My Hawaii Nature Journal ~ Watercolor Pencil Orchid

Vacations are BUMMERS! Well actually, the bummer is when you get home from Hawaii in your sunglasses and safari shorts and tanned knees and turn into an instant icicle with snow globbing up on your cold blue knees!

I'm exaggerating just the tiniest bit....I was glad to see Daniel again, and to have a chance to share with him some of my best adventures as he took time off from work to drive me to my house. But that stinker was chuckling as he took this picture of me in front of my house (if I cut him a little slack I have to admit I probably would have been chuckling wickedly, too, if I were him).....

But it ain't FAIR! I've experienced a blizzard with 3" of snow, 60mph winds, downed trees, a 36 hour power outage and about 3½" of rain in the paltry thirteen days I've been back, and it has me vowing to retire early, move to Hawaii and live a life of ease, doing a painting every few days to sell at a nearby gallery to pay for my coconuts and margaritas....... ah, such are my dreams.....

Actually, today I wanted to show you how my photo of the orchid turned into a watercolor pencil painting in my journal. I'm going to show you how I did it, step-by-step, so you can see if this is something you might want to try yourself (if you aren't already an accomplished watercolor pencillist). Be sure to click on the pictures to see them close-up. (Does anyone happen to know what kind of orchid this is? Even just the genus, or maybe a common name?)

The orchid of which I took the original photo in the Hawai'i Tropical Botanical Park wasn't perfect and it showed raindrops and some wear. I decided to not show blemishes or water drops on my finished painting.

Since my main aim was to play/practice with the watercolor pencils, I didn't make any effort to draw a freehand outline. I brought up the photo in Photoshop, made a new layer, and traced the orchid to create an outline drawing (#1).

Then I printed out just the outline drawing (#2). Since I wanted the painting to be on the same paper as the rest of my journal, i.e. heavy paper that would take water without buckling or pilling, I pulled a sheet from the back of my journal and ran that through my printer to print the outline on.

Using just the pencils in the 12-color Staedtler set (I'm not promoting this brand particularly ~ it's just one I got cheap because the metal box was bent. But these pencils do a fine job, as do many other brands), I chose a lime green to start out the color (#3). You'll notice that there's not a lot of color there, because when it is wet, the color will spread and intensify. I tested out what it would do by making some trial swatches at the bottom of the sheet.

Next I wet the green, and when that was dry I put in the yellow center then started adding spots (#4) . Always start with muted background colors then put bright colors over them. If you forget and start with the bright colors (a pinkish red, or cerise, in this case), you'll have to be extra careful not to let them bleed as you try to mop in a subtle background around them.

Let wet areas dry before putting on more pencil if you want to control the colors even a little. If you pencil into a wet areas, it will make a really sharp mark that won't blend in very well with the brush. Experiment in your trial swatch area.

Next it was time to finish the cerise markings (#5), but on looking at the photo I decided to use a more orangish red to tone down the pink. I also added in some blue to give shadows, then wet it again.

It was looking rather pale against the white background, so I decided to make it pop out of the page with a contrasty black/blue/green background (#6). I blended this in really dark with all three pencils at once before adding color. Only part of it was added here (in #6), and I wet it to see how far out it would extend. Actually, I didn't have to add any more in the darkened background areas since I found I could pull the dark color sufficiently far away from the center with the watered brush.

I finished up with the remaining background areas (#8)(oops, there never was a #7!), and painted in a bluer contrast in the center areas. For these areas, I've just wet my brush and dabbed some color off the pencil point and painted that on.

I didn't try to copy all the ferns and leaves in the background of the original photo, since they would have drawn attention away from the orchid. And I didn't add the storm damage on the lower flower lip, either. Here's the photo again, to check it against.

If you'd like to try this as a tutorial, you can click on drawing #2 and copy and paste it to any program that will print it out. MSWord would work. Print on very heavy paper with some tooth or roughness to make it work best with water. Then color your own version!

