Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020 - Day 22-23

Two intricate pen and watercolor sketches in a row for Day 22 and Day 23

Day 22 - Old Chevy Truck and Shed - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

This rural scene is based on a photo I took somewhere in the rural part of southern Utah County, probably near Spanish Fork.  However, the original photo was taken in summer, I decided to change it to fall.  I also added the old Chevy truck from another photo, it was red, I changed it to blue.

Day 22 - Junkyard Dodge Dart - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

Prints Available

This one is a rarity for me, a sketch not based on one of my photos or from life.  I saw the reference posted on twitter by someone I follow and who follows me.  As soon as I saw it I knew I had to sketch it, and I also knew that the woman that posted it had taken the photo herself so she could give me permission and did.  If you are into old cars, especially Mopar you might want to give her account a follow: https://twitter.com/AmberDawnGlover The photograph was very well composed, the only change I made was to simplify the background. The other thing that drew me to it was that grill, even a perfectly preserved 1960 Dodge Dart grill is pretty wild looking, but this was all bent up and took it to another level.

Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020 - Day 19-21

Again, three more days, three more sketches.  I think this is the longest I've ever stuck to a challenge like this.  It hasn't been easy and it has eaten into my painting time but I think it's been worth.

Day 19 - Abandoned Dodge Truck - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

Prints Available

I decided to stick with a fine pen for this one, a Copic Multiliner .05 except for the darkest parts where I used a .1.  This means all shading was done with hatching.  I found this old abandoned Dodge farm truck in the rural central Utah town of Loa.

Day 20 - Abandoned Country Store - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

I stuck with the fine pen for this one but then colored it with watercolor washes. The old country store actually exists, at least it did the last time I visited Boulder City, Utah. The vintage tow truck out back was taken from another reference photo.

Day 21 - Winter Barn and Fence - Daily Sketch Challenge May 2020

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Time was short this morning so I had to keep today's sketch simple, so I went with a winter scene, the fact that most of the ground is covered in snow helped keep it minimalist.  The composition as it sat in the refence photo was almost perfect, everything leading to the focal point, the abandoned barn.  I especially liked that wrecked fence gate in the foreground, it pointed right up the snow ridge and to the barn, I did add a little tuft of grass in the lower left to point to the fence.  I found this scene in the small rural farming community of Eden, Utah in Ogden Valley.

Finally Returning to an Old WIP

I couldn't believe it when I looked it up, it really had been since June 2015 since I worked on that painting.  Yep, I started a painting almost 9 months ago and put the project on hold soon after.  I could have sworn it was late summer when I took a "break" from that painting.  The WIP has even been sitting on the small table next to my easel the whole time.  I finally decided it was time to rectify this situation and finish this beast.  Rather than divert you to links that are nine months old I'll recap those old WIP posts here and add one new one.

This painting is a little more complex than my paintings usually have been so I did more than just a typical thumbnail and made this small but somewhat detailed pencil sketch to plan the painting.  It almost seems like some kind of badge of honor nowadays for an artist to proclaim that they do no planning and just jump in and go where the muse takes them.  I suppose there may be some artists that are talented/gifted enough to get away with that but I can't help but think that they might get even better results if they put some thought into their design, or maybe they do and just want to create some kind of artist mystique but really do plan more than they claim.  I don't know about other artists but I feel no shame in admitting that usually my best paintings are well planned first.



This is usually the first step in making one of my paintings, though not all paintings get a full pencil underdrawing but those this complicated do, and as you can see the design has been refined somewhat as well.  This gives me another design iteration before the paint hits the surface.  After the underdrawing was done I applied a coat of yellow ochre diluted with glazing medium.  This layer serves two purposes.  First it seals the gesso and the drawing.  By sealing the drawing the graphite won't smear around while painting and by sealing the gesso the moisture won't be sucked out of my paint so readily and it will spread easier.  Second it gives me a tone to work against rather than a stark white surface, however I wish I had gone a bit darker with my tone on this.

Unless I'm painting with a palette knife my first layers are transparent.  I like to find my way into the painting by gradually layering transparent paint and even use optical mixing by layering different colors over each other.  Yes, most of this gets covered up opaque layers later but it's part of my process, it's part of my journey through the development of the painting.  I never intentionally mix water into my paint, I always use glazing or gloss medium to dilute it and make it transparent.  My experience is water tends to make the paint chalky or cloudy, or at least not as vibrant as it is using mediums.

