Peony

There is something about the simplicity of a line drawing. I was going through my collection of photo's from my garden and was delighted to find a snap shot of Peonies. I did this on purple card stock paper using a white gel pen. Originally I thought I was going to add color, but after showing the rendering to my husband, I decided I would just leave it as is.

Love in the Mist

Some flowers have such beautiful names. Here's two more flowers in my botanical series.
Geranium in shades of voilet and Love in the Mist in shades of blue. I sketched both with a Faber-castell artist pen in Sepia and then used watercolor and colored pencils for detail.

I was a busy girl....

I was a busy girl yesterday. My new special order David Yurman blue topaz w/diamond ring came in, so I went to Nordstrom to pick it up. While there my partner in crime sales associate said "Would you like to see the new pieces we just got in?" Duh...of course I wanted to see...big mistake. I ended up buying a Bijoux necklace. So I think I'm set for a while with jewelry. I'm not sure what is worse buying lots of clothes or buying jewelry...what can I say...it's an obsession...me and David Yurman. I have so much of his jewelry I probably could open up my own store. I'm just rather lucky my husband let's me indulge in my passion for jewelry.

Hand made journals

In one of the daily digest I receive someone had given instructions on how to make your own moleskin type journal. The instructions were easy enough that I decided to give it a try. The first journal was
done in pink flowers is 5 1/2" by 8 1/2" using card stock paper. The second one I did was a 5 1/2" by 7" watercolor journal done in light blue travel paper. I used 300lb watercolor paper.












I really enjoyed making these journals and probably will make more in different sizes and give as Christmas presents this year.

Blue Poppy

Here's another in my botonical series. I first drew a line drawing using my Faber-Castell sepia marker and then painted the detail in watercolor. I had bought yesterday a new Black Gold 3/8" dagger watercolor brush by Dynasty, which is good to do fine lines.

Botanical Flowers

I thought I'd try my hand at botanical flowers. This is my blue series of flowers. I think I might have 6 more to go. I did these sketches using Faber-Castell sepia marker outlining the flower and then added watercolor, finishing off with colored pencil. I really love these MarimeriBlu Venecian watercolor pallet.

The ten thousand dollar dog

This is my lastest pet portrait of my husbands beloved "Benji". As I like to call him "the $10,000. dog." Benji has been gone now for 12 years and it was only recently that my husband agreed to having a portrait done. Benji was a stray that my husband Rick found on the side of the road leading to Bodge Bay, California one Spring day. Benji was some type of terrier mix who was lame, had bad doggie odor even after a bath, and the tip of his nose was a pinkish red. Benji also had numerous medical problems, hence, the $10k nickname. The last year and half of his life Benji was in and out of the vet's office, with each visit we'd think this would be the last, but he always seemed to rally. Benji was with us for 14 years and finally his body could take no more and we had to put him down. My husband was heart broken and all pictures of Benji were put away. During the last few years that I've been building up my pet portrait portfolio,I would ask my husband Rick if he'd like a portrait done of Benji. While he finally said "Yes." So as a surprise I did his beloved Benji. I did the portrait in colored pencil on Art Spectrum colorfix paper. The paper feels like sand paper and eats away at your colored pencil tips, but takes the colored pencil with no problem. I rendered the portrait rather quickly and I think all my portraits will be done on this Art Spectrum.

I finally figured out headers!!!

I finally have figured out how to put a header of my dogs at the top of my blog. It was through trial and error that I finally got it to work. I'm so happy...one more thing about blogging.

As my blog title says "I'm crazy about David Yurman jewelry! My husband bought me this lovely smokey quartz with diamond ring...just because! A girl can never have enought DY jewelry.

Me at San Marcos Square

This is me standing at San Marcos Square. The weather had been perfect for the whole week I was there. I think when I look at this picture I'll always remember what a wonderful day that was.

View From Venice looking at San Giorgio











Side Street in Venice

Gondolas on the Grand Canal

I thought I'd post some colored pencil drawings that I did while I was in Venice, Italy. These were done in my small sketchbook moleskin. I used a combination of Derwent Artist Colored pencils and Derwent Colored Inktense pencils. I really liked using the Derwent Artist Colored pencils but wasn't too thrilled with the Inktense colored pencils. The Inktense had a tendency to smear and transfer the image to the other side of the page once the moleskin was closed. Probably a way to stop that from happening would be putting a piece of paper over the image so that it only transfers to the paper and not the moleskin drawing.

I'm hoping to develop some of the drawings that I did in Venice into larger pieces. Not sure if I'll do them in colored pencil or combination colored pencil and watercolor.

When I was in Venice Italy last month I really enjoyed seeing all those gondolas in the water. So I thought I'd try to capture them in watercolor. This was done in my small watercolor moleskin using Maimeri Blu watercolors.

My new watercolor molesking

Yesterday I finally got to use my small watercolor moleskin that I bought at Dick Blick over a month ago. I had taken it to Venice, Italy with me last month, but never had the opportunity to use it. When I was in Venice I bought a Maimeri Blu Metal box with half pans. I can't get over how vibrant the colorers are and I think this will become my new watercolor palette. Luckly I can get replacement colors from Dick Blick, Cheap Joes, Jerry's artarama, and probably some of the other online art suppliers.

Port Townsend outting

I always have good intensions to post daily, but I don't. Currently I'm participating in a Sketching class over on WetCanvas taught by Katherine Tyrrell.

The first week was trying to do daily 5 minute or less sketches leading up to longer sketches. I experimented with pencil, pen and ink, and finally colored pencil.

On Saturday I drove out to Port Townsend,Washington which is about 40 minutes from my house to have lunch and do my first outdoor sketch for week two of the sketching class. I had bought one of those Large Cahier plain paper notebook Moleskins (5.25 x 8.25) w/80 pages. I discovered that the paper was rather thin and not really good for detailed sketches using colored pencil. It took the colored pencil, but when I got close to the edges , the paper tended to get creases. So now I'll just use this notebook for practice sketches, things I don't care if they have mistakes.