Following the Masters - Robert Henri

My painting of Marine Storm Sea after Robert Henri

On the blog Following the Masters this month Michelle has given us the opportunity to paint from Robert Henri's paintings. Although I have his book The Art Spirit, I had not really looked at his work much before. I ended up loving the painting I chose, "Marine Storm Sea". Before I finished the two studies and my interpretation of this painting I was sure I could feel the surge of Mr. Henri's sea.

(above) Robert Henri's Marine Storm Sea

a pencil value sketch as well as a watercolor and some white gouache

I swear to you every time I take a photo of my work it looks different, like I've changed the settings such as the lighting settings ... and I have not. Any suggestion's?

Pastel Chalk sketchbook ...

Lemon ~ Pastel Chalk

(click on picture to enlarge)

I think I mentioned this sketchbook, as well as many others, back in February 2007. This one has a corrugated brown cardboard cover with brown paper bag type paper and appears to be hand bound. The only thing I put in this book is pastel chalk work. I just like the way it looks with color on the brown paper.

I really do need to update this blog.... I need a different archive system but this template that I am using is one of the first ones and it isn't easy to update.... Any suggestions about how to get a new template that I won't lose everything, or how to change some of the sidebar? I welcome all suggestion's. Can you tell I am not techie?

Pen and Ink Sketches from the shore

Here are two pen and ink sketches from yesterdays walk along the shore line.

This is Mt Rainier in the back-ground. The body of water is Case Inlet and the shore below the mountain is Key Peninsula
I had planned on sketching the view from where I sat on a log ... then realized I had gotten carried away with making the trees too large to include anything else. Oops!

Also, I had done a couple studies of the small waves that were lapping along the shore and I just couldn't focus on how they were shaded. Today I may take my camera and see if I can't capture some wave action to study.

Virtual Paintout - San Francisco

Yellow house on 6th Avenue- Virtual Paintout

I love contour drawing.....

I've decided to give Virtual Paintout a try. Oh boy, what fun. I found I was all over San Francisco using Google Street View. I was hooked on placing the 'person' icon in locations all over the city. Finally I settled down and picked this pretty yellow house to sketch, did a contour drawing and then painted it.

I'm looking forward to seeing where the Virtual Paintout will be next month. Give it a try!

Autumn Leaves ...

What a beautiful sunny day it turned out to be. I think I heard the weather reporter this evening say it reached 61 degrees here today. I'm seeing daffodils ready to bloom in a lot of yards, and yesterday at a friends house I saw a rhododendron blooming. Its looking a lot like spring around here.

As the day wore on the better it seemed to get. I received a call that a couple would like to come look at the work I had available for sale ... in particular "Autumn Leaves". After they came and confirmed that was the one they had in mind I offered to let them take it home to see if it would work out for them in the particular spot they were thinking of. Within the hour they were back with a check ... Its a good day. "Autumn Leaves" SOLD.

Illustration update....

All illustration's copyright ©2009-2010 Nancy Van Blaricom

In the photo above you can see a few pages of finished illustrations I have completed for the children's book I have been working on. Each actual painting is 8" x 8", on Arches 140 lb cold press paper measuring approx. 11" x 10". You can tell in the photo that I have each small painting slipped into a clear envelope (notice the glare) to keep them clean until time to photograph them for publication.

There are parts of the illustration process that I am thoroughly enjoying ... such as the physical painting of each page. Other parts like the deciding how the the character will look on each page is somewhat tougher.

~ "A wisely chosen illustration is almost essential to hasten the truth upon the ordinary mind, and no teacher can afford to neglect this part of his preparation". ~ Howard Crosby