In fact, you can sit at your computer, click on the link to get the big picture, and see right in front of you exactly how this orchid was done, step-by-step (and try your own flourishes if you prefer ;^)

When I was finished, I wanted to put the orchid painting into my journal in the correct spot, right after the page with the ti leaf, so using a pair of fancy-edge (scrapbooking) scissors that make a really classy torn-looking edge (check it out on the enlargement!), I cut out the orchid with about a 3/4" margin, watered down some Elmer's glue with water, used a big brush to paint the glue on the back of the painting, pressed it onto a fresh journal page from the back of the journal along with a printed-out photo of the orchid, and pressed them flat under several books for an hour or so.

Then I removed the journal page from the journal with a sharp scissor snip behind every coil in the binding. If you just tear out the page, it creates a rough edge that won't press back into the coils and stay properly ~ but if you snip it out and press it very gently into its new spot, no one will even notice it was added later, and it will stay in place. Using this method, the orchid appears in the journal across from the Botanical Garden entry as it should.

So there's your art tip for the day! I hope you enjoyed looking through it as much as I did making it. This is the sort of hands-on artwork we do in my workshops, and in fact, we'll be painting this very orchid (or one much like it) in my Nature Journaling/Sketching Workshop in Costa Rica next month. Hope you can join us ~ there are still a few openings.

Prep For My Nature/Journaling Trip to Hawaii

Hello! I've been nose-to-the-grindstoning the last two months to get my new book The Southern Swamp Explorer ready for press. Every day, all day, no weekends off. Finally, yesterday, I sent off the last three proof copies to my proofreaders and turned off the computer for the day. Boy, does THAT feel weird!


While it was off, I started, finally, collecting together what I want to take to Hawai'i -- wait. . . .I don't think I've mentioned the trip I am taking for nine days over Christmas to scout out Hawai'i as a possible nature sketching/journaling workshop site! That's a NASA photo of of The Big Island at right. It's about 50 miles across.


One of my recent students has a house on The Big Island in Hawai'i, and I'll be staying there for part of the time. My idea is to take this trip using all of the tips and techniques I use in my Nature Sketching/Journaling class, taking in the wonders of each lovely spot and recording them in my sketchbook. Normally I travel with someone else, and that kind of dictates what you end up doing. I'll miss my traveling buddy Daniel, but by myself. . . well, I'll try new ideas out.

I am traveling l.i.g.h.t. I want to be able to carry everything in my backpack and fannypack -- on the plane, while I travel in my rental car, etc. So I've been paring down everything I can, and the process is amazing.

In this blog I am going to outline my travel kit, and when I get back I'll tell you how it worked. Here's the plan for right now.

All of my drawing supplies need to fit in my fanny pack, so I got a sketchpad that is 6x9, the Robert Bateman Cover Series with 100% recycled paper (which is marvelously heavyweight and smooth) -- I used one like this in Costa Rica last spring (see blog #1). To prepare the sketchbook, I scanned in a roadmap of The Big Island from Hawaii, The Big Island Revealed, by Andrew Doughty (looks excellent, comes highly recommended) which I will also take. With the map on the cover, I'll always have a convenient map handy. I also decorated it a bit with the Hawai'i banner across the end just to pretty it up. I haven't yet covered it with clear package tape, but that's the next step. I'm expecting it to get rained on, and the tape will repell rain for quite some time. It weighs 13 ounces.


Inside the cover I've fastened a light, clear ruler and two business cards in case I lose it.


Next comes my drawing kit. Here's a scan of it. The stuff all fits in my clear plastic "cosmetics" container, which I use as a bug jail for sketching bugs. Actually,all the sharp goodies are put first into a little snack baggie to keep them from scratching the "jail" -- I need it scratch-free so I can draw insects I put inside (only briefly, to draw; this ain't death row!).


