My Daily Carry Bag

Thanks to everyone who commented on the new backpack I bought to replace the bag that I lost. I mentioned that this is for when I go on actual sketching adventures rather than a trip to the grocery store, doctor, or to have coffee with a friend.

Some were surprised by the size of it and I confess that my “serious” bag needs to be ample because it might be carrying a tripod, stool and have to handle gouache or oils in addition to my typical sketching needs.

It was suggested that I do a post on my daily carry bag. Because my loss included the contents of the bag, I’m struggling to fill both bags adequately/properly. Add this to my generally fickle nature regarding what I carry and the best I can do is throw out on the table its current contents at this point, but I can assure you that it will be different within a week. For instance, I don’t have a kneaded eraser (a must) in my daily carry bag because l lost my favorite little metal container where I carry carried it. This is why I didn’t talk in detail about my new bag contents as they are changing by the minute (grin). Anyways, here goes…

The main bag: This bag is really the baby version of my old main bag. They came in several sizes and I bought two of them.

Bag with flap open: With the flap open this is the view. As you can see, all my pointy devices are accessible. You can also see that these aren’t the same pointy devices as you see in the contents photo. Photos taken at different times and some of the stuff was on my desk when this photo was taken.

Top View: I’ve tried to open all the compartments so you can peak inside. There’s a pocket on the back of the bag that you can see but I stuff things like a plastic bag and paper towels in it.

Bag Contents: Treating this as two rows (LtoR), Uniball Vision – micro, Pentel Kerry 05 mech. pencil, Ticonderoga #2 pencil, Lamy Safari (F), Kaweco Lilliput (F), waterbrush, #10 pointed round travel brush, spritz bottle. 2nd row – Nalgen bottle for water, Portable Painter Micro, Kleenex.

A couple things to note that underscores the serendipity nature of these contents. That Lamy Safari isn’t something I carry. I wanted to do something with Lex Gray and so I filled it and it found its way into the bag. The sketchbooks I show in the second graphic aren’t permanent fixtures. I’ll always have a 3×5 scribbler and I keep meaning to fill the tiny sketchbook, but the other one will probably be jettisoned soon. I’m using sketchbooks less and less these days (see below).

My Paper Case and Drawing Board: I’ve played mental ping-pong over the sketchbooks vs single sheet approach to drawing, art or whatever you want to call it and single sheets are winning the day for me. The reason is pretty simple. Sometimes I like pen and ink. Sometimes I’ll draw with pencil. At other times I want to do watercolor, qouache, etc. Being able to choose a paper on a per sketch basis is wonderful. Being able to choose the color and format of paper on a per sketch basis is, well…let’s just say it’s a bonus.

And so, in both of my bags I carry a “paper case” which is nothing more than a couple pieces of pieces of Coroplast taped together to form a book. Inside I can put any quality, size, or color paper. I can select one and clip it to the exterior and the book becomes a backing board for drawing. The biggest that will fit in my small bag is 8″ tall. A bonus of this approach is that it’s a LOT lighter than carrying a couple sketchbooks all the time.

** Note that the bulldog clip shown here is really horrible. I lost a bunch of clips with my lost bag and need to get some replacements.

So, there you have it – my daily carry bag. I try to keep it light and not carrying sketchbooks really helps with that. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Resting Next To A Friendly Birch

I’m trying to get back to a daily walk routine.  It’s been hard this spring/summer because of all the rain and a bunch of house stuff we’ve been doing, but I was out the other day and stopped to sit in a park near my house.  There was a birch tree there to keep me company and I decided to draw it, or at least its feet and legs.

Stillman & Birn Alpha (9×6 softcover), Kaweco Lilliput pen, DeAtramentis Document Black, Daniel Smith watercolors

Sketching Is For The Birds

It was only five days ago that I reported that we hadn’t had high temps above 10C yet.  Times change.  For the next three days we’re going to experience temps around 30C, which is kinda-sorta abnormal for us.  We generally get a couple days like that in mid-summer but certainly not in May.  But I’m not complaining.  I went sketching.

Another bit of news that’s relevant to this post is that I just got a hearing aid.  It’s not a fancy programmable one but it has allowed me to discover a lot of sounds I haven’t heard in a long time.

I stopped at a park bench and decided to try to draw/paint directly with a brush.  I’ve been learning how to handle brushes and Marc Holmes’ 30 in 30days (direct to watercolor) event is coming up next month and I want to try it. I didn’t bring my watercolors but I had a waterbrush with some diluted ink and so I did this simple drawing.  Look ma, no lines.  I include it here only for the sake of completeness.

