It’s nearly the end of September! While the weather has been drier and slightly cooler lately, it still doesn’t feel quite like fall. However, we can’t complain too much: Our area was spared by Hurricane Helene while others are in the thick of dealing with its immediate aftermath, so I guess we’ll take the less than perfect temperatures and be grateful it isn’t worse.
Another tropical system is expected to form in the same area that spawned Helene, unfortunately, and we’re all watching it closely and hoping for the best. At this point, there’s little else you can do, aside from making sure you have any shelf-stable emergency supplies you might need (and most of us have probably already done that).
Earlier this month we marked the 20th year since Hurricane Ivan brought so much damage to our part of the Gulf Coast. It was the first summer after we’d built/moved into our home (where we still live), and my parents and youngest sister came here to weather the storm, because their house at the time had a large pecan tree in the backyard that was a threat to the roof. We were all together today at a family birthday celebration, and we spent a little time remembering the most terrifying moments of that storm. Hard to believe it’s been 20 years!
More Spoooooky Houses...
Last time, I was doodling spooky houses and tinting them with watercolor and watercolor pencil (and then some white accents in gouache or whatever else seemed to work). It was fun enough that I decided to doodle a couple more.
The first one, I thought I’d try a monochromatic look in shades of purple… I believe I mostly made this one up from scratch (though it’s been a while, so maybe I’m forgetting). Either way, I had much fun making it.
The next house shape started out being loosely based on an image I found online. Then it got even looser as I simplified it and decided that perspective is over-rated.
I wasn’t sure what color(s) to use for this one, but ended up following a whim and making it red. It’s a bit in-your-face and, well, “murder house”-y to have it all red like this, so I decided this house didn’t need ghosts. A blood-red house with a red sky is creepy enough without any ghostly figures or glowing eyes in the windows!
I’m not sure if I’ll do more of these, but with all of October still to come, it’s possible the mood will strike…
The Pumpkining
At some point I decided to try making a less spooky autumnal house—a pumpkin house! In my head, the house would have cute architectural details and decor outside. Maybe a clothesline… A lantern lighting the door… Just lots of fun things.
When I got down to doodling, it didn’t happen. I think I got discouraged by the dip pen and just made it simple. Maybe I’ll try again sometime. It might take a little extra planning to get right.
I did go back and highlight parts with gold watercolor, which adds a nice shimmer in person, but is difficult to photograph or scan well.
I then decided to make a bunch of simple pumpkins just for the fun of it… And this is something I definitely want to do more of in October and maybe November. I love pumpkins, and painting or doodling them is always fun!
Some of them have gold highlights…
Autumn Flowers and Blackbirds
This one’s based on something from Diane Antone’s YouTube channel. Just some fun, simple autumn-themed flowers and birds, with gold details. (The scanner didn’t show the gold details to their best advantage, but it gives the general idea.)
I later tried a slightly different thing along the same lines, on a smaller scrap of paper… This one’s a snapshot, which may be better for the gold paint:
Potted Plant Collage... AGAIN.
Somewhere in here, I wanted to play around with simple collage, and I chose a familiar subject—potted plants. But this time, rather than collaging just the pots and then drawing/painting the plants, I cut everything from paper.
Here’s a photo from early in the process, when I was placing the flower pots, trying to arrange them in a pleasing way and leaving space for the plants to go between rows.
For the pots, I mostly used scraps I’d painted earlier with the dregs of a dirty palette or when cleaning my brush between colors.
Next came the plants.
I pulled out several pages I’d made on the gel plate, and that’s where most of the plants came from. Greens, but also a darker page printed with black, purple, and green paint.
After gluing these into place, I added some details in white paint pen, black ink pen, white chalk pencil, color pencil, and even a bit more watercolor. A few tiny pots went here and there to fill in the page, and I finished with watercolor shadows under the pots.
This is another really fun, absorbing thing to make. It’s perfect for doing while listening to an audiobook, podcast, or music.
Hillside Villages
Remembering the hillside villages from this blog post, I decided I’d like to do it again.
This time, I changed a few things. I didn’t put houses on a distant hilltop, for one thing. When I doodled these (yes, there are multiple hilltop village doodles again, because it’s addictive), I didn’t plan, but just improvised as I went along. I think that’s the best way. Start at the bottom of the page and just work your way up, adding one row of overlapping trees and houses/buildings after another until you reach the top of the page. You can stop and add a sky, or mountains, or whatever comes to mind.
Here’s the first village I doodled this time around, with just the houses painted in (with watercolor).
I contemplated leaving it like this, with just the human structures painted and the trees and landscape left black and white. I do like this more minimalist style. It reminds me of something you’d see in a children’s picture book.
However, in the end I decided to tint the trees, grass, mountains, sky, etc. I like that look, too, but part of me still prefers the one above…
Here’s a demonstration of how different things can look depending on whether you scan them or photograph them. First is scanned, second photographed (quickly, with my phone, so not ideal or very “professionally” done):
I have two additional hillside villages ready to paint, and a third in progress, so there will be more to come.
They do start to get a bit “samey” after a while, but if you cared to, you could change them up a lot with different styles of architecture, different types of trees, different levels of detail, different colors, and so on. Personally, as long as I’m having fun making them, I don’t really care if they look alike. It’s all just for fun, after all.
I’ve just been using my cheapest black ink pens for these doodles. They’re the ones I used for the first “spooky house”, expecting the ink to run when it got wet. However, it really doesn’t seem to run much at all, so it’s fine for this type of thing. No idea if it’s archival or whatever, but it doesn’t matter to me. I’m not creating masterpieces here, and once they’re scanned or photographed, a decent (by my standards) digital copy is saved, anyway.
Oh Deer...
One day, recently, while walking by a window, I did a double-take. There was something big and brown down in the bottom corner of the backyard, where there really shouldn’t be anything big and brown…
No, it wasn’t a bear (though I’ve dreamed about finding a bear in our yard on several occasions). A deer had apparently jumped the fence into our backyard, in search of some tasty nibbles!
It wandered here and there, making itself at home and causing me to wonder if deer are visiting our fenced yard on a regular basis without our knowledge.
I followed, watching, from room to room, until it eventually made its way to the front of the house, right outside my craft-room window, where I recorded this little snippet:
{Snippet deleted for technical reasons… Imagine a short video taken through the open blinds of a window… The deer is nibbling grass, then seems to catch sight of the videographer through the window, freezes for a second, and slowly turns and moves out of sight. That’s more or less what you’re missing (i.e. not much).}
After a while, it reappeared in the back, and I went outside to see it. I did see it, and it saw me. Evidently it wasn’t in the mood to chat, because after a short staring contest, it turned tail and hopped the fence gracefully, disappearing into the woods.
