Day 168 (sat 6/17) Great Watercolor Deal for quality student grade set

All I’ve done is add a little color to yesterday’s sketch.

The good news: I tried this Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolor sketchers box, and love it!

Which I found at Amazon for $12.93, an amazing deal, and I am really pleased with it. I really dislike my original W & N set, and I kept reading about how everyone loved them, even the Cotman student line, so I thought, when I saw this deal, I’d try them one more time. And I’m really glad I did. If you are looking for a very inexpensive start to watercolor, or a nice little travel box cheap, this one is for you. The box is nothing special, but adequate, the assortment of colors is really good, with two good yellows, two good reds, two good blues, two good greens, as well as yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber, and (wasted on me) white… really great choices… and it comes with a beautiful tiny travel brush that is nearly worth the cost of the whole set. Now that I have tried it, I highly recommend it, and think this will be my go-to pan set for travel, even though I have worked so hard to set up different travel tins.

Seriously. Under $13 and free shipping, if you have Amazon Prime. I haven’t seen a price like this anywhere. (*I just looked to see how much without a Prime membership, and there’s another seller listing it for $12.77 with free shipping right now… I wish I needed more of these!!) Many of these are “hues”, which bothers some artists, but they have good lightfast ratings and vibrant colors. I’m really happy with them.

FullSizeRender.jpg

Day 167 (Fri 6/16) Another pen sketch or two

In my tiny Stillman & Birn. I did this with a tiny Pilot pen pencil combination I purchased specifically to go in my travel set. It works fine, but the ink isn’t as nice as the uniball pen I normally use.

FullSizeRender

Day 158 (Wed 6/7) The Neighbors

My favorite type of art now… this just seems way too simple to count.

This is the road behind my house (even though I don’t live in the country). We, my husband and I, call it the cat barn, because our cat years ago would go visit the cats there, but I don’t really know if there were a bunch of cats or not. I assume there were cats… he’d come back looking a bit rough and mangled… but I never actually saw any.

This afternoon the two horses were outside grazing, and it just felt… pretty.

IMG_2434

Day 154 (Sat 6/3) an unfinished page of random people sketches

Sometimes even MY life is just to busy to get much done. Still, I’ve stuck to my goal of doing SOMETHING with art every single day this year, so far, and am really seeing progress. Thanks, everyone, for holding me accountable! I’ll add to the page another day.

FullSizeRender

Day 153 (Fri 6/2) adding watercolor to a sketch

I decided to try a bit of color on yesterday’s sketch, and wanted to try just one color. I was going to go with indigo first, but something about blue faces put me off. So I went with Daniel Smith’s Bloodstone. This is made from a mineral, no other pigments added. I purchased it expecting a deep eggplant-y purple but it’s a neutral shade, on the red or purple end of the spectrum, and lovely for bringing a loud color down just a touch. It also granulates nicely. If you don’t have this color, in my opinion it’s a really nice one to add. Right now I use it more often than any other neutral. The result:

I’m pretty happy with it. And I loved working with layers of just one color.

Canson mixed media journal, Daniel Smith Bloodstone watercolor, uniball micro deluxe pen