I decided to risk it with the dark blue background for the gouache and color pencil persimmons, and I love how it turned out. I just had to make sure it would be dark enough against the very middle value red. Fruit of the year from Stacie Martinez prompts

Ok, pears are among my least favorite fruits to eat because of the texture. And the flavor on its own reminds me of the texture. But they are a fun-looking fruit. Such a great shape and it turned out well in gouache and color pencil. Fruit of the year from Stacie Martinez prompts

I am so pleased with how this gouache and color pencil apple turned out. It really shows that beautiful mottled color of the skin. And the background square in the vibrant blue color pencil works great! Fruit of the year from Stacie Martinez prompts

I love how soft-looking these peaches in gouache and color pencil turned out! Plus they are one of the few fruits I'll eat. Mainly as peach cobbler and in peach oolong iced tea, though. Fruit of the year from Stacie Martinez prompts

I don't mind fake strawberry and I kind of like strawberry jelly, but I can't stand eating strawberry seeds. They sure do look pretty though! Fruit of the year from Stacie Martinez prompts.

I was handed down a huge pile of old, musty Communication Arts magazines from 20 years ago. I ripped out all my favorite pages and am now using the leftovers as acrylic palettes. When I'm done, I smear it around, and while it is still wet, I drag a stylus (or the back of my brush) in it to draw!

Color Planning for Stronger Watercolor with Patty Edge. This was an interesting little workshop about color planning. We started with the color swatches, figuring out the colors we wanted to use, and then a brief color thumbnail before the actual painting.

Charles Bridge in Prague with David Drazil. The demo for this painting was done at "live" pace, which many of them were not. Since watercolor takes so long to dry! A wonderful reminder of how I love to ink and paint together.

A Boat at the Beach with Ink and Watercolor with Martin Lachmair. This was annoying but fun. Annoying because I had just refilled all my pens and this was a bleeder. Worked fine after I let it dry a bit longer. I love the looseness in this piece.

The Art of Simplifying: Loose & Expressive Tropical Sketching with @anastasiiamoro.bsky.social . This loose tropical painting was great practice in negative painting, that is painting around the subject, instead of painting the subject itself.

Two colors was too hard, so I tried painting with just Prussian blue. Lots more water. Lots more glazing. Worked much better. Now to get used to that Indian red watercolor paint.

I am participating in a show that opens this Friday at Allied Arts, in Bellingham, a collection of exquisite corpses based on the various denizens of the Salish Sea. This is my contribution of a silver-spotted sculpin, which I had never heard of. And I have no idea who it will be paired with.

2 Colors with Unlimited Possibilities with Darman Angir. Prussian blue and Indian red. I had never used Indian red. What a watercolor paint! It is wonderfully gritty. Dense and opaque. Way too easy to paint overly dark with. So I tried again with this little cottage. Still too dark.

Stamen.

Paul Nash (British, 1889–1946) "A Drawing", 1913. Watercolor, Pen, Ink, Pencil, Crayon and Chalk, 55.9 × 38.1 cm. Private Collection. #art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

Since I am using a limited palette of gouache (ultramarine blue, brilliant yellow, and flame red + white), it was really hard to get the color red I wanted! But I made a color wheel out of them, so I just used that to find it. Year of fruit by Stacie Martinez is onto cherries.

Figs are fascinating. I proofread the book "Gods, Wasps, and Stranglers" by Mike Shanahan. (And one of my favorite covers from @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social when I worked there.) For Year of Fruit prompts by Stacie Martinez.

I think apricot preserves in an English muffin (ooh, or crumpet!) might be one of my favorite things. I would grow an apricot tree if we had a good location for it, but I think I would kill it in a year. Anyway, this is gouache and colored pencil, another day of Stacie Martinez's Year of Fruit.

The 2-Color Palette: An Overgrown Doorway with Susan Chiang. This bad boy is painted using only two colors! If I remember right (because I didn’t write it down), this is viridian green and burnt sienna. I never would have put these colors together, but they are just lovely. I really enjoyed this.

I like processed mango, like a blended mango curry. But the straight up fruit, while beautiful, is a straight up no. This is the third in the fruit series from Stacie Martinez prompts.

Lemon. I didn't like anything lemon beyond lemonade until nearly 40 (and Lemon Heads). Then I made Abe a lemon birthday cake. Well here's my second gouache and color pencil for year of fruit.

Practicing gouache and colored pencil with a "year" of fruit, a prompt list from Stacie Martinez. It's really fun because she also gives something to focus on, artistically. Here's "January": orange. All the quotes are because I'm doing one a day instead of one a month. I made a sketch book for it.

