Fall II 2024

 Wonderful Watercolor from Ukraine

A few months ago, I saw a paint box called Rose Gallery. It was new to me and looked interesting. The rating on Amazon was through the roof and best of all, it was affordable. Noticing that the paints were made in Ukraine, I thought why not. This could be my way of supporting the country. Besides it was only $20.

Of all paints I have (I have many), this watercolor set offers the most brilliant and intense color I have ever used. In fact, the colors are so full-bodied you could mistake it for gouache without the chalky binder.

Below is a Neurographica piece I did recently using Rosa paints. I expected the paints to lose their brilliance once they dried, not so with this brand. 

Tree of Chaos 

However, there is a disadvantage to painting with heavily pigmented medium. Since we're all used to paints that deliver faint colors, which we have to bring to life with several layers, Rosa doesn't perform that way. So it requires a learning curve. 

In other words, instead of approaching the paint as we would typically do, we have to first dilute the paint more so than usual. I'm still big on layering, so I greatly water down the paints before I place them on the paper. From there I can layer or let the paint stand on it's own. Notice, in above piece, the flowing river (light turquoise) in the lower right hand corner. This was done by diluting with water, no layers.

I am so impressed with this brand, I actually bought a larger set. I would highly recommend Rosa Gallery watercolor paints to anyone. They are a fun experience.

Note: Next issue, I will talk about Neurographica art (see above), which is a great meditative art form . It's a great way to maintain mindfulness. To give you some background, I tumbled this summer and have post concussion syndrome. This artform is supposed to help with your brain neurons. I can't say I'm getting cured anytime soon, but I do find that my brain seems a bit more relaxed after a neurographic workout. More next issue.

What coming up in the studio?

The second half of the fall class session will begin on October 23rd and only costs $99 for five weeks (around $20 per class). As this is student-driven program, the students have come up with the following topics:  masks, haunted houses, abstract trees, turkeys and pumpkins/corn stalks. We'll be doing mixed media. Sounds like fun!

If you're interested in attending, please email me: jjgoodell@gmail.com

That's all for now!

Be careful who you trust, for even the Devil was once an Angel. Bianca Scardoni

Fall 2024 Newsletter

 Pan Pastels. A unique alternative

As I write this blog it is hot outside. I am soooo looking forward to fall. I like the cool, crisp mornings and sweater weather in the afternoon. Besides, my flower beds are reaching "spent-hood," so it's time to put in some autumn plants and decorations.

Last summer I wrote an article on soft pastels, providing lots of information regarding drawing (painting) with pastels, including how to work with pastel sticks, pastel pencils and even the best paper (ground) to use. I touched upon a fairly new product called Pan Pastel and how it serves as a good alternative to working with traditional methods.

The pans
The biggest difference of Pan Pastel is namely the pan where the color lies. Made of the same ingredients as the stick and pencil, Pan Pastel comes in fairly good-sized pan, packed with solid soft pastel (some refer to this as chalk). See below to view one such pan.

Normally, when creating a pastel painting, you use your stick to lay down the color. I may also use cotton swabs or a blending with my cots covered finger. However when using PanPastels, you use applicators.

I like the intensity of the colors. Using applicators also seem to give me more control. But best of all, I don't have pastel dust building up on my picture. If I do, it's minor and I simply take my ground (paper) and tap it against a slip sheet I have below.

The color palettes

The pastels come in a handy pallet that I can use immediately. There are several themes: basic colors (see below), sketch & tone, earth colors, metallic, skin tones, designer color and more.

Completed Project

Just recently I created a still life with an apple and some cherries. It was fun and easy to create. I would highly recommend this product. BTW, you can see a demo on this on my YouTube channel.

What's Coming this Fall (2024)

Students have selected an autumn theme, so we will be covering leaves, gourds, landscapes, sunflowers and holiday cards, using graphite pencil, colored pencil, pastels, watercolor and charcoal. It should be fun. 

Classes will be conducted within a five-week session. The session fee is $99. Each class within the session is $20 (give or take a dollar). Individual classes (taken separately) are $25 each. See details below.

Identifying colors

I have covered color mixing before in this publication, Studio Muses (see a treasure trove of color ideas in my blogger log). This past class session we again covered color theory and mixing in depth, including the Isaac Newton and the CYMK* color wheels as well as how to make greys and browns from complementary colors, color temperature and so on. 

One of the most common mistakes I think people make when they buy a new travel tin of watercolors is not identifying the color cakes in the half pans. Very often knowing the colors you have are very instructive, which one has more red it in, more green, more blue. Don't believe me? Here is a picture of my Lukas half-pan set and the color swatches I've created to truly examine what each color offers.

