Spilling Over (as in abundance)

The theme for March over at the "Sketchbook Challenge" is "Spilling Over".

I'll repost part of what I posted on the challege blog here.

 

Here in upstate South Carolina March brought warming temperatures, beautiful sunsets

and the return of baseball season.

Why, what an odd thing to talk about on an art blog...

baseball season?!

Not for me, not really.

My sweetie is a college baseball umpire and I go to a LOT of baseball games (another abundance!).

Since baseball does tend to move (a little) slow, I have to find other things to do while sitting there.

So, I draw.

Or I paint.

I sometimes stitch.

Sometimes I knit or crochet.

This particualr day I painted and drew.

The campus I was at had an abundance of pine trees.

It was spilling over with pine trees actually.

Not to mention pine cones...

I decided to do some (kinda) realistic sketching this day.

I had my handy dandy sketching kit with me,

a brand new watercolor pad (140 lb hot pressed this time)

and a lightweight folding chair.

I picked a shady spot and set up my sketching area.

Oh, don't forgot sun screen and a hat (or an umbrella).

I looked around for something that had a pleasing shape.

I draw a lot of trees (they spill out from me) so it seemed natural that I would pick one to draw.

I actually wanted to paint this one first, then add a few details...

this is a fairly close rendition to what I drew the first time (I'm doing this tutorial after the original was completed).

We're not going for a balanced composition here - I'm just painting showing you how I paint/draw a tree.

Anyone could paint this, right?!

Right!

Now, add a few smears of green paint at the ends of the tree limbs...

Don't think about it, just do it.

Now comes the fun part!

If you read my blog, you'll remember the tutorial that I did on drawing a great journal page when you are having one of those "I can't draw days".

This technique is done almost exactly the same way.

Check out this post to see what I'm talking about and then hop back over here.

Okay- ready to put some marks on the page?

Honestly, this is all I did to begin detailing the tree.

Very.

Simple.

Outline.

See?  It really is a quick, uneven outline of what I had painted.

Now, I went back in adding the "zippers" (my friend Denise named them) at random sections of my outline.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I use a smaller nib size on this part of the detailing.

I used a size "S"  for the first outline and a size "XS" for the outer line and for the pine needles.

Here is a completed section.

Notice that I added the pinecones in on the limb - I didn't paint anything extra, I just drew the shapes in.

I could go back later and add a little highlight to them.
Click on the image to see a close up of it.

You can really see the difference in the way that the tree looks after adding the detail lines, can't you?

I want you to try this.

Then post your results on the flicker site so we can all see them!

Here is the completed tree that I did that day at the ballgame.

Actually, I want to go back and bump up the color a little bit

and add more detail on the pinecones /limbs on the ground.

Or maybe take a cue from Kelli Perkins and add some stitching with black thread..

yum, that sounds good.

Now, where did I put my black thread at...