Valley Stream train station

20 minute drawing of the Valley Stream train station. Sharpie pen in my Cachet earthbound sketchbook.

-R

Portrait by Vic

This is a drawing of me done by my friend Victor. We met up in the studios at school to draw and catch up. I was having a shitty day and my drawings reflected that so I decided to sit and let Victor do a portrait of me. I think it's a really well executed charcoal drawing and I'm happy to say that I am the proud owner of it. I am definitely going to frame it and hang it up. Thanks Vic !

-R

Hell's Gate from Astoria park

I can't believe it's been so long since my last post, I feel like I'm slacking a little. I'll try to keep up with daily posts. School is getting hectic but I don't want to use that as an excuse.

I did this watercolor at Astoria park in Queens, NY and it took me about twenty minutes. I feel like I'm slowly figuring out my new watercolor set and I have been using it a lot. I've filled a small sketchbook with color charts, mixing charts and opacity tests.

I've done several drawings of the Hell's Gate, but never a fully planned out piece, next time I'm over in Astoria I'll take an hour or two to make a nice watercolor painting. This was done with Daniel Smith watercolors in an Arches 140 lb sketchbook.

ps: I apologize for the crappy picture, I usually just take photos with my iPhone because I'm too lazy to scan my drawings.

-R

Oil painting at QC studios

I met up with my good friend Victor today at the studios at school to do some oil painting. I know I should be painting way more, but it's easier said than done.

Victor is a much more experienced painter so he helped me out a lot. This was done in about two and a half hours from a reference photo. I'm going to attempt to do one a week, so I'll definitely make a post about them that way I can see some sort of progression.

-R

Moly X: Portrait 5

I guess I never mentioned it, but I am involved in an international Moleskine Exchange. It's a portrait group and I've been involved in this nice project since December 2009. The other people on the exchange are all great artists and they're from all over and have all different types of backgrounds. So the whole point is to do portraits of the owner of the book you receive and also a self portrait in every book. It's a round robin kinda thing and it's nice to see other people's work in person and see the books get more and more portraits in them.

I haven't received or worked on a book for this project in a while, but I recently got one in the mail. This book belongs to Son and he lives in germany, I just started his book but I usually post the first stages of a book on the Moly X: Portrait 5 blog, so I'll do a cross post also posting it here. This is done in india ink and alcohol markers. More to come as I make progress, don't forget to check out the Moly X: Portrait 5 blog, it chronicles our whole history.

-R

Quick post

Self portrait, marker on paper. More to come soon.

-R

Oldie but goody

I've been drawing and doing some watercolor sketches, but nothing that I want to share right now. This is an older watercolor painting I did in one of my Moleskine sketchbooks (over a year old). This is a church in Montclair, Essex county NJ. I think this was the turning point for me as far as watercolors go. I was very apprehensive about putting watercolors over my nice ink drawing, but as I came to find out it's an awesome combo. I still use ink and watercolor, but I feel like a lot of times ink lines control me too much when I use paint. Now I'm trying to just do a soft pencil sketch and concentrate more on the colors than on the lines. Some of you might have seen this sketch, it's on my Flickr page. I have other stuff on there, but I most definitely update this blog way more often. I do have way older stuff on my Flickr page though.

-R

New watercolor set !

So I just recently received my much anticipated and very researched new watercolor set. I ordered 24 colors of Daniel Smith's extra fine watercolor tubes with a 24 color half-pan metal box. This was a pretty serious investment, but I already love my set. The colors are extremely vibrant and I can tell the pigments are richer and stronger than my Sennelier set and most definitely my old Koi and Grumbacher set. I squeezed the tube paint into the half-pans and organized the colors in a comfortable arrangement. The paint took about 2 and a half days to dry up solid and to my surprise the paint hadn't diminished much.

I really like the Quinacridone colors specially the Quinacridone Burnt Orange and the Quinacridone Gold. The Quin colors are nice and transparent,but can be laid down thick so it covers well, they also lift off nicely when wet. I'm still in preliminary stages of getting to know my new set, but I've been experimenting and playing around. I did a quick self portrait and I immediately learned how some colors behave (I accidentally dipped my brush into the Pthalo Blue and did the shadow under my glasses, I don't mind the mistake but I will say that the Pthalo is incredibly strong and the smallest dot of paint will last for a while.) So this set is a permanent addition and I'm sure I'll have more work to show in the upcoming days/weeks.

ps: rich green gold and olive green are also some of my favorites.

-R