Fig Tree in Fall

I am continuing to sketch a lot with my Neocolor II watercolor crayons. I think they are a good match to the paper in the Stillman & Birn Alpha series sketchbooks; I really like using the 7” × 7” Alpha sketchbook and a new one of these just arrived for me today.

Here is a sketch of the yellow leaves on our fig tree which I did as an experiment in sketching light subjects against a dark background. This is very hard to do in watercolor without resorting to various forms of masking. I’m pleased with how this turned out via drawing with the watercolor crayons and activating the pigments with a small wet paintbrush to create the wash. The crayons I used were lemon yellow and yellow for the leaves, umber, light gray, and white for the branches, and emerald green and Payne’s gray for the leafy backdrop.

Drawing While Journaling

I’ve been doing my morning pages, but I keep getting interrupted by cats. So I draw them.

Pomegranate In Neocolors

This week I’ve been continuing to practice with my new set of Neocolor II water-soluble crayons. Here is a sketch I did a couple days ago of a dried pomegranate. This is the one Neocolor II sketch I’ve done on cold press watercolor paper; the others have all been on the much thinner Stillman and Birn Alpha paper.

On Painting and Thought

I’m continuing to explore sketching with my new Neocolor II crayons, and here is a painting I did today of one of the Sugar Bee apples from today’s grocery shop run. I’m starting to learn how the Neocolors work as their own distinct medium. They go on the paper very smoothly — it’s a wax crayon — and it’s easy to spread the pigments around with a wet paintbrush. Once the paper is dry again, you can draw on it with more crayon in another layer. I also picked up a trick from a video about drawing birds with Neocolor IIs. The artist in this video uses a plastic palette with a rough surface. After drawing on the rough surface with a crayon, one can pick up the pigment directly with a wet paintbrush, thus turning the crayon into what is effectively watercolor paint. This can solve some problems posed by only using the crayons directly on the paper, such as being able to create a smooth wash, or being able to paint details with a fine brush. I made up an instant rough palette surface by using steel wool on a yogurt container top, and tested this approach out.

It is interesting that learning how materials behave — in this case a new art medium — is as far as I can intuit is the domain of non-linguistic thought. When I wanted to add yellow spotting on top of the red of the apple, I just knew that my little rounded flat travel brush would be a good tool for this. I don’t believe language had anything to do with this thought.

This is a consequential realization because the trillions that are being invested right now in AI are being built for the most part on the manipulation of language. To the best of my knowledge the heart of today’s AI boom is large language models (LLMs). There was a piece published in The Verge today about how this is likely a philosophical error. The article is entitled “Large language mistake” and has the subheading “Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it.” The article draws upon a perspective piece published in Nature last year entitled “Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought”, arguing its case from contemporary neuroscience and linguistics. I’m not expecting AIs to know how to paint watercolor anytime soon.

The Work

Neocolor IIs Arrive!

At last week’s sketchcrawl, I did a sketch using a small set of Caran D’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble wax crayons. Working with these crayons was interesting enough to warrant ordering a bigger set, and this arrived today. I quickly swatched out the set, and the swatch chart is shown at left. There are thirty colors in the set, and I added a couple of other colors as singles to the collection (Payne’s Gray and Sepia). Now I get to play and experiment to see how they fit into all the other sketching media I use!

Line and Wash and Soy Sauce

As remarked upon previously, for Friday dinners we almost always have a tofu-cilantro stirfry over rice. But we were out of soy sauce and had to pick up a new bottle this morning. It made a fine subject for a sketch. I did this with my fude fountain pen and Schmincke pan watercolors. I tend to use waterbrushes for my sketches instead of actual paintbrushes but today I used the latter — it’s a good practice. One gets a lot more control with real paintbrushes but they are harder to work with in the field.

Brush Lettering Workshop

I attended a short workshop today — more of a demonstration, really — on how to do brush lettering with different brush tools. I’ve tried it in the past with limited success but I think Mike Gold’s tip — work slowly between strokes — really hit home. I couldn’t resist drawing the Anna’s hummingbird outside and was beside myself when Mike said “Always draw a bird.” (I don’t need telling twice.)

Not sure how to use this so my holiday cards might get some fancy lettering this year…

Cats with Fude Pen

Now that the temperature has turned cool the cats are snuggling up more together and this afternoon they were uncomfortably trying to occupy the same cat bed. Esme is on top of Winston in the sketch here at left.

I have sketched the cats here with my Sailor Fude pen which I just resurrected today. This is a bent-nib fountain pen that is designed for Japanese calligraphy and is easily manipulated to give very thin to quite thick lines. I have loaded the ink cartridge with De Atramentis Urban Gray ink which is waterproof, though I don’t use any wash in this sketch.

Second Street Sketchcrawl

Today we went to the sketchcrawl that took place in downtown Davis in the morning. We all met at Second Street and G Street but I immediately sauntered east one block to a spot closer to the train station. This sketch here is of a smaller building nearby that serves as the Amtrak bus depot. I did one other sketch today; I looked the opposite direction from where I was sitting for the first sketch and focused on the colorful entrance to the Mexican restaurant there, Tres Hermanas. This sketch was to experiment with a small set of Neocolor II aquarelle wax pastel crayons.

After the sketchcrawl ended, Pica and I had lunch at Tres Hermanas with a friend of ours. We both had vegetarian quesadillas.