Mill Pond Sketch

"Mill Pond" Sharpie and Watercolor. Another sketch vignette to try to keep things moving along as I recover from shoulder surgery.

Old Barn Sketch

"Working Barn" Sharpie and Watercolor. I know it has been a while since I have made any posts. I finished my Daily fly drawing project and I am now onto new things. I will have more more posts in this blog this year.

Peggy's Cove Lighthouse

My wife recently returned from a trip to Nova Scotia. Among the many pictures she took, this lighthouse and rock formation caught my eye. This was a perfect opportunity to practice some ink and watercolor wash.

Drawing Flies Project

The Jeff Sketch blog is in limbo while I work on my Drawing Flies 365 project. I am drawing, painting or scratching out a fishing fly a day for the next 365 days. Check it out at www.drawingflies365.blogspot.com

Yuletide Carolers

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of my blog readers! The following is the steps I took to create the final painting "Yuletide Carolers". I have not done a full scale painting in a while, so this was a bit of a challenge. I wanted to create an image of our church with some Dickens style carolers at the front door. The feeling I was going for was a warm inviting feeling, even though it is cold and blustery out. The painting will have a cool dominance to enforce the feeling of cold. The warms were placed at the center of interest. With that said, here we go...

These were some of the initial sketches with 3 values applied. The value patterns show an overall mid with the lightest value at the center of interest and the darks creating the contrast at the center of interest. I was concentrating on creating interesting shapes and not "things".



I then created a more refined sketch. This helps me to get a better understanding of the shapes. I added some marker to some of the shadow areas. I try to keep thinking of shapes and not things.



I created some small (6"x8") initial color studies. These also helped me to loosen up a bit before I dove in.



I sketched the shapes in pencil on my watercolor paper, soaked the sheet with a sponge and applied the first loose washes of the mid values. I made sure that I did not paint the white or light areas.



After letting this wash dry, I was looking at the composition, and decided that I was not happy with it. The shape that bothered me the most was the large shape of the church split the paper exactly in half. I should have caught this at the sketch stage. Since this painting was to be used for our family Christmas card, I was pressed for time. I try to start the work on these holiday paintings early, but unfortunately this was a busy year and the time slipped by quickly. So I created another sketch that resolved the problems. I shifted the view which helped to create shadow shapes which I could use around the light value shapes. The church shape was set more to one side.



I created a more refined sketch to work on the composition a bit.



Here is the value pattern I will go with.



I roughed the shapes in pencil on my watercolor paper, soaked the entire sheet and applied the first loose mid washes.



I then added some dark shapes, using my value sketch as a guide.



Define more mid value and dark value shapes.



Reinforcing values and refining shapes.



More shape refining and a signature.

Jury Duty Sketches

It has been a while since I have posted anything. I am trying to saddle up and get going on a series of paintings along with working on some Christmas cards. This page out of the sketchbook was done while I was on jury duty. This is a great time to get some sketching in.

Lighthouse study

We took a family trip to Pictured Rocks in the UP of Michigan this Summer. During the sunken boat tour, we passed by an old restored lighthouse. This sketch is a quick study of this wood and stone light house