Some tulips for spring and Easter weekend that I originally bought for Lesley's birthday. I drew the sketch with my new Pilot “Young Rex” (dumb name) fountain pen with mixed Waterman black and brown ink, and then watercolor over that. I didn't realize how architectural the vase is until I just looked at the picture… Continue reading Flowers for Easter
Tag: 2013
Chicago On the Ipad
To complete my spring-weather theme, here's Chicago in the rain (specifically Starbucks on State just north of Chicago Ave.). Actually I started the picture last fall sitting at the window counter, and then finished it from photographs. The beauty of rain is the great reflections. This picture is also part of a series I started… Continue reading Chicago On the Ipad
Ipad drawing
I thought I'd post a nice summer picture since the weather's been so rotten here in Wisconsin. It snowed all day. Some spring! I did this on my Ipad on Sunday morning sitting on my patio. It's not so obvious here, but when I matted and framed a digital print of this picture, all I… Continue reading Ipad drawing
More Color Studies
This assignment in David Hornung's book Color: A Workshop for Artists and Designers is to make one color look like two. The Inkpad app on my Ipad is perfect for this. It's really easy to make a template with two big squares and two small ones and then just copy it for each new attempt.… Continue reading More Color Studies
More Color Studies
This time the studies are painted in gouache (opaque watercolor), so as you can see a little cruder. But it's trickier to mix the paint instead of just moving some sliders in a computer program. Gouache, I'm finding, has it's own quirks. I can't use as much water as I do with watercolor and… Continue reading More Color Studies
Glasses
Just a small middle-of-the-night drawing I did with my favorite Pilot fountain pen and new bottles of Waterman brown and black ink. I'm up a lot with an aggravated sciatic nerve these days, so why not draw?
Framed Watercolor
I matted and framed two of the alla prima watercolors from the P&C Monday open studio, just to see how they look, but also so I could put them on the wall and look at them. This is “Green Woman.” I'm hoping to mat and frame paintings as I do them and then have a… Continue reading Framed Watercolor
Color Studies
These are the first color studies I've done based on David Hornung's book “Color: A Workshop for Artists and Designers.” I started out intending to do the studies in gouache on paper, but I found that in the back of the book Hornung includes a section on doing some of the studies digitally. A… Continue reading Color Studies
Roy Chapman Andrews
This was a really fun cover to do. Richard Quinney wanted to publish a paperback version of a book we did for Borderland Books a few years ago. He also wanted to jazz up the look of this version and thought we could use an illustration Steve Chappell had created for the hard cover, but… Continue reading Roy Chapman Andrews
Cows: A Closer Look
Paul Thoresen takes beautiful pictures of cows near his home south of Madison. He had already created a book of his photos with text on Blurb, but when he decided to publish the book through Borderland Books, he asked me for design help. I took what he had created and added spacing, better fonts,… Continue reading Cows: A Closer Look
Ken Crocker Artist 