Color Doodles

Here are some sketches done with pen and oil pastels.






Taste of Sketching
7/1/06 10:53pm
07/01/2006

Went to the Taste of Chicago and tried to do some sketching. I felt so self-conscious. These sketches were all done in 10-15 minutes each. My models kept moving on me.

06/12/2006

This week I tried quick sketching with my oil pastels and a pen.
These are about 8x8" and each about 20 minutes. These are from this week's WDE on WetCanvas.com

It's funny I started quick sketches using oil pastels (OPs) and didn't like the lack of detail in something done so quickly. So I tried watercolor but must not have figured out how to use them properly because all I seemed to be doing was mixing colors and wiping the small palette in the travel kit. Not enjoyable and I used too much water so not strong enough colors. Okay, so I moved on to watercolor (WC) pencils. didn't have to do much mixing because I had a large number of pencils. And because I used very little water, the colors were nice and saturated. But it still lacked detail. At that point I read a book about sketching with WC pencils by Charles Evans. He alway goes into his WC pencil sketches and punches them up with pen. That finally gave me the combination of detail and saturated color I wanted but the sketchbook paper wouldn't stop warping from the water used!
So I decided to try the pen with a much lighter, looser approach with oil pastels. And surprise, surprise! My favorite painting medium just became my favorite sketching medium.
I'm finding this whole circling back to where I started as rather funny!

I liked my experiment with brush-tipped pen and Oil Pastel so much that today at lunchtime I went out and did a 10-minute plein air sketch.

I used VanGogh OPs which are harder sticks. It was only 70F today but the car was in the sun so the OPs sitting in there got warmer than that. But still they were fine to use. Did not seem to soften at all.

Okay so here is the sketch. Kind of loose is what I was striving for.