Sunday al fresco sketch of the Southern Oregon Siskiyous

This my third al fresco sketch. As I collected my gear I was thinking that there’s nothing interesting in my back yard. Could I be bored with the Al Fresco Art Club already? Once I seated myself under one of our dominating deodor cedars, I looked to the East and noticed some large cumulonimbus clouds over the distant Siskiyou mountain range. There was interesting atmospheric perspective (which I didn’t capture in my sketch), and my partner, wearing her Van Gogh straw hat, sat in the foreground painting in her sketchbook.

I used my Pentel Brush pen for inking. It’s pretty beat up — it doesn’t come to a point anymore, but then again, it never did, really. I did a rough sketch with a 2H pencil then inked the sketch with the brush pen. It was fun, and not at all boring.

Jimmy Jay holding his butterfly buddy

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Jimmy Jay, the protagonist of The Jay That Fell Down the Chimney, is holding his pal, Buddy Butterfly. I used a Pentel Pocket Ink brush for the inking. I have two of them, one comes to a nice point, and the other is a almost blunt — that’s the one I used for this drawing. I learned that it’s unwise to use a blunt brush when lots of fine lines are needed.

An hour before I started drawing I was looking through Albrecht Durer’s woodcuts. I really like his clouds and skies. I can say that I need to practice drawing parallel lines and practice keeping even pressure on the ink brush.

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