Drawing with Mittens

What could possibly be more fun on a Sunday than going to Silverwood Park on a Sunday with a friend, to take kicksleds out on the lake and draw while wearing mittens????? I can't think of much more that could make it more fun except maybe adding in a random encounter with a friend I hadn't seen in a few years and her daughter and meeting a few other new people. Drawing with Mittens is an event (free; materials and kicksleds provided!) put on by The Drawing Project, a non-profit co-founded by Shannon Brunette (my fun teacher of Botanical Art and Experimental Drawing classes).

Materials used were kid cray-pas (the little skinny ones) and I used a limited palette of colors: black, brown, yellowish-white, orange, and two blues. Yes, I wore my mittens. I made 3 drawings and two are shown here. The first one was my warm-up and thus not shown.

The island was a satisfying drawing project and was mostly simple lines and then when I got it home I added a light wash of blue on the top and a very light very pale grey* wash to part of the snow. So I sort of cheated and didn't wear mittens at home when I was using watercolor. I love watercoloring over cray-pas or oil pastels. I think they should always be used together. *For the gray I used a mix of indanthrone blue and burnt sienna; my favorite way to make cool, warm, and medium gray.

The tree started out as a negative space project and then got filled in. My mitten ended up being used as the mixing tool to smear colors around. Then of course when I was using the watercolor a bit of it ended up in the blue section as well.

The negative space exercise helped me look at the space instead of the object and when I got home I did a negative space drawing of a section of the pot of nasturtiums. I did it on a piece of paper already background painted and then filled in the negative space with blue ArtGraf and surrounded it with a pink Montana marker. (I'm going to post on yesterdays post because it can be the start of the nasturtium series).