The primaries are lemon yellow, magenta, cyan. 

Below are the swatches. While our computer screens can distort color, I want you to take a moment and really "see" the colors below. Notice how red in the cadmium red is as opposed to the magenta or alizarin crimson. Look a the blues, the ultramarine blue is more of royal blue as opposed to the cyan or Prussian blue. The burnt umber is far more reddish leaning and darker than the raw umber (do you see the green in the raw umber?)

So why is this important It really makes a difference in color mixing. I personally like working with cyan, magenta and lemon yellow. While the chart above doesn't show how reddish cadmium yellow is, it can make a difference when mixing. So, just for grins, I'm offering the following chart. I took cadmium yellow, lemon yellow, ultramarine blue, cyan blue and mixed them. The greens seem to be the same but when you look closer, there is a difference. I've also include mixing black with yellow to make olive green and mixing burnt umber with ultramarine blue to create a dark gray. 

Why not try this yourself? In fact, I challenge you to see what happens when you mix your colors randomly. Does anything change? Maybe take notes to remember what you did. This is definitely the fun part of color mixing!

*C=Cyan, Y=Yellow, M=Magenta, K=Black (the same colors that appear in your color printer

What's coming up?

2024 Summer Session

Newsletter: Drawing with an ink pen

Let’s draw with an ink pen WITHOUT using a pencil first. 

Some of you may say I'm crazy. You want me to draw with only an ink pen? Yeah, I know this is scary stuff. I can hear the questions now.

• I can’t draw with an ink pen?
• What if I make a mistake?
• How do I correct mistakes?
• I feel more comfortable starting with a pencil and then using my ink pen.
• This will be nerve ranking for me.

This past class session in my studio (via Zoom), I taught my students how to do something they thought was impossible: draw with only an ink pen. It's been four weeks now, with the last class this week, and I must say the students have done a remarkable job, even outstanding. In this newsletter, I want to share some of the nuggets I passed on in my classes.

For years I've been teaching students to draw with pen and ink. In fact, I hold workshops on the subject. However, I always told everyone to start with a sketch in pencil, getting things just the way you want it, then add ink. If you want to add watercolor, erase the pencil marks and add color. Most people did a pretty good job.

From the outset, I was a bit trepidatious about this method myself. Not only did I have the same fears and questions listed above, I also was afraid I couldn't teach it without making a complete fool of myself. But as they say, I carried on.

Perfection is not attainable, 
but if we chase perfection,
we can catch excellence.
Vince Lombardi

Perfection is overrated.

I think the hardest part of drawing with a pen—any kind from fountain to technical—is fear. For myself, I have always drawn with my pencil first. My biggest fear was, “What if I make a mistake.” There are a whole slew of other fears as well. It’s sort of funny, because I’m one of those teachers who encourages students to “throw it out” and begin again.

But working exclusively with ink to create your sketch is just learning another skill. Remember when you started out, the hard part was even putting pencil to paper. Then little by little you learned a new skill. The same can happen here.

Here are some advantages and/or reasons to use ink alone. 

• Sloppy is good. Really? Just ask some of my travel workshop students about using sloppy copies. It’s a great way to just let go and sketch.
• Wobble lines are good; they create lively ones and are more expressive.
• Creating a line without a ruler is a skill and well worth the effort.
• Increases creativity.
• Fast and fun.
• Somewhat representational and full of life.
• When you start, ignore the mistakes and don’t sweat the details.
• Once you begin to master this type of sketching, you discover a whole new sense of freedom.
• Go with shapes first, details last.
• You’re responding to the world around you; it’s like a narrative of your life.
• Learn to “restate” your lines. There are no mistakes, just lines to be restated.

For this article, I will cover fountain pens and technical pens. If you want to learn more about dip pens, please go to this link at my YouTube channel to see a two-part series on dip pens.

The Fountain Pen.

There are all sort of pens available today: ballpoint, rollerball, gel, felt tip and so on. I especially like fountain pens. What?? Didn't that go out of fashion in the 1950s when the ballpoint pen was invented. Well, yes but that doesn't mean the fountain pen is not a good drawing tool. I like how the ink flows out of the nib, making it easier for me to draw and even write. Speaking of nibs, there are also different sizes that help when drawing a line. They come in extra fine to fine to medium. Not only that but the Platinum Preppy comes in point sizes: .02, .03 and .05. 

