Morning Glories

Ok, so in a past post you all found out that Morning Glories are one of my favorite flowers.  I love the way the just keep going.  Water them, they grown, neglect them, they grow.  Forget about the, they come back the following year.  And each year they have all these wonderful flowers on the.  They are survivors.

I don't know if these flowers turned out exactly as I had planned, but I like morning glories so much I just had to post the.

I was hoping to get a nice dark green around some of the flowers to indicate some leaves or greenery behind the flower.  I don't think I quite got that right, but it does make for a bit of a different look.   I think I need to work a little orange into the picture to really make the flowers pop off the page.

Well, at any rate I had a blast painting them, hope you enjoy them too.

Even More Poppies

Once more into the breach with theses poppies.  Maybe its the fact that they grow so well here in California and that I seem them every day from mid spring through fall, but I can't stop painting them.    Actually, I think I might be coming to the end of my time with these.

I am loving this style of painting.  Using this I get to do what I think painting should be.  I get to give the viewer a feeling of, or the essence of, the flower, without having to paint a flower exactly as it is.  You get the idea of exactly poppies are, but I am free to play and have fun with the paint, free of bounds and borders.

I am gonna try to move this technique to other subjects.

Mostly I think I like this technique because I get to play with the paint and let it flow around the paper.  Soooo fun.

Hope you enjoy these.  Thanks for the view.

Morning Glories and Roses

Building on yesterdays lesson, I decided to spread out just a bit.  Today, it was morning glories.  These are some of my favorite.  You plant them and they keep replanting themselves and seem to grow whether you care for them or not.  

I think I rushed these, and the subsequent roses, just a bit.  I didn't give my paper time enough to dry and as a result, they didn't turn out quite like I wanted.  That's not to say they turned out badly, just not quite what I wanted.  You can see there is one hiding in the middle of the painting.  I guess it looks like its behind the others.  I wanted to paint 5, but in my rush, that one got a little covered up.  Oh well.  Live and learn.

The red that is on the left hand side is the poppy painting from yesterday.




So, in addition to the Morning Glories, I painted two roses.  I rather like this first one, though I think I left a bit too much white on the inside.  The second one....eh.  I tried to paint it a bit from the side and missed my mark, thought I think I know what the real problem with this is:  The outside petal is too shallow.  Had it been deeper, it would look less saucer-ish, and more flower-ish.  Something to remember for next time.

Well, I hope you really enjoy these.  They truly were fun to paint.

Poppy Fields

Im not sure why I feel the need to paint flowers right now.  Perhaps it's the oncoming spring.  Perhaps its the vibrant colors.  Or, perhaps it's because I can paint simple flowers without having to struggle to draw something to paint.  (Honest Admission:  I am not good at drawing, and from time to time will trace my subjects onto paper and then paint them.   I am working on trying to draw better, but it is taking a while to get to a point I feel my drawing is acceptable.)    But for whatever reason, I thought I would try my hand at painting some poppies again.  I've tried poppies before, and though they are simple, mine never seemed to work out well.  But this time, I have forsaken trying to paint a literal interpretation of poppies, and gone for a much wilder interpretation.    The whole point of this exercise was to put paint to paper and make an image that gives the impression of a poppy without throwing a poppy in your face.

I definitely think I accomplished that.  While I think I got a few of the colors too dark in places, and perhaps should have had a  little cleaner rinse water to allow the paint to fade a bit more, I think I did a decent job.

Well, if nothing else, I'll have a nice spot of color on my walls.  Hope you enjoy viewing