Monday, September 12, 2011

Another take on Highland Avenue

Jeanette here...It’s amazing how Jim and I can sit sketching right next to each other, using the same tools, and come up with completely different results. It’s always been this way since 1980, when we met at art school.


I used a Windsor & Newton enamel 12-pan Lightweight Sketcher’s Box, a sable filbert travel brush in a Moleskine 5" x 8" watercolor book (just like Jim used).


I finished it with a black ballpoint pen. It’s my favorite tool. Lately, it’s been a Pilot easytouch fine point, which doesn’t get goopy and leave blobs on my sketch. The detail is blown up from about the size of a postage stamp.

10 comments:

  1. Jeanette- I really really like these! Jims are great too but I particularly like these. Nice work! Cheers

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  2. It's nice to see the mixture of pen and w.c., Jeanette, and great to see your wonderful work, too!

    I've always liked to mix ink and w.c. (though I don't always do so), and I've been looking for - and wondering about - a good disposable pen. Thanks for mentioning that Pilot. I'll check it out.

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  3. I like this too. I think pen & WC has a whimsical quality -- maybe its the emphasis of line over tone or the scale of thin line texture over broad watery tones.

    Tom Hart -- I like to use a Permawriter II 03. I like them a lot for drawing -- but they don't last very long

    I usually like doing the pen first and then follow up with light color washes--either drawing directly with the pen or using a WC pencil to establish the big shapes (the pencil lines wash away when you hit them w/ water brush). Jeanette you implied you add the pen second -- Jim you use a fountain pen which means you add it last because its not waterproof ink correct? I think Cathy Johnson (who has commented here) uses fountain pens also.

    So pen first or last? Permanent or Water soluble?

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  4. I like the "handwritten" quality of it.

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  5. Love this, Jeanette. I'd like to see you do more guest blog posts!

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  6. Yeah, both are great, different approaches.

    Interesting how yours has an emphasis (intended or not?) on the red stop sign, a sort of bullseye in the middle of muted colors while in Jim's version the porch of the white house is central, especially due to the diagonal shadow above it.

    How long did these take ?

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  7. Jeanette, I really like what you are doing with pen and watercolor !

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  8. Great work Jeanette ! you must ask Jim to put more of your work in his blog. You must have another point of view even if you sketch from the same point of view... and that's what's interesting. I bought a all bunch of different colors of Pilot V5 and V7 pens and these are very good pens I agree Pilot has very good pens.

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  9. Thanks everyone for your kind comments and observations. Let's all get out there and do more of these little sketches!
    Daroo: I like to do the ballpoint last, it helps give definition to things. Jim likes a fountain pen with water-soluble ink, and also uses it last.
    David: Neither of us had a watch on, but judging by the change in shadows we were working for maybe 2 hours. The time-consuming part was the pencil lay-in of all the perspective.

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  10. the sketches are beautiful. There is just something about doing observational pen & ink/WC sketches. Its funny that both you and Jim do the pen work last (I have seen that from a lot of artists). I took a trip to Scotland and England this summer, and I ended up doing all of my pen work first, fearing that I would not have time to capture the detail of what I was sketching if I put down any color first (I was with a group so that was part of the rush). I still ended up with some nice pen and ink sketches though:)

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