The common bracken fern on our property are often 5 feet tall and sometimes 6 feet. I measured a couple of fronds against myself and one was finger tips to past my elbow and another was finger tips to my sternum! That's like 1.5 & 2.5 feet, respectively.

For my Everything Journal, I have added stickers to the inside of the back cover because I guess the matte medium needs longer to dry? Anyway, it keeps sticking, so I put some washi stickers over the most annoying spots and it is much better.

This is my Everything Journal with a signature hidden in the cover. On the first page of the ToC signature, I wrote all the book’s info, like a colophon. On the right side is the first page of the sketchbook from a Playful Mushrooms workshop with @kimdellow.bsky.social at Mastering Mixed Media Expo.

I am so surprised that I am enjoying all this abstract art lately. Because of the way the covers are made for the Everything Journal (a large folded sheet glued on like a backward signature), you can have a signature inside the cover, too! I am using it for a table of contents (of a sort).

As long as we're doing ✨anti-Prime Day,✨ gang: The most direct way you can support an ICC creator is by backing a crowdfund. Don't wait until it's in stores! And hey, "The Goblin Throne" has just ONE WEEK LEFT to hit its stretch goals. Anybody wanna put their money where their mouth is? ;)

I had a bouquet of these vibrant purple flowers and tried to capture the color. I was surprised to find it was Quinacridone Rose and Lamp Black that did the trick.

Heehee! I learned a new book to bind and I love it!! The Everything Journal with Andrea Chebeleu. And I did it! I finished in by the end of class. I particularly enjoy the little main at the top of the spine.

Pets are the best, so when I saw Sketchbook Skool doing an A-Z of pets, I had to participate. It was a live draw-along. I chose a limited palette of a black Derwent oil pencil and Daniel Smith Moonglow watercolor. #sketchskool

There are a shocking number of found animal parts photos that come up in my OneDrive's "this day in your photo history."

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I had two old dried roses in vases to choose from. Of course, I have them because I have saved them in purpose to try out making inks and stuff.

Check out WICKERSON: Tales from the Grove by Derek Laufman on @kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com/projects/der...

One of the most interesting things in this workshop with Karoru Hirose was the different sorts of paper I worked on. The yellower paper is a not-great cardstock. The white with black ink is some weird coated card stock. The ink doesn’t soak in even thought it dries really well.

I wanted to try another mood mini from the Sketchbook Revival class taught by Cynthia Hauk. So this time I did the text on the same page, writing it around like a border. The bottom says: Grabbing into the dark, smoke and mirrors hide growing fear. #sketchbookrevival

True story! In grade school, I once decided to wear all red. But, as noted in the image, my only red shoes were late-80s kids’ patent leather kitten heels. And not a single color of red I owned was the same. Of course, it was a gym day so I had to run laps in my socks. #sketchbookrevival

During dog play time, I noticed the curly sepals of the petal-less thimbleberries. When I got them inside I noticed the lovely subtle colors.

Hey, stop doom scrolling, it’ll solve nothing. Why not instead grab yourself a BASIC emulator, download Usborne’s 1984 Weird Computer Games book & spend the afternoon making A WEIRD GAME, I mean that won’t solve anything too but it’s still a better use of your time drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxv0...

I'm annoyed at the thickness I drew the stems but I love how the colors turned out on this thimbleberry.

I drew these petal-less thimbleberries and was going to stop there but the noticed how beautiful the colors were.

This stamen is from so random lily my partner got at Trader Joe's. I saved them all to make ink it something! You can see the pollen spread on the paper, the nice orange.

Now that's a sky I would paint with phthalo blue if ever there was one.

This is one of the best books reviewed I've ever read!

We've been clearing out the invasive blackberries in our area and the native osoberries have been exploding in their place. Finally took time to draw a berry and they are gorgeous.

Anise scented sage. Wow. We grabbed this plant from the nursery because we watched a hummingbird going to town. And the colors are amazing. But taking this closer look, amazing. The flowers look like a happy snake eating an angry snake. For the Mindful Art Studio slow botanical challenge.

WICKERSON: Tales from the Grove has only 7 days left to back it on Kickstarter. Help soread the word! Reposts much appreciated🙏 www.kickstarter.com/projects/der...

We have a huge hedge of Woods's roses and they are just starting to bloom. I nabbed a single petal and a leaf for reference.

For the Mindful Art Studio botanical drawings herb prompt, I grabbed some mint from our garden! It smells so good! The leaves are so textured. #botanicalslowdrawing #mint

My first start at botanical slow drawing with mindful art studio. Mock orange. I'll do the real illo tomorrow but what great leaves they have!! #sketchbook #slowdrawing