This year I made a watercolor card for Mariko for Mother’s Day. I used a photo of another watercolor as a reference.

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Tonight I filled my Ohuhu waterbrush with a mix of diluted ink, first with Noodler’s Bulletproof Black. I added just a few drops and painted the background trees. I had to get the paper really wet, and I am not very fond of the way the ink granulated on the watercolor paper. Next, I refilled the brush with water and 10 drops of Kuretake Zig Cartoonist Ink and painted the items in the foreground. I am really pleased with the effect! It reminds me of Chinese ink paintings a bit, since I guess the medium is essentially the same.

It’s fun to “doodle” using the waterbrush and diluted ink. I’ll do more for sure in the future!

I hope you had a nice day!

またね～

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こんばんは。

Tonight I did a watercolor version of a sketch I did a few days ago. It’s so much fun to play with color! I used my Prima “The Classics” watercolors, plus a couple other Windsor & Newton colors that Bay got me for my birthday.

To see all the sketches I’ve been working on, you can check out the Flickr album “My Sketching Journey”, or my Instagram account barron.sketches which I created just for posting sketches, watercolors, and stationery items.

I hope you had a good day!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

Tonight I did a little watercolor of my pineapple ukulele. And by little, I mean A5 size. You see, since I switched to the A5-sized binder, I’ve been waiting for the special Carl 20-hole punch to arrive so that I can add any kind of paper to the binder without using tape or glue. I am excited to be able to add watercolor paper at A5 size, or actually any size A5 or smaller.

So tonight I created this on a hand-cut piece of watercolor paper, then used the new hole-punch, and added it to the binder. I think it is going to work out nicely!

I hope you had a nice day!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

Tonight I did a little bit of editing on these sketches, just like I did a couple nights ago. I am sensing a pattern here… I tend to draw faces too long (my opinion) which means I should take care to pay more attention to that when I am doing my sketches. Of course, I can edit them in Photoshop, but it’s better to get it right when I put it on paper. Sort of like it’s better to get things right in-camera rather than relying on fixing things in post.

Anyways, here are the before and after versions of the sketches.

To see all the sketches I’ve been working on, you can check out the Flickr album “My Sketching Journey”, or my Instagram account barron.sketches which I created just for posting sketches, watercolors, and stationery items.

I hope you had a nice Sunday!

おやすみなさい

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こんばんは。Good evening!

Today I practiced a bit with my watercolors. As you can see from these photos, it was all about trees! I watched a couple Youtube tutorials on adding dark shading to wet areas of the painting and decided to give it a go. The photo above is my second sketch after I watched the tutorial, and the photo below is before I watched the video. I think the photo below is pretty fun, but the one above is a little more tree-like. I really need to work on the trunks, though!

For the color in the top painting, I used mainly Sap Green for the lighter color, then a mix of Sap Green and Pthalo Green for the dark color.

Later in the evening I practiced drawing a face, which I find is quite a challenge. I may have mentioned that one of the big problems I have is getting the facial feature more or less symmetrical. I watched another tutorial (isn’t Youtube amazingly useful?) and it explained a good way to divide up the face so that it is easier to match the size of the eyes. I think it helped my drawing quite a bit!

The technique of dividing up geometric shapes is easy to follow, but difficult for me to memorize, so more practice is needed. And of course, this is just a straight ahead angle. I think a three-quarter angle will be a lot more challenging!

Onward and upward!

To see all the sketches I’ve been working on, you can check out the Flickr album “My Sketching Journey”, or my Instagram account barron.sketches which I created just for posting sketches, watercolors, and stationery items.

I hope you had a nice Sunday!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

Well, this morning was a busy one, in which I (with the help of a friend) figured out how to get the new ISP service to work concurrently with our existing television service. Basically, it involved putting the new router on its own cable circuit and keeping it separate from the television. So, we are up and running with a super-fast and strong connection! Yay!

With that solved, I took Bay to Jerry’s Artarama to buy a new brush and palette knife. The store was having a big sale, so I took advantage and bought a new tube of watercolor for myself. The new Pthalo Green rounds out my palette, which you can see in the photo at the top of this post. I think it will be useful to create dark shadows in trees.

On the way home, we stopped by Fry’s to buy a USB Wi-fi adapter, then stopped at the hardware store to pick up a flapper to fix the toilet, and finally returned home to finish setting up the network. And fix the toilet.

And to finish the day, I had a glass of wine and watched a couple more episodes of Tsubaki Stationery Store. I really like it.

I hope you had a nice Saturday!

おやすみ

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

Wow, the weeks are flying by so fast, aren’t they? This evening I did a quick sketch of some tapas that we enjoyed in Granada. That fortune cookie on the left side is actually supposed to be a lemon.

I used my Micron pen to outline the fish and then watercolored over. I am not sure I like the pen on this painting. I wonder what it would look like with just watercolor?

After I finished the tapas painting, I sketched a bunch of eyes and faces (or parts of faces). I filled my Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen with Iroshizuku Chiku-rin ink for the larger green face. I really like the ink color! But my favorite is the bright blue Ama-iro ink. I love it!

To see all the sketches I’ve been working on, you can check out the Flickr album “My Sketching Journey”, or my Instagram account barron.sketches which I created just for posting sketches, watercolors, and stationery items.

I hope you had a great week!

またね～

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こんばんは。Tonight after I practiced drawing more eyes (not so happy with those) I applied some color to a couple Marrakech sketches. I’m not thrilled about how they came out, but I suppose they are ok. I am still having trouble finding a nice grey that I like. The ones in the first sketch are too green. However, I’d rather make greys by combining colors instead of using the grey or black paint. You can see in the painting below, in which I used the black in the shop interior and around the tires of the car. It doesn’t have as much character as a mixed color would have.

One thing I do like is the detail that using the white gel pen adds. I put a little detail into the paintings in some of the dishes and signs. It’s a nice effect. 

I see a couple things I want to fix in these two, especially the mis-spelling of “Marrakech”. 

To see all the sketches I’ve been working on, you can check out the Flickr album “My Sketching Journey”, or my Instagram account barron.sketches which I created just for posting sketches, watercolors, and stationery items.

I hope you had a nice day!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

Tonight we enjoyed one of our favorite meals: karaage. Koa loves it and requested this dinner since he hasn’t had a chance to get in his JFC (Japanese Fried Chicken) fix while Mariko was away in Japan. Needless to say, it was delicious!

Today I applied some color to a sketch that I did a couple weeks ago. It’s an alleyway at the Kasbah of the Udayas in Rabat, Morocco. I used a reference photo that I took when we were there last month. It’s a simple scene, and the blue is pretty intense, but if you’ve ever seen it in person, you will agree that the color is amazing. The more I look at this painting, the more the blue wall looks like the sea.

I’m enjoying sketching and watercolors a lot. Plus my fountain pen interest has settled into a nice groove. Meaning, I am enjoying using my LAMY Safari to write in a daily journal every night, and my Pilot Kakuno is used for general purpose writing, and captioning my watercolors too!

To see all the sketches I’ve been working on, you can check out the Flickr album “My Sketching Journey”, or my Instagram account barron.sketches which I created just for posting sketches, watercolors, and stationery items.

I hope you had a nice Sunday!

またね～

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