items on display.

We began in the Museum of Natural History's Halls of North American Wildlife, African Wildlife and Botany.

The following week, we moved on to the Hall of Architecture, where we found statuary, columns and facades to illustrate in our sketchbooks.

The museums allow visitors to draw, but only with graphite pencils and sketchbooks small enough to fit on your lap.

Those requirements make copying oil paintings particularly challenging.  

We invite our intuition to lead us in figuring out how to create the textures and values we see in the paintings with our pencils.

My sketch of the painting "Head of a Woman" by Eugene Carriere.

You can see the original here:

https://collection.carnegieart.org/objects/247c15b1-2c83-4972-a02e-8310762d5464

Drawing in the museum is an age-old technique for learning from the masters.  When you draw something, you see it more deeply than when you simply glance by it.

When was the last time you went to a museum?  Why not take a pencil and a sketch book along with you and sketch your favorite artwork?

Travel Journal: Florida

I escaped to Florida this winter, and took my travel journal and a small art kit along with me.

A vacation is a great time to play with your art supplies!

You can record the little details of your trip, and later you'll have a memory book to look back on.

I used a sketchbook I had taken on a previous trip to Florida.  You can see that entry here.

I began with rough sketches of the waterbirds

Each sketch you make helps you to see your subject -- here a shorebird -- better and to draw it more accurately.

We encountered Magnificent Frigatebirds on our trip.  Amazing masters of riding air currents, they remain aloft for days and months at a time.  You can see how taken I was by these massive birds -- I made a lot of sketches of them!

The dune grasses bent by the ocean breezes created lovely shapes and graceful curves.

Peering over the crest of the dune, I found a wild sunflower blooming -- in January!

The ocean carries a variety of interesting flotsam and jetsam, to the beach.  This coconut and seaweed sprig washed up on the shore.  

The first few days of our trip were overcast and windy, and you can see the gray sky in this watercolor sketch.

Sometimes, the tiniest things tell the story of the beauty of the beach.

This beach was decked with a variety of intricate seashells and driftwood. 

Are you planning any travel?  I hope you take along a journal and a few art supplies!

Happy creating! 

Copyright Betsy Bangley 2024. All rights reserved.

More Burnishing with Colored Pencils

Artists often work in a series, coming up with an idea, then tinkering with different versions of the idea.  This allows them to experiment freely without concern for making any one iteration "perfect" or even "pretty."

My burnishing practice led me to experiment a bit more.  I wanted to reduce the heaviness of the heart outline and explore breaking the boundary of the inner heart and the outer space with squiggly lines.

I used a larger, sturdier piece of paper this time -- tan, 184 pound, mixed media paper.

Here's the progression of the project from start to finish.

After laying in a variety of pinks, magenta, crimson, scarlet and a dash of lavender within the heart, I began burnishing, pressing down hard on the colored pencil and creating a rich area of color. 

Above is burnishing with a magenta pencil.  Each step mixes the colors and tips the balance in the favor of the last color layered on.

I wanted to connect the interior of the heart with the outer space with these energy lines.  Eventually, I added active lines to the interior of the heart, too.

White colored pencil added over the layers of magenta, crimson, scarlet and pink brightened these areas to create a highlight, and made the heart more round and plump.

Burnishing with a white pencil blends the colors below as it lightens them.

If I continue with this series, I would like to experiment with making the interior swirls and swoops more pronounced.

I hope you take time to experiment with burnishing.  Just playing around can lead to more ideas for projects, and pretty soon you're on your way to creating