Good morning!

I just received this lovely email from Francesca from Ireland. It was in response to my article in the current Art Journaling Magazine now available at Barns and Noble.

It got me thinking about all the places one could look for pigments to use in your art. It is easy to try. Just add some gum Arabic to help the pigments adhere to the watercolor paper. I assume you would need to grind the pigments into a fine powder. A mortar and pestle like the kind you need for making mojitos should work!

This is what Francesca writes:

My name is Francesca and l live on the southeast coast of Ireland in an area known as ‘The Copper Coast’. I really enjoyed your work on the Roussillon area of France, l have recently been making my own inks and watercolours using foraged pigments. I was interested to know if you have details of the local sources of the pigments in earth tones. The coast in my area is rich in alluvial mud stones which is easy to grind into pigments. There is a choice of colour, earth tones, lilacs blues and greens, they also contain mica fragments so sometimes l get sparkle too.

        I have been a hobby artist for years but my interest in natural color comes from my interest in ecology. Thank you once again for a great article. Best wishes Francesca. 

A new color palette: Hummingbirds can see colors we can’t even imagine. Their color discernment goes well beyond our rainbow color spectrum, writes Virginia Morell for Nat Geo. Researchers studying wild broad-tailed hummingbirds in Colorado found they could determine spectral-colored feeders from feeders in nonspectral colors. “Seeing them do this right in front of my eyes is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever witnessed,” says Mary Stoddard, a Princeton evolutionary biologist.

Read more at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/06/hummingbirds-see-colors-outside-rainbow/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=Animals_20200618&rid=B3A6CED8605047579A2791D10CEA9344

I am so happy to share with you my new article, Color Choices, in the July 2020 issue of Art Journaling Magazine! It is always a privilege to be included in such a prestigious art magazine. My article is about how I make watercolor color choices in my travel journals.
Whether painting landscapes, windows with flowers, or just preparing a colorful backdrop for journaling, there are color choices to be made. Color is what initially drew me to watercolor painting. As a novice painter, the excitement I felt for all the lovely bright juicy colors when putting watercolor on paper led me to use every single pigment on my palette in all my paintings. Unfortunately, my attempts ended in a big, ugly, muddy mess. This was the beginning of my lifelong quest to learn everything I could about color and how to make certain combinations to create beauty instead of dreadfulness. I learned many secrets of mixing color by studying how to use the color wheel and by producing oodles of color studies. This article shares with you some thoughts on how to successfully create colorful, vibrant paintings and art.

Watch for the release of Art Journaling Magazine Summer Issue 2020 available July 1, 2020!

Welcome to International Nature Journaling week

(1-7th June 2020)

I just learned about this wonderful upcoming event and wanted to share it with you all. During this week we will come together as a world-wide community to celebrate and document the beauty and diversity of the natural world. 

“Nature journaling allows us to open ourselves to wonder and explore with joy.”

Each day during International Nature Journaling Week will be focused on a different aspect of nature, which will be a starting place for our journal pages for that day. You can access the themes for each day through the Program page or in the list below:

1ST JUNE – PLANTS

2ND JUNE – ANIMALS

3RD JUNE – FUNGI

4TH JUNE – NATURE FINDS

5TH JUNE – LANDSCAPES

6TH JUNE – SKIES

7TH JUNE – ECOSYSTEMS

Traveling is a great way to inspire ideas for paintings in an art journal. I am fortunate to be in the colorful, sunny land of Baja, California, Mexico for a few days. My focus has been bird watching every morning – early before it gets too hot and the birds are still active. Inspiration from nature is a great way to add to my journal.

My brother shared with me an app called ebird which has been very helpful to keep track of all the beautiful birds I have been seeing here. In the afternoons, I am enjoying relaxing by the pool and painting in my journal. The birds are colorful fun to watch. Here are a few photos that I took over the last few days. Insiration from Nature…..

Inspiration from Nature

It is fun to add pen, ink, and watercolor washes to create monochromatic pen and ink paintings to your art journals. These are easy to do and are a great way to make little paintings in your journal to record your travels. I am currently teaching a series of classes in my Tumalo Studio in Oregon. The weather has turned quickly into a feel of winter, so what a great way to bring in the new season than to do some sketches and monochromatic washes.
The focus of this series of classes is incorporating pen, ink, and watercolor. Here is an example of one of our lessons. I started with a photograph I took of a quaint village in the south of France – the Dordogne area.

I did a contour drawing of the parts of the photo that I wanted to include. Then I used this as a reference and transferred it to my watercolor art journal. I drew it with a permanent pen. I added watercolor washes of Quinacridone Burnt Orange and Aussie Red-Gold, both by Daniel Smith. Where needed, I added more pen and ink lines after the painting was dry.

add pen ink to monochromatic watercolor washes

I am happy to announce that my painting, Summer’s Delight, was accepted into the WSO Fall show 2019. It will be on display with the other accepted paintings at Central Oregon’s Community College Rotunda Gallery.

The paintings will be on display for the month of October 2019.

I am excited to share with you a new watercolor find! It is a tiny paint palette. I don’t know how this guy does it, but he creates a 3D print out of a tiny watercolor palette that fits in a tin the size of the Altoid tins. It is a single piece so all those annoying things that happened with the loose half pans are no longer a problem. One of the big issues was that some of the pans would fall out. People tried sticky tape, magnets, and/or hot glue. With this design, this problem has been solved!

If you like to travel light and take along a watercolor palette, then you may want to get one of these for yourself! I contacted him on Facebook. He was very responsive and quick. I ordered 2 and paid him $30 through PayPal – that included the shipping for 2 of these neat little palettes. They are made of a very sturdy plastic-type material. And honestly, it is amazing that he can “print” these out!

If you are interested, contact Steve at his facebook marketplace:

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/179231272929069/

If you would like to see other reviews that I did on watercolor paint palettes, check out my previous blog posts: