Watercolor: New Sketcbook Pages

Continuing my experiments with a long lost love... watercolor and ink on paper. My WN paintbox is a mess - i need to buy a new set. this one is ancient, busted color pans, chips of broken color from other pans embedded in what where clean colors at one time. the mixing pallet and lid are chipping their enameling, so flakes of paint are landing in the pan colors, and often has to be picked out of washes... I'd be better off with crayola colors at this point. perhaps a new Cottman box or higher end WN box is in order. You can see my washes are a bit muddy, but it's great to get all sloppy in my sketchbook again. the pages get all crinkled and looking like a real artists owns the book... not me. hahahahah. the pieces here are all sketchbook items from this week. The apes were while watching a PBS show on stress, dealt a lot with baboon society, some macac. the dogs are always around somewhere, and easily penned. the last piece came out after thinking of the elections and privilege in our society. the title is "Groomed for Success", which wasn't supposed to be a Kennedy, but certainly has the family traits. the ink was done on vellum, while the watercolor was washed over the original pencil study. I merged them back together in photoshop. i experimented a bit with changing the black ink lines to the background blue, which works well too. this is getting to be a real nice time of discovery for me. i look forward to trying the WC out on my book project sketches. They'll really benefit from the freshness, but only after I buy a new set of colors to work with... soon-like

Oh, Chimp-Ciggie may become my new IM or Facebook avatar