This is the last WIP photo I posted last June.  You can see now I've added some opaque layers, still gradually finding my way into the painting.

Here is where the painting stands now, or rather where I left it last June but I never posted a WIP of this point before. Here you can see I've started refining shapes and adding details however that may be a bit premature, I'm guessing at most I'm only halfway through this painting now.  I'm committed to finishing this thing up though so fresh updates will be coming shortly.





Some Ten Minute Sketches

Here are the last few ten minute sketches, all in pen this week;

This 1930 Chevy flatbed truck is part of a monument on Main Street, Coalville, Utah

I made this sketch to specific proportions as an exploration for a possible painting.

I don't remember specifically where I took the photo of this 1946 Ford flatbed truck, I think it was somewhere west of I-15 in Utah County.

A Sketchy Black Friday

I've never been one for hunting for Christmas time bargains, in fact for a very long time I've felt the holiday has been way too over-commercialized and it only gets worse every year.  For me the Friday after Thanksgiving is another day off work, (now that's something to be thankful for. <G>).  We have been blessed with milder than normal weather for this time in November which allowed me to get out and do some sketching. I headed to one of my top five favorite sketching spots, Wheeler Farm, a historic farm owned and run by Salt Lake County.  I knew they had liberated the old Dodge truck from the garage and placed it out in the garden so of course I sketched that first.

"Derelict Dodge"

I kept it simple, just graphite pencil in my 9x12 bristol smooth sketchbook.  After a break for some lunch I walked over to the antique machinery building planning on sketching the John Deere they always have on display outside.  I was surprised and excited to see they now have another tractor on display outside of the building, a Moline I believe, so I sketched that one instead, this time in pen and watercolor.

"By the Barn"

There was a lot more foot traffic in the area where this tractor was parked so I got a lot more attention, in fact I gave out more business cards in one sitting than I ever have before.  One person even said he thinks he likes the sketch more than the real thing. I think that is the best compliment an artist can receive, thank you kind sir!  One boy even asked if this particular sketch was for sale, I had to tell him no, not yet for a couple reasons I won't go into here.



The Best Laid Plans.......

I went to Wheeler Farm today with my sketching backpack planning on doing a largish, detailed pencil sketch or two.  I realized just as I went to unzip my backpack that I had left my pencil case at home, still sitting on my drawing table.  Then I remembered I keep a couple pens and a mechanical pencil in my car so I went to retrieve them.  Turns out the lead was jammed in the tip of the mechanical pencil and I had no way to get it out, so I resigned myself to pen sketching.  I went to start with the .03 pen and the tip was damaged, no ink would come out.  All that was left was the .1 pen, luckily it worked and worked well, unfortunately I can't be very subtle with the larger tip but I made do.

The first sketch was at the west end of the farm, a spot kind of by itself that doesn't get much attention.  The cow looked content to be lying there so I took advantage and sketched it in first.  The thing about the scene that intrigued me most was how the shed was practically being engulfed in foliage, in particular the Russian olive tree that was making its way across the roof.  I think this might make a good painting.

For the second sketch I got a little more brave and tried to sketch horses eating at the trough. Unfortunately the one on the right left before I good get any shading on him, so he's just a ghosted outline.  The tree wasn't actually right there, it was quite a ways farther to the right but since I couldn't finish the horse I figured I might as well put something else in there.

Obviously I'm not showing this sketch because I think it's good, it most definitely is not, but it was a useful exercise.  I plan on eventually putting animals into my paintings so I figured I ought to get more experience sketching them from life.  I really admire artists that somehow can make great sketches or even paintings of animals from life, even cows move more than I can handle!  This group of cows in particular was feeling playful today, often pushing and bumping into each other.  I just tried to fit as many quick gesture sketches on one page in the sketchbook as I could.

Now this is more my speed.  Wheeler Farm has a 100 year old, restored garage in which they keep an old Dodge truck. Unfortunately much of it is blocked off from view by a partition on the lower half of the garage opening, and the rest has a screen over it.  Not much light makes it into there but I decided to sketch what I could.  It didn't occur to me that the garage was something they locked up when they shut the place down for the day.  Luckily I was close to finishing when one of the employees came over to lock up, he saw that I was drawing though and let me finish first while he went to other buildings to lock up.  Thanks, whoever you are!