What I'm packing to make art outside this weekend!

And a video replay for paid subscribers

May 24, 2024

∙ Paid

Sunday, June 2nd, 10:30am central— Image Word Mystery: Ekphrastic Fantastic with the art of Mati Klarwein. Free. Hosted by Vision Train

Paid subscribers: You’ll find the video replay of last Sunday’s Image Word Mystery Creative Jam “THE EXQUISITE MYSTERY” & links to the Community Chat below! (That was so funnnnnn, y’all!)

Lisette smiles in the foreground with eyes closed, behind her is a massive blue sky, white clouds and flat green field.

We’re off on our first camping trip of the season!!!!!!!

Mostly I packed high grade snacks and art supplies.

What’s coming with me to make art outside this weekend?:

Pigments— Watercolor pan, watercolor pencils and, my new obsession, the Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble crayons.

Tools & stuff— I’ve got a handful of different water brush pens with me, paper towels & a spray bottle of water. There’s a roll of painters tape, some 300g hot pressed watercolor paper and a small artboard so I can clip and tape stuff down. I’m skipping the plein air easel this weekend in favor of resting the artboard horizontally on my lap. I like the immediacy there and can really pool my water up on the page without it running that way. Other than that: Camp chair, drinking water & mad sunscreen!

(Brittney Monster’s Dibs the Raccoon is the winged angel watching over the scene!)

This was the setup I hiked in with the other weekend at the bison range in the wildlife refuge.

Throughout June I’ll be deep-diving with paid subscribers on all things plein air & we’re gonna be making some sweet poetry-with-place.

And I’ll report back next week with the art I make this weekend!

Prompt for you?

I’m focusing on clouds right now & invite you to get into clouds, too. Drawing nature while it does its thing means everything is constantly moving and changing- light, colors, shapes, relationships between objects. I like just being with the change and seeing if I can capture some kind of emotional truth about a scene while it flows and changes before me…

I don’t have a ton of practice drawing skies and clouds, really, which is fun because I don’t have one way I “do it” yet. I’ve been letting myself just try out different colors, different ways of looking at and representing skies.

This was from the refuge:

Watercolor and artist crayon illustration made en plein air featuring bright blue skies, wavy clouds, hot yellow and green foliage on a wire bound watercolor notebook clamped to an artboard. — caption...

And this was a study I did in the studio this week, looking at “Pilgrim of the Radiant City” by Nicholas Roerich— I was interested to feel how he’s working with color & value (some things we will be talking about in the Community Chat with paid subscribers next month!):