Leaf

I sketched this leaf in my Moleskine notebook during my watercolor class yesterday (hence the wrinkled paper) with brown Micron pens and watercolor. I love my Moleskine sketchbooks.

Watercolor Painting - Autumn Path

This painting is from my class work for the watercolor studio that I'm in this semester. I'm working hard at trying to improve my watercolor skills, and so far I feel like I've been doing pretty well with trying to apply what I'm learning in the class.

Inspirations: Vintage Books no.1

This weekend, while I was in Woodstock, Vermont, I went to a store that was selling old and used books. If you're ever in Woodstock, I definitely recommend stopping in Pleasant Street Books.

I spent a good amount of time looking through the old childrens' books, mainly because I love a lot of the old illustrations that you can find tucked away in those books. I also love vintage cover art. The owner of the bookstore gave me permission to take pictures if I wanted, so I snapped a few pictures of some things that caught my interest.






I also took some photos of decorative bindings on a few of the older books that were in the shop as reference for an upcoming art project of mine.


And this is what I wound up bringing home with me! I bought this hardcover, clothbound edition of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. It's 373 pages long and has numerous full color plates inside, illustrated by A. Duncan Carse. There's no publisher's date inside, but the bookstore owner said that it's from the early 20th century. I just thought it was a really beautiful book.

I also brought this old, torn book cover home with me. The store owner had a bunch of detached covers propped up around the store as decorations. I liked this one and asked him if I could buy it, but he wound up just giving it to me. Two thumbs up for the cool bookstore owner!

More figure painting stuff

Here is some work from in class yesterday. The first is pencil on paper, about 9"x12". The second was a color study done with acrylic on an 11"x14" canvas panel. The plan is to eventually make a larger, more finished painting using these two studies as resources.