Wow

I am so happy and feel honored so very much - I received my first Blog-Award!!!!!
Dors, an artist whom I love and adore gave it to me. Please visit her blog Dors Art - you will be amazed too.

Now look - my very very very first award:
(*bursting with proud and all this joy*)

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To keep this award and the joy coming with it running please pass this on to 5 other blogs that you find inspiring.

I have chosen these 5 blogs - all are great and inspiring for me.

Beth S. Macre ~ Art Journal

Pet portrait and wildlife art by Karie-Ann Cooper

Arthur Simo Art Corner

Blueberries, Art & Life

From Forensic to Fine Art

To those I nominated, please take a moment and pass this award on to other worthy blogs that you like.

Daily sketchbook 2

My daily sketch today is a colored drawing of a cherry. I loved and will ever love this medium for it's ease and because I don't have to build a lot for my work - no waterbowl, no palette and brushes, no paints and turpenoide - just paper and the pencils.

It is not finished yet (he he he - you didn't thought that.......) but I thought it couldn't hurt to show it right now.

I used Koh-I-Noor CPs on drawing board. Size of the board is DIN A 5.

Daily sketchbook 1

Today (and yesterday evening) I felt like drawing one of our cats from a photo. She was sitting in the kitchen on her favorite place. *lol Good for us when we want to do the washing-up - we can't!

Not the best and by far no masterpiece, but it is the first time that this cat looks like exactly this cat - Nicky.

For I am a "landscaper" animal portraits are challenging, especially with graphite.

Okay - here's the result:

did you know this?

I never heard of Jon Gnagy. And obviously he made his video tutorials a long time ago. But nevertheless they are wonderful. Have a look.

On my sketchblock / drawing board

Because Geoff Kersey said that he never had seen a good watercolor painting that came out from a bad sketch/drawing I grabbed my graphite pencils and decided that I from now on make a daily sketch and a weekly drawing.

But what the heck is the difference between sketch and drawing????? I wondered about that since I started to make art (or try to *lol*) !

Unit last night.
I couldn't sleep so I got up and started my computer, surfed to "Jerry's Artarama Free lessons site" and watched one of Chuck MacLachlans drawing-instruction videos. I guess it was "Perspective made simple" where at the end said a single sentence: A drawing is a finshed sketch.

With this video Mr MacLachlan not only made perspective simple but also solved my so-long-gnawing-mystery on the difference between both.

However - I made a quick sketch yesterday evening (yes, I know everyone can see that it was a quick one.... next will be better) of our windowsill:

This sketch shows our wooden windowsill with a tiny plant (plastic - because of the cats), a lantern and a rose quartz. You can see it here:

Kim (our youngest) and Nicky

And this morning I started a graphite drawing - my reference is from the cover of Christopher Leeper's book "Realism in watermedia" - a great book btw and a great artist ( please have a look at his homepage) and I use a Vang sketchblock (it's okay but I prefer smoother paper) and a 2B and 6B graphite pencil.

I'll show this in a new post.

Mill - step III

I worked a little bit on the mill yesterday. I have huge problems how to do the lower walls. It is no brick wall and also not wooden so I thought to claim my right of artistical freedom and did what I see - okay - close to what I see. At the moment the brush is not always doing what I want and mixing the colors or layering the colors is not such easy too. I'm still learning.

Watercolor mill - step II

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Now here comes my 1. real watercolor painting.

I started with a drawing while I watched TV, not knowing that I would later decide to use watercolors and pen. How funny, the movie I watched was "Moulin Rouge" - two mills at one time .....

I started with the drawing:

I then applied a bit pen (Faber-Castell) and much masking fluid on the areas that I want to keep white.

Next step was making a light wash of cobalt-blue with a tiny bit mudder lake for warmthen the sky and then I put out the color for the clouds.
For grabbing out the color I used either a damp brush or a damp piece of kitchen roll.

Then I started to add greens (veridian, lemon yellow and cobalt-blue with different amounts each time) for the trees and bushes.

Now the mill got it's green cloth on, again the same mix for greens as for the bushes.

And here is where I am so far.

I used watercolorpaper made by Gerstäcker (a shop here in Germany) - 240 g/sm and rough (cold pressed?), 17 x 24 cm and as a reference an old calender photo of 2002.


To be continued ...................

Starting with watercolors

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Because I am a beginner I bought a good but inexpensive set of 24 tubes "Reeves Watercolour". I already had paper for my former painting attempts. Different papers, tons! *lol

And I have a wonderful husband who has open eyes and while shopping he stumbled over this thingy here:

On the easel: "Hot Dane" (Soft-pastels)

He at once thought "Wow - this could be a great easel for my beloved wife!" :))) and bought it.
He is right, this "easel" which is a bookstand made of bamboo is definately great for me. Not too large and easy to handle.

Also Kim, our youngest cat is thinking so. She always watches me painting or drawing and this new "buddy" pleased her very much:


On this photo you also can see my new bought watercolor stuff: The tubes, a small sponge, a palette, synthetic brushes roundbrush No 16, 12, 8, 4, 3 and 1 and a No 2 rigger, a goat hair brush 1,5" and masking fluid (very important, I had no idea how useful this is!!).
Graphite pencils and a rubber I of course have already.

Also watercolorpaper I bought months before because I needed it for colored pencils and pastels.

Welcome to my art!

May I introduce myself a little bit?

My name is Martina, I am born in 19- okay, not such interesting. :-)
I am a self-tought artist and I live in Germany, near to Hamburg.
I love to paint and draw and started to learn it in December 2006.

My main medium has been colored pencils, pastels and mixed media - but predominantely colored pencils.
My favorite theme to draw and paint is nature, pets and wildlife. and a bit still-life, but I'm learning this yet.