Malibu and Art Supplies

Artplein air

Aug 28

Written By

Hey everyone! Happy...day of the week?I'm writing this on a Tuesday, so let's say Tuesday.A few days ago I finally received the art supplies I ordered from Blick (entirely patron-funded too! ahh!!)! Some of you may have seen the vlog already. If not, you can watch it here:[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z68lRSkQIVU[/embed]I go over the products in the video, but essentially I bought a ton of canvases and watercolor paper, so I'm looking forward to doing a lot more traditional painting in acrylics and watercolor! I've got one painting set up and ready to get started with, and a couple other painting ideas brewing, and I'm all sorts of excited about it!For any artsy readers who are curious about the exact supplies I bought, I'll provide a list of links to the exact products I purchased at the end of this post. These will be affiliate links, which means if you click through and decide to make a purchase, I'll get a small commission at no extra cost to you :) So if you're in the market for canvas or watercolor paper...do ya girl a favor lol ;)Moving on!Sunday morning I went to Malibu!! :DTJ had been wanting to take Ollie up to Malibu Bluffs Park for a while, so we finally decided to go this past weekend. We had to wake up bright and early, but the drive was traffic-free for the most part and parking was not only available, but FREE. Not too many people were there either, so it was nice and peaceful, albeit cloudy.We decided to check out the trails first, although they were steeper than I thought they would be! They weren't very long though, so we arrived at the vista point pretty quickly. Decided to take some family photos, and luckily a lady nearby volunteered to snap a pic of all three of us.Congrats, now you know what my lock and home screen look like for my phone!(and yes leave my son alone he was NERVOUS)We walked around some more and did a couple loops around the whole park. Spied on a paddle-boarder through one of the telescopes, sat in a whale-tail shaped bench, argued on whether the large field was a golf course or not and learned that it was simply the front lawn of Pepperdine (you win this one, TJ).At the end of our visit I decided to do a quick watercolor sketch. You'll find it's messier than the ones I did in Hawaii, and I'm still debating whether to ink it.I'm most pleased with the tree trunk, as it did have a weird twisting, spiral shape, and I think I managed to accomplish that (or at least suggest it). Looking back now, I think there's just a bit too much white space throughout the sketch for it to be as clean or polished as I liked, and the grass isn't my favorite either.However, I am pleased with the washes I did for the bushes. A lot of wet on wet English technique there, haha. I took my watercolor teacher's advice on adding a new color to each wash, and the bleedthrough is something I'm very happy with.Also got some light sparkle in the ocean and some differentiation in the horizon.To be honest, I might clean it up, or repaint it with the intent to pump up the values, as I think it has potential composition wise to be a good painting, what with the S-curve of the sidewalk. But for now I think it suffices as a quick sketch and reminder of the day and what my view was.So that was my weekend! Hope you enjoyed. I've got some fun videos about bullet journaling planned for you guys, so be on the lookout for those! Thanks for reading!~Corinne