I was at the Farm Center where I go to buy corn for my chickens, hardware type supplies and new mud boots when I need them. Well, they had new baby chicks! What can I say? I have a barn, I have chickens, I love chicks and being the little kid in a big kids body that I am…ahem…I bought them for myself!! It was to cheer myself up because I’m still hurting from my car accident.
Usually I would put them directly in the barn, but it is still quite chilly and I don’t have a heat lamp set up yet or a pen. So I put them in the ‘old’ bathroom in the bathtub! Ha, what a surprise when my boys saw them!
I looked at it like an opportunity to draw them and do some studies, the dedicated artist that I am!
So the first page was sketches with a graphite mechanical pencil…it’s hard to draw things that are constantly moving! The other page is watercolors that I played with. At the bottom you can see where I wet the paper first and touched it with my color on my brush tip. It makes fuzzy blobs that are fun to play with, but you have to be careful as to “how” blobby it gets. Watercolor has a mind of it’s own, but that’s what I like about it. You can play with this technique, just wet the paper first…let it dry a bit to lose some sheen, then touch paint to it and let it go. It will grow on it’s own. Experiment with this to see how it reacts when your paper is wetter or drier. Then let it dry totally before you try to add details or they will be fuzzy too.
Go here to see my new Nature Sketching Class schedule! http://marymcandrew.blogspot.com/2008/05/nature-sketching-classes.html
or there’s a link in the right hand column for my classes.
A good subject matter for a picture could be to show a chick gazing up at a Dandelion head as if to ask “are you another chick or perhaps something to eat?”
“Fluffy chicky in the bath,
jumps on my feet and makes me laugh,
oh! but when it spies a a big fat worm,
takes a peck and makes my squirm!!”
Camulus 05/08
Yan-Peter where are you? ha!!ha!!
Well Camulus, that is a silly poem but it’s the type that I often like and write myself…one of these days I’ll do a little painting of a frog and then put up the silly poem I wrote about that jumpy subject! It’s silly.
Yes you’re right, where is my Dutch poet Jan Peter?? I’ll have to drop him a note.
How are things in England?
Mary