Birthday Flowers

To see my paintings visit my website www.janblencowe.com

 Yesterday I celebrated my birthday! Since my birthday is in the spring and since I love flowers and gardening I tend to get a lot of flowers for my special day and yesterday was no exception. These beauties are from my husband who also got me an ipad3 much to my delight! I also got flowers from my friend Joan , pansies for my flower boxes from one of my sons, a container of tulips from another friend, and a gift certificate to the local garden center from my mother. Needless to say you'll be seeing sketches of flowers in the next few days.

This is done with my fav Uni-ball Vision pen, Daniel Smith watercolors, and Golden Fluid Acrylics. I'm really pleased with how well the 100lb. paper in the Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook takes all the wet in wet water media I throw at it.

I've put links to the Stillman & Birn website and Facebook page in the sidebar for you to enjoy!

Sketching Farms and Food

To see my paintings visit my website www.janblencowe.com

Tiffany Farm, Old Lyme, CT, Stillman & Birn Beta Sketchbook, Copic, Prismacolor, Utrecht Design, Mark-It, Uniball Vision

Really loving the new Stillman & Birn sketchbooks. 180 lb. paper in a sketchbook is just fantastic.

This was done late in the day this past Sunday. Tiffany Farm is one of the few remaining working farms in Connecticut. I pulled off to the side of the road and sketched from my car. It's a view I've done before and i always find the buildings challenging. I liked the rows of stubble in the field in the foreground. Corn will be growing there in a few months.

Here we go with the Stillman & Birn Alpha, spiral bound sketchbook.  White, 100 lb. paper which is working very well for ink and watercolor washes. I'm using a Uniball Vision pen and Daniel Smith watercolors.

Here's a close up....

This was done at Savvy tea Shop in Madison, CT a favorite hang out of mine.

Tea and Scone at the Books-a-Million cafe in Waterford, CT also in the Alpha sketchbook, Uniball Vision pen and Daniel Smith watercolors. Using a lot of water to lighten the background washes and the paper is holding up well.  The page does buckle somewhat when using watercolor, but it doesn't curl like some sketchbook papers do. The buckling doesn't bother me at all because once the sketch is dry and the book is closed the weight of the cover (and other pages when you get further into the sketchbook) flatten out a lot of the buckles.

Still in the Alpha (which I think is going to become my foodie sketchbook!) Uniball Vision pen and Daniel Smith watercolors.

This week end I'll be in New York City sketching, so stay tuned!