Here's what I put inside: magnifying glass on a colorful string so I don't lose it, business cards to give away, mechanical pencil, extra leads, kneaded eraser (that blobby gray thing at top), paintbrush with water in the barrel (it's blue, LOVE it!) , blue wipe cloth. eraser in pink barrel, a pencil sharpener for colored pencils (at bottom), a couple of pencil smudgers (tortillons, at left), safety pin, paper clips and a rubber band. That weighs 5 ounces.

I was going to just take my watercolor pencils in their flat metal box, but then I realized that, weightwise, the box could be replaced with a whole slew of other pencils, so I added a lot of in-between colors from my workshop kit. I've tried several different brands, and they mostly work fine. These are Staedtler (which I haven't used before) and Van Gogh and Faber-Castell, both of which are great. All together, they still don't weigh as much as half the original pencils IN the metal box


I'm taking my gold calligraphy pen (in center) with which I can make lovely initial caps. They really dress up a page.

All these things go in the fanny pack. Also in there is my smallish flashlight (4 ounces). Hawaii is in the tropics, and the sun will be going down around 6pm, so I might get caught out. I'd like to see the lava eruptions at night (if there are any) and it could come in handy. A flashlight is also super for looking into crevices for insects. Next, I have a very thin 9"-12" foam pad which weighs less than an ounce, a 3"x5"x ½" little packet with an emergency poncho in it, and a couple of energy bars. There is a pouch to carry a water bottle which slips on the belt, and I'll get a bottle for it when I'm there.


The whole fannypack, without the water, weighs 3 pounds exactly, and I'll probably stuff some other things in it, too (chapstick, sunscreen, deet, etc.). And maybe my little binoculars, which still will probably total less than four pounds.


Then, in a separate camera bag slung over my shoulder, I'll carry my camera bag, which weighs in at just under a pound. The camera is an iffy thing. I've noticed that when I have the camera sometimes I'll take a picture and skip drawing. So I may have to ration camera use. I probably should clip my cell phone onto my belt, too, in case I fall off a cliff. Well, I may look like a burro with all that gear, but I'll have everything I need to have fun with.


Sometimes I wear a fishing vest instead of using the fanny pack. It distributes weight evenly over the shoulders and is more comfortable than the fanny pack. I'll have to think about it. I don't wear it when I'm with Daniel because he thinks it looks goofy, but hey, I don't care.

So there's the sketching end.

For the workshop end, I'm taking along my workbooks from both the nature sketching workshop and the nature journaling workshop. I can show these to anyone who is interested, because they really do outline what I teach in the workshops. As well, I can give away my business cards (see inside the sketchbook cover) which have this blog address and my workshop website address on them. (By the way, I got those business cards at vistaprint.com for free -- you just fill in what you want them to say, choose a design, and click. All you do is pay shipping and handling, $3-$4. Don't they look nice? And no, I didn't get paid to say that -- I just think they're a terrific deal!)


Now, as for the clothing, Hawai'i has ALL the climate zones except one, I understand, from sea level to the top of Moana Loa. I'm told that in addition to shorts and T-shirts I will need my fleece jacket and jogging pants. So, since it's December in Oregon, on the plane I will wear the jogging pants with my summer-weight safari pants over them. The safari pants have zip-off legs to make shorts, and lots of pockets, perfect to travel in. And I'll wear several layers of tops including my jacket. . . hey, maybe my change of clothes can consist of a swimsuit, a pair of sandals, a sun hat and some extra underwear! I'll have access to a washing machine if I need it. Cool!


So there it is. I think everything else (paperback, comb, first-aid kit, teeny travel towel, toothbrush, maps, addresses, sunglasses, bird book, cellphone charger, etc.) will fit in my pack which I can skooch under the seat in front of me on the plane.

Now I must clean the house for the house-sitter and make her a list of what to do in emergencies. (and hope Jesse doesn't pounce on her like he did the last house-sitter). Jesse says he will get along just fine without me, and he has already hung his stocking (in progress, at left). Well!


Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays, dear friend! I will blog again when I return, with results of my trip.