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

A few photos from the last completed sketchbook

Just a few random pages. I hope you enjoy them. Thanks.

-R

Philadelphia part2 Philadelphia Museum of Art

Like I said in my previous post on Philly, I didn't sketch or draw as much as I was planning on because I was exploring and looking at art the entire time. Here is one of the quick watercolor sketches that I did get to finish up. This is the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the stairs, there was a late Renoir show (which was pretty amazing) and they had the banners in between the columns spelling out "RENOIR." Like I said before, the museum is beautiful and their permanent collection is eclectic. Hopefully I get to go visit again soon. There is a lecture on Eakins and the Gross Clinic in two weeks perhaps I'll try to go back then. This was done in an Arches watercolor sketchbook (140lb cold press) with Sennelier half pan watercolors.

-R

RG Peredo after Matisse

At least once every two weeks I like to go to a museum here in NY. I frequent the Metropolitan museum of art because of the Greek and Roman sculpture garden as well as the European sculpture section. This last week I went to the Museum of modern art armed with my sketchbook and a pen. I walked around and I also got to see the new Henri Matisse show which was pretty incredible. There was a lot of artwork, a lot of etchings, paintings, sculptures etc. I think my favorite pieces were the simple etchings, which were studies and quick portraits, Matisse's self portrait etching was my favorite of the bunch.

After I saw the whole exhibition I walked around the museum and ended up on the 4th floor in the european hall, I found myself again in front of some of Matisse's work (I drew this painting, the tag next to it said "Odalisque with a tambourine" but I actually looked on the web for it and another Matisse painting shows up.) It took me about 15-20 minutes to do this drawing, and in that time I met a very nice family on vacation in NY from France. They walked up to me and started watching me draw and then slowly the children started asking me questions. I eventually started making conversation with the parents.

I think that's one of the cool things about drawing in public, you get to meet people who are curious and always interested in art. At the same time some people don't necessarily like the fact that you're there for a while drawing. I had a woman come up to me and ask me why I was drawing there, that I "should take a picture and draw at home." I always try to step back and leave room for others to see the works of art, but some people just like to interject their opinions. All in all the day was nice and I did a lot of drawings, but this was my favorite.

-R

Self portrait on brown paper

This is the other self portrait I did using that same reference photo. I did this about a month ago using a regular ballpoint pen and a white gel pen. I'm almost finished with the sketchbook I'm carrying around now, so in a few days I'll post a variety of pages from it. Perhaps maybe another version of this drawing.

-R