Molly Hashimoto

In Celebration of Spring: Hellebore

 I am preparing for my upcoming quarter and am excited to be teaching Watercolor Flowers once again.  My spring garden always fills me with new ideas. I have several different varieties of hellebores planted beneath an old apple tree in my back yard and they suffer neglect and lack of water all summer without complaint. Sometimes I trample their leaves when I prune the apple, and they simply grow new ones.  I got my first hellebore from a friend and it is now about 3 feet by 3 feet.  Wonderful weed-stopper!  I got the idea for the technique I used in this botanical sketch from the early 20th century architect and watercolor artist, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I love his strong yet quirky drawing and the fact that he has left several unpainted sections in his work. 

North Cascades Institute Student Art

 Barbie Metcalf is a student who has diligently applied herself to many different subjects that I have taught in my Seattle watercolor classes.  She has also attended workshops at the North Cascades Institute. This is a painting she completed this winter in my Landscape Watercolors of the American West class, a marvelous view of Diablo Lake from the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center.  She worked from photos both of us had taken at different times at the Lake.  Students in my upcoming North Cascades Institute June class Glaze, Wash and Brushstroke: Landscape Watercolor in the North Cascades will work en plein air at this location.

Watercolor Travel Journal

I painted this small watercolor sketch at the travel journal demonstration that I did at Daniel Smith. I used a photo I had taken while hiking the Slough Creek Trail in Yellowstone back in September. The striking fall color of the grasses seen against the Absaroka range filled us with awe.  A small sketch like this took only about half an hour--I chose the photo to show how trips can continue to inspire us for months, long after we are settled back in at home.  If you'd like to read more about the demonstration I did, follow this link to the Daniel Smith blog. Deborah Burns writes an excellent blog for Daniel Smith and I was most appreciative of how ably she captured all of what I considered the most useful things that I talked about in my demostration.

Two of the more salient points. 1. You don't have to go on a trip to keep  a journal.  You can just go out in your back yard, or to the park--the world is full of amazing sights.  I started my journals when I was unable to get out much, but my back yard provided great inspiration to me, so at that point I called them my garden journals.  Later I decided that I would compress everything that I do into the journals so that there would be no distinction, no categories of journals.  Now they are only chronological.  2. If I do a page that I heartily dislike and know that I will not want to flip through and see again, I tear it out!   Yes, it's perhaps a little wasteful, but the purpose of the journal is to make me happy and if I see some piece in it that reminds me too much of a struggle with the medium, or a failure, I remove the offending sketch and move on to a new subject!

Student Art from the Snow Goose Festival

I asked the students I met at the Snow Goose Festival at Four Springs House on Camano Island to send me images of the art they created that day.  Austin Biehl, a 15 year old, sent me this wonderful sketch. I especially admire the sweep and flourish of his brush strokes in the water, suggesting the dynamic quality of water without getting labored about it. Notice how as the brush unloads most of its paint, the strokes become drier and more of the texture of the paper shows through--the drybrush technique.  Austin also figured out a way to mix watercolor with white gouache to indicate the softer lighter feathers atop the heron's body. It was a real privilege to work with Austin and all the very talented people I met there. I bring Prang 8 color paintboxes for these kinds of programs, and I think they are a really great bargain, with excellent colors (unlike some other manufacturers). I have been using these for my library programs for over 15 years and have never had to replace one. When the individual pans of color run out, I simply replace them with refills availabe online.  It's great to have discovered this way to minimize waste. 

Woodblock Print: Swans

 I saw these beautiful swans last spring at the Union Bay Natural Area in Seattle, and photographed and sketched them. A friend suggested that they might make a good block print with their strong whites against the dark water. I had alot of fun carving this block and kept it small: 5" X 7". It went so much faster than the Yellowstone bison print I labored over for months. It helped to only have 2 colors, the blue and the black.  

This is the first in an edition of 25, medium: printing inks on Magnani Pescia Paper.

Price: $65

Sibelius called his 5th Symphony his "swan hymn." He wrote: Nothing in the whole world affects me--nothing in art, literature, or music--in the same way as do these swans and cranes and wild geese. Their voices and being.

More Student Art from the Snow Goose Festival

 
 Here are several more sketches and paintings created by the students who worked with me at the Saturday class at Four Springs House.

Students' Work: Sketching & Painting Birds

On Saturday's workshop at the  Snow Goose Festival on Camano Island, I enjoyed watching the progress of each of the students at Four Springs House.  Several students were intrigued by my many photos of great blue herons and green herons and had great success with them.  Here are a few in progress. I'll share more of the art in the coming days.

 

Sketching Birds in Watercolor at the Snow Goose Festival

Yesterday at Four Springs House on Camano Island, a group of artists of all ages helped to celebrate the annual Snow Goose Festival. The Friends of the Camano Island library asked me to come up and teach a class in sketching and paintng birds. I brought some of my favorite bird photos and all the materials and did a little bit of demonstrating to get everyone started.

I love working with students of all ages, as there is a happy camraderie that occurs with this mix--there aren't that many places where young and old can come together on such an equal footing. The setting was beautiful, as you can see the Preserve just outside the window.

Watercolor Travel Journal, Quick Sketches

I demonstrated these two quick sketches at the workshop I recently taught at Daniel Smith Artist Materials. You can read more about it on the Daniel Smith blog. The monochrome drawing on the left was done with the Stylist water-soluble pen, and is one of my favorite adobe structures in Taos, New Mexico--the Mabel Dodge Luhan house.   

I sketched the doorway below using my very small portable Winsor and Newton paintbox with Niji waterbrushes.  The hollyhocks bloom away in June at Rancho de Taos, New Mexico.

Watercolor Travel Journal, continued

 Janet Takahashi created this page after she got home, and had time to time ponder ideas we discussed about journals and the use of watercolor and other media.

She traveled to Seattle and stayed in a hotel near the Mariner's Safeco Field so one of her pages was a record of that experience.

Bob Horsley also sketched and painted with me last weekend at the workshop I taught at Daniel Smith and like Janet, generously shared some images of his work. I admire the convincing architectural perspective combined with the loose watercolor method.

 
Read more about watercolor travel journals on the Daniel Smith blog.