The potbelly stove in ink and watercolor

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Again, the the gouache painting is too leaden. I’m going to move on from the Zorn palette to something a little brighter. I haven’t decided what colors I’ll be using.

Today I punched away wildly at my Daniel Smith Ultimate Mixing palette and the colors were okay until I painted the little flower pot on top of the stove. That Cerrulean Blue Chromium it a little too wild, but I approve of the rest of the picture. Pen and ink really floats my boat.

The squiggly lines show that there’s a complaining jaybird inside that stove.

Could use a shadow under the stove…that’s that voice of my inner critic talking to me. What a pest that guy is. All he ever does is bitch and moan.

Instead of a fireplace, what about a potbelly stove?

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While I was researching fireplaces for my children’s book, I came across pictures of potbelly stoves. My grandmother actually had one of these, and a terrifying wood-fired kitchen stove. I’ve been wrestling with the complications of explaining how to open a chimney flue to let my errant jay bird escape — flues aren’t a big topic in books for 5-year olds. Serendipitously, the potbelly stove solves my problem — it’s obvious that you only have to open the top door and Jimmy Jay would simply fly out the door. No explanation required.

This gouache painting uses the Zorn palette (yellow ochre, vermillion, lunar black, and white). No photoshopping for this one.