Earlier this month, the Rush Fifty-Something tour rolled through Denver and I was in attendance (along with my dad). I will never financially recover from this.
A photo of the venue before the concert. We were disgustingly early, but it filled up almost completely by the time the show started.
Attentive readers will know that I really like Rush. I'd even go as far as to say it's my favorite band, and I'm really bad at picking favorite anythings. Unfortunately for me, I didn't fully appreciate them until after the R40 tour in 2015, so I figured I had missed the boat for seeing them live forever (not the most devastating thing because most of the artists I like are dead or inactive anyway). But I was pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong, so there I was!
I got two free Daniel Smith dot cards (36 dots total) from a friend in Urban Sketchers Boulder. I like the idea of Dan Smith paints, but I don't have the inventory space or budget to buy all the colors I like. The dot cards give me the opportunity to have fun with weird colors without going bankrupt! I thought about different ways to make the dots portable before settling on the extremely low-tech option of cutting the dots up and taping them into a mint tin. (As we know, I do love me a mint tin)
Daniel Smith carries a lot of interesting colors, especially in the way of earth tones. I've been married to the same set of primaries-plus-green for a while, so I decided to try branching out a little by putting together a fall palette.
Watercolor dots, listed from left to right. Row 1: Sap green, Cadmium yellow medium hue, Transparent red oxide. Row 2: Transparent brown oxide, Quinacridone gold, Phtahlo blue (red shade). Row 3: Cadmium orange hue, Pyrrol red, Prussian green. The first photo shows the dots new, the second shows them after a few weeks of use.Read more
September was a busy month for sketch meetups. I went to both Boulder meets in addition to the Fort Collins one since they didn't overlap this time! I keep telling myself I'm going to discuss each of these outings in separate posts and never do, so I'm throwing them into one post so I can stop being so behind. The overarching theme was cool buildings.
The first meetup of the Urban Sketchers Fort Collins chapter was in August. I was surprised there wasn't one already when I started looking for groups last year. I would have done it myself, but me starting a recurring social group??? In this economy??
This group has a different energy from the Boulder one because some people have been bringing their kids! Which is awesome! More kids should go on art outings. Also, I brought my dog and everyone was a big fan.
Of course our first meeting was in Old Town Square. I've drawn in the square many times already, so I split off to walk up the street and find a building I haven't worked with yet. I picked one that I've thought a lot about drawing without actually getting around to it... the architecture is neat and there's a horse in the window. I tried using watercolor crayon to add some brick texture and am happy with how it turned out!
Pen and watercolor painting of a brick building with a green awning. The lower part of the building is painted teal and white with red accents. There are plant containers in front of the lower windows. The right window has a white carousel horse displayed inside.
The lunar eclipse on August 27 was almost completely visible in Colorado. My phone photos of it came out predictably awful, so I sat outside and drew it with a flashlight as it progressed.
Sketches of the stages of the lunar eclipse. The right page shows the eclipse at its maximum. Most of the moon is shaded red except for a sliver of white on the top.
An extremely crunchy phone photo of the eclipse. The red tint is visible but at what cost...