I was walking along my river and the first thing I experienced was birds singing.  I love birds and spend a considerable amount feeding them every year.  But I haven’t heard them in decades.  Well, I can hear crows, but none of the songbirds.  Anyways, the trees along my river had birds, chirping birds.  And so my first act wasn’t to sketch but to lay down in the grass, close my eyes, and just listen.  It was wonderful.  I spent half an hour doing only that.

But I did want to sketch and so I sat up, noticed a line of trees and started sketching.  The “scene” wasn’t that great so I added my own mountains and came up with this sketch.

It was time to walk so I headed up river and eventually came across some rocks to sketch.  These sit, among others, at the end of a new walk bridge the city built last year.  I’ll have to sketch that soon but for this day these rocks were just the thing.  Color got added when I got home.

It was sooooo good to get out sketching.  Maybe I’ll do it again tomorrow (grin).

Trying Thicker Paint Applications

If you listen closely, good watercolorists will talk about beginners never using enough paint.  Insufficient paint is the cause of the pale images produced by beginning watercolorists.  This is true and I’ve been guilty of this sin.  Why do we do it?  Because we’re timid.  Pale washes are easier to control because they have a lesser impact on our sketch/painting.

A similar phenomenon exists in oil painting, but for different reasons.  If you were a 16th Century painter, it’s likely that you’ll be applying very thin coats of paint, generating very detailed paintings.  You might even be adding many layers of very thin glazes over the base paintwork.

At some point, however, some artists started using more paint.  The impressionists started working with “broken color” and the placement of thick spots of color became the order of the day and the notion of “brushwork” became a more prominent portion of the artist’s “signature.”

Fast-forward to today and we have both of those forms of painting, or maybe its best portrayed it as a continuum of thin and thick ways of applying oil paint.  For someone like me, who is trying to figure out how to use oil paints, I have found this confusing as I watch some artists use large brushes and apply thick layers of paint with a flourish while others use thin layers of paint and, typically, smaller brushes.

So, with this sort of variability, it leaves a “let’s try it” kind of guy like myself with a need to try both approaches to see what approach bests suits the kind of painting I want to do.  This last thing is important as I’m not interested in heavy impasto painting where identifying the subject is obfuscated by the brushwork.  Instead, I am trying different paint thicknesses within a narrow range in an attempt to paint fruit (or flowers).  I’m still a detail-oriented kind of guy, much to the chagrin of the painterly types who tell me to “loosen up” (grin).

Here’s an attempt at using thicker paint.  I find this approach fun but it’s so easy to muddy up the shadows while trying to turn the form.  This is a good example of this problem.  But it is a pumpkin; it’s just a slightly out of focus pumpkin.  I’m having fun with oils and learning a lot.  I feel it will improve my watercolors in the long term.

Relaxing In St. Simeon

Late in August most of the lockdown stuff was over.  We’re still wearing masks because we’re not idiots, but back then we were like bears poking our head out of the cave, unsure if we wanted to come out.  Being a bit apprehensive about traveling anywhere, but also feeling like most and wanting a change from being sequestered at home, we decided to take a trip.

We didn’t need or want a big “see the sites” trip and most tourist things were shut down anyway, so we decided to go somewhere and sit, without our computers, without TV, and without an agenda.  I even made the decision to limit my sketching during the trip.

We chose St. Simeon, Quebec because there isn’t ANYTHING in St. Simeon except a coastline along the beginnings of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  When I say there isn’t anything I really mean it.  No good restaurants, no coffee shops, no nothing.  But we did have a hotel that looked out on the water and it was quiet enough.  We drove up a valley that holds the Black River and did a bit of sitting by the river.  I spent half an hour making a sketch of the tree-lined roadway.  I had a lot of fun doing it but I can’t show it to you.  I’d forgotten what a spiral-bound sketchbook can do to a pencil drawing and the sketch has become a cloud of smeared graphite.

On another day, however, we went to “Port au Persil,” which is a small town with a gorgeous cove area and a pier where you can sit and watch whales.  I got to see my first beluga whale which was exciting.  Actually, we saw lots of them during our trip.  By whale standards they’re quite small but they’re snow white and gorgeous.  My sketchbook came out around the cove though.  The cove is full of rounded sandstone rocks and I couldn’t resist.  This reflects those formations.

Mostly, though, we sat on the balcony of our hotel, or walked along the beach.  This involved a lot of whale watching, some beer drinking and a lot of salsa and chips.  It was delightful.  I decided that I should try to paint the coastline and I’m afraid I let the paint get away from me a bit but I’ll share it anyway.

The trip was a big success.  It seems that doing nothing appeals to both of us and we felt great as we headed for home.  I need to spend more time doing nothing.