First of all, my sister got back from a trip to Argentina and gave me these handmade colored pencils. They look a lot like these I found on the internet. They are even bundled up the same. Anyway I like the look of them and praise the fact that I have handmade colored pencils that I am afraid of using them. Maybe I should still try them out.



Secondly, I received this new calendar where an outline of a painting is given daily and well, you paint. I have never been a big fan of painting because I don't have a good control over the brush but I need practice for my painting class next year. I have only done a few so far. They all look very similar to their originals. Comment if you like.
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I love your calendar drawings. And go ahead and use those colored pencils.

Judyvan

Aviation...I think you should try them colored pencils out!! They look cool. Definately not something you can really buy at a craft or art store around my state. As for the painting, are you using watercolors? I think it looks neat (the calender) and want to know where you got it from? I need to start practicing. I still have to do two projects to complete my online artist course one being mixed media (which is really complicated) and I have to do a still life watercolor painting with fruits and flowers. Which I don't think will be so bad. Very nice job on the paintings to by the way. Let me know if you need any study material on watercolors if you need it and i'll see what I can muster up.

Well, I also got the calender as a gift. Although I found it through Google at calenders.com. Unforutnatly it appears they are out of stock but I am sure you can find ones like it. The things that I find annoying are that you can imagine that the paintings have been reduced to a size of about a 4 inch square and the watercolors are cheap that it is impossible to make a decent brown with the red and green. Also there is a black but no WHITE! So I have been forced to combine 3 different sets of other paints!

Now the colored pencils are pretty weak compared to Prismacolors. I have to think of something to do that the pencils can take. Maybe something that doesn't need a whole lot of blending sice they can't blend at all although it is a 12 pencil set.

Hmmm Aviation, then maybe the pencils would make a great decoration in your art studio surroundings. They are pretty cute. If they don't work that well then I wouldn't mess with them because its more of a watse of time. That really sucks about the calender as well. I was hoping it was bigger. From what I am learning from my watercolor study unit, there really is no need for white in watercolors and much less need for black. If you want white in a watercolor you skip around the area you want white. They have a special liquid type stuff that you let dry in the area and later just rub off to get the white area to stay and keep washes from bleeding into the area. When I remember what it is called I will let you know. The reason for no white though is because you can get the color effects of a lighter hue by adding more water to the mixture. Ohhh and another thing never paint a light color over a darker color in watercolors.

Well, I know not to put a light color over dark, silly! Well, just adding water doesn't have the same effect as adding white. Well, it doesn't appear to. And for that blue bird painting there was a note on the side that said to get the effect of the trees in the background you use almost no water. So I would have to use white to get some of the different colors. I didn't like that one anyway. It looks easy but it proved itself to be difficult.

My mom went to a garage sale today and got me a 24 watercolor set. It seams cheating because it eliminates a lot of the mixing but it has a couple decent browns! Which I mentioned earlier is difficult to make in the set given with the calendar.

aviation there are some water color lessons--free--on the internet--i havent practiced with them for a while but you have inspired me to get them back out. i perfer the pans--i even like the ones they sell at drugmart even though there is only twelve--i dont like mixing colors either. also i heard you can use rubber cemet instead of buying masking fluid. i havent tried it yet. but i think you are doing a wonderful job--keep working with those water colors.
have you seen venus watercolor pencils flowers? they are spectacular.
venus i know you will do a great job on the fruit. please post when you get that done.
Lori

Lori, no problem..I usually try to post all of my work here before I send it out to get graded. Like when I did my portraits, I sent the one I did of my daughter Tuesday that I really took my time on. Still waiting for my grade though.