Author: Keith g Shafer

Sky Studies

One of Two-Wet on Wet vs Wet on Dry

This week I spent some time working on sky studies. Clouds and sunsets, colors and techniques to improve my landscapes.

Prompted by World Watercolor Month for clouds last week, I decided to spend more time getting to know skies a bit more. After all, I’ve spent a lot of time up there and I certainly have seen some beautiful skies.

Two of two Wet-on-Dry

Steve Mitchell, The Mind of Watercolor, had a good tutorial on clouds the other day working in both wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques. As you can see in these to photographs each has its own merits depending upon the affect I’m trying to achieve. Naturally I didn’t want to waste the paint and time so what do we to with two cloud/sky studies? We add a landscape of course!

Continue reading Sky Studies

Time to Get Serious

The union oyster house Boston 11 x 14 cold press watercolors by Matthew Mc

After several weeks of World Watercolor Month #worldwatercolormonth, it’s time to get serious about painting. Now…don’t get me wrong, I’ve been very serious and taken my time and done my best on many of my paintings, but…

When I see a painting like this, The Union Oyster House, by Matthew Mc I realize I still have a long way to go when it comes to composition, value, and color in my work. As I mentioned in my post Quantity-Quality-Or Both, I’ve been pumping out a quantity of art, especially this month, to practice and learn but once this month is over I’ll need to concentrate on quality. Continue reading Time to Get Serious

A Peek Behind the Curtain

First layer…somewhat loose

I thought I’d give everyone a bit of a peek behind the curtain this week when it comes to my paintings and sketches.

On the right is my first layer of a painting I did for #worldwatercolormonth sponsored by www.doodlewash.com, whose daily prompt was “Blossoming”. As this is a “loose” painting, meaning I’m not trying to make it a photo-quality work, I used a large quill brush on 300# cotton paper. The idea is to just get a rough outline of the subject.

Continue reading A Peek Behind the Curtain

Of Pen & Ink

Pink Crape Myrtle

I like to experiment with different techniques of pen & ink. Recently I bought a dip pen with several nibs and went to work on a couple of botanical studies.

On the Pink Crape Myrtle painting to the left I penciled in the overall outline before going to the pen & ink. Usually when I’m using a fountain pen I tend to just draw out the sketch without first penciling in the outlines.  Freely inking the sketch forces me to concentrate more as I draw my subject. Continue reading Of Pen & Ink

Quantity-Quality-Or Both

Photo and work in progress

Is quantity, quality, or is both that are important when it comes to learning to paint with watercolor or sketch with pen & ink?

Learning a craft is much like playing a sport—to get good at it, one must practice, practice, and practice some more. Sports legends like Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, and Tiger Woods spent hours, days, and years practicing their sport to get to the level they have all achieved. Continue reading Quantity-Quality-Or Both

Waiting for the Paint to Dry

Waiting for the Paint to Dry

Well I’m sitting here waiting for the paint to dry on a commission I’m doing for a dear friend of the family so I thought I’d take a moment and update my blog.

This has been a busy week for us. On Monday Ilene worked at the local Food Pantry while I worked on preliminary sketches and colors for Barbara’s painting. That’s after we dropped Bella off at the kennel and picked up a rental car. Continue reading Waiting for the Paint to Dry

We’re Expecting!

That’s right! These 60-somethings are expecting a new addition to the family and it’s due in September 2019. On September 16th Ilene and I will be picking up our new Oliver Legacy Elite II Travel Trailer.

While traveling full time over the past two years we’ve kept our eyes open for just the right place for us to eventually settle into. We think we’ve found it with Fredericksburg (FBG), Texas. Continue reading We’re Expecting!

Urban Sketching

Carol Hicks Bolton Antiques in FBG

In the course of improving my drawing skills and learning watercolor I ran across the group: Urban Sketchers a global community of “urban sketchers” started by Gabriel Campanario, a journalist and illustrator in the Seattle area.

I think it was Teoh Yi Chie at ParkaBlogs.com that introduced me to the urban sketcher concept. Continue reading Urban Sketching

Artists Journal

Happy Flag Day!

One of the reasons I decided to get serious about painting and drawing was I saw it as a way to keep track of our journey as retirees. I’m not really sure where I  got the idea of drawing/painting as we traveled but it’s certainly turned into quite a habit.

What I do know is on January 5th of 2018 I started my first sketch book and in December of the same year I drew my last sketch in that book. I know that in the beginning I used pencil but by the end I was mostly doing pen and ink. In fact, if you look closely at the picture above you can see the sketch on the other side of the page showing through…the sketchbook was designed for pencil, not pen and ink…oh well. Continue reading Artists Journal

Painting with Kateri

The first art “lesson” I purchased was through The Great Courses program. Taught by Kateri Ewing, her course gave me a good foundation on color, value, and techniques for learning to paint with what many believe to be one of the toughest art mediums—watercolor.

A fun thing she does in the class is show several ways to add “texture” to watercolor paintings. In this case she had us swab several colors on paper then sprinkle table salt and water on the collective colors. Continue reading Painting with Kateri