Category: Ink

Making Thank You Drawings

Around the holiday season, I make a series of small works on paper to send to collectors of my paintings as a way of saying thank you. This time-lapse film documents the process of making the mixed media drawings I sent this year. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that I started working on light blue paper, but eventually switched to a white paper. The blue paper felt too flimsy, so I used a heavier-weight watercolor paper instead. You’ll also notice in the upper left corner when I cut the new watercolor paper. I think my favorite part of the video is seeing all the tools move around as I used them.
This was shot over the course of two days, with a photo once every 10 seconds. I used watercolor, graphite, ink, wax pastels, colored pencil, and gouache (opaque watercolor). Enjoy!

Discovering drawings and paintings from Australia

In this video I share a box of drawings and paintings I made while living in Australia in the time after I had a baby. I talk about how making drawings and paintings daily helped me get back on my feet at the start of motherhood. I also talk about continuing to make work with limited time, space, and materials.

My travel watercolor and drawing kit

In this video I’ll share with you what I pack in my travel painting and drawing kit. I’ll show you how to carry just a small kit for drawing, and what to add if you want to paint with watercolors. Find out what type of pens and other drawing supplies I use, as well as which particular colors and brushes are in my portable watercolor kit.

Looking for more tips for artists? Check out the blog posts below:

Good books for creative people

Timelapse showing how I pack my plein air painting kit

11 Things athletes do that will make you a better artist

Know anyone who might find this interesting? Please share it!

The unglamourous part of making art

Behind the scenes this week…
I’ve been using torn bits of my drawings as collage material in my new mixed media pieces. After brushing the back of the paper with acrylic gel medium and placing the paper where I want it, I flatten it with a piece of wood and weigh it down with something heavy – in this case, gallon paint cans. I typically let it sit overnight so that it’s ready to go in the morning. Once dry, I can work on the paper and panel with paint, ink, pastel, or whatever other medium I choose to use on it. With these particular pieces I am not using oil paint. This allows me to keep the paper exposed because I don’t have to prime the paper to protect it from the oil paint.

New house, new studio

I haven’t blogged in a while. We bought a house this spring/summer, have been settling in, and getting the studio (in my case) and darkroom (in Tim’s case) going. The studio feels good. We insulated it, put up homasote, and I recently prepared a bunch of new panels to work on a series. I’m working on mixed media collage pieces using some drawings I made last week. Mix of Sumi ink, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, pastel, graphite, and markers. I’m trying to keep the works on panel pared down – which is hard for me because I have a tendency to want to bury layers of paint and drawing and build up the surface. We’ll see what happens…

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