While a complete review of fountain pens can be covered in another blog article, I'd like to share a few products with you today. The two disposable pens I use the most are the Pentel's Tradio style sketch pen made in Japan and the Pilot Varsity made here in the USA as well as France and Japan. My favorite non-disposable fountain pen is Platinum Preppy from Japan (you'll notice Japan is mentioned a lot because they make some good stuff, along with Germany). These pens are also rather affordable at just a little over $5 a pen. If you get further into this subject, you will find that some fountain pens are extremely expensive. The most expensive pen, the  Fulgor Nocturnus by Tibaldi, has a gold nib and studded with black diamonds which recently fetched $8 million at auction.

The Technical Pen/Fine Liners

Rotring originally offered the Isograph techincal pen. Architects and commercial artists used them for their detail work. However, these pens can be persnickety with ink drying out often and then having to clean them often. In years since, the technical pen has been replaced by fine liner pens that have a nib size as small as .003 to .08, basically the same size of the Rotring brand. My favorite is Micron with Copic pens coming in a close second.

Ink

What's nice about these fine liners is their varied nib sizes and the ink is usually permanent. Fountain pen ink has traditionally been water soluble, which has always been a negative for me. The reason for this phenomenon is that the permanent inks have been India ink (which contains shellac) and acrylic ink. Both of which will clog the fountain pen. 

But there's good news! During the past few years, some ink companies have developed permanent products: pigmented and carbon inks. Both are supposed to be permanent. Two of which I can totally recommend are: Platinum's Carbon Ink and Sketch Ink. There are others but these are the ones that have worked for me.

Do NOT put India or Acrylic ink 

into a fountain pen as this will ruin the pen.

One last pen: Fude

I ran across the Fude pen last year. It is a funky looking pen, and I just had to have it (of course, I'm addicted to art supplies--better than alcohol!)

Here's a photo of a Fude by Sailor:

Notice the nib, it's lifted a bit. In fact, it may look like it's broken but it isn't. The lifted edge makes wide lines. For smaller lines, just turn the nib around and draw very nice fine lines.

Notice the fine lines and then the bold. I used watersoluble ink, which I could use as a nice wash. It's a fun pen. By the way, you can find lots of videos on YouTube on Fude pen.

That's it for the time being. I'll cover more next month, such as continuous drawing and paint first, ink second.

Winter 2024 Newsletter

Happy New Year!

Last fall, I talked about drawing in pen and watercolor. It was a fun session, but not as much as the one we had in the November/December session. We were planning on studying acrylic. A student requested that we do holiday cards. So I took up the challenge. 

To be honest, I hadn't touched my acrylic paints for months, so I was a little rusty. It was difficult to rev up in the beginning, but once I started going, I had an immensely wonderful time. I think the students did too. So much so, they requested we do the same this year during the holiday season. 

Here's a glimpse at some of the cards we produced:

This was done in an Impressionism style. Once you get the idea of dabs going in different directions, the painting gets easier.

Hey, some snowmen. One is the traditional and the second he fell down against a tree. Maybe later this year, we'll create snow girls.

A Christmas tree done exclusively with a fan brush. New technique learned, new skill earned.

Sleigh bells. I always called them jingle bells--must be a family thing. But in fact, they are sleigh bells and date back centuries. This was a card where we painted the front and continued to the back.

One more example, a wreath done with a cotton swap. What fun that was. I first painted the barn door, then the wreath. That's the beauty of acrylics. It is so flexible. You can paint over anything you don't like or add stuff you do. I love it!

So what's up next?

This next session we will be exploring drawing with ink again, but this time, we will eliminate the pencil and eraser. Yikes! In other words, we'll be drawing strictly with the ink pen. While it may seem scary, it's actually rather fun and freeing.

This next session, which begins January 9/10, we will be exploring drawing with ink again, but this time, we will eliminate the pencil and eraser. Yikes! In other words, we'll be drawing strictly with the ink pen. While it may seem scary, it's actually rather fun and freeing.

We meet every Tuesday or Wednesday for five weeks from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fee is $90.00 for the five-week session.

Here's the syllabus:

• Week One: Introduction to the fountain pen.
• Week Two: Techniques using the technical pen (Micron).
• Week Three: Creating perspective without a ruler.
• Week Four: How to draw continuously (without lifting your pen).
• Week Five: Having fun with monochromatic drawing/painting.

Topics or sequence subject to change.

Register at jjgoodell@gmail.com

All levels of experience welcomed

Come learn in a fun, safe and encouraging environment.