Art with coffee

I have a morning ritual where I get my day started with a few habits like exercise, morning pages and I have added a 5 minute timed sketch to the routine.  

I did this sketch in 5 minutes, all while enjoying my morning cup of java.

I look for something on Sktchy that I know I can sketch in 5 minutes, set the timer on my phone and get to it.  Here is this morning’s “Art with coffee.”


If you would like to read about my morning pages ritual, click below:

Morning ritual 

https://ginassketches.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/morning-rituals-a-good-way-to-start-your-day

Some recent sketches

I have been working on a project that I don’t wish to post just yet.  In the meantime, here are some sketches I did recently.

This one was an experiment that didn’t come out as intended, but I am content with the result.


This next sketch is a haiku sketch where you only have 7 lines to describe your subject.  I used 7 different colors so I could keep track of my own progress plus it helps the individual lines stand out.


Lastly, the photo of this little guy that was posted on Sktchy was too good to pass up so I sketched him.

Another painting started

This boat has been put out to pasture.  It’s a shame because it looked like it used to be a nice boat.  It’s pretty big.  Word in the boatyard is that it is being stripped down and it will be burned in a boat burning next month in Sayville.  I wanted to capture it’s last days as a boat before it was towed away.  I never got to it during the plein air event, but I was able to get out today and work on it. I decided to do an oil painting to change things up a little.  

I used a watercolor pencil to sketch it out first and you can see the burnt sienna from the pencil marks mixing with the paint.  Most of that will go away once I add the final layer, this is just the underpainting.  The underpainting is where I put a thin layer of paint to mark where the big shapes are.  I will probably go back tomorrow to finish it, if not, next week, to give the oil a chance to dry a little before I move on to the next layers.

I did the front because I liked the shape of the boat better in the front. All the details will be added later, plus any additional tweaking of line, shapes and color.  Darker values will also be added later.

Plein air again

Tonight was sketch night and I pulled the pastels out again…. I started this around 6 and the sun sets on the South shore at 7:09 so I didn’t have much  daylight toward the end of the painting session.  It still needs some tweaking if I wanted a polished piece and there is enough information here if I wanted to take it further so I am content with this one.

Sketching with pastels

So I decided to combine sketching and pastel.  I went to the local wild life refuge and sketched goats and an alpaca.  I didn’t have any plan in mind except to just try using the pastel sticks to actually draw with them.  I liked how these turned out and I think I will go there more often to try other media and do the same exercises.

PS, the goats were more active and it was like trying to sketch a school of fish.

The Artful Flea

Once a month, on second Saturdays, Chincoteague has an arts “flea” market.  I wanted to do one more painting before this evening’s wet paint sale so I tackled painting the market.  This was a ton of fun!  I usually sketch big markets and crowds of people with ink & watercolor, but this time I used pastel.  I loved doing this painting and plan to do more of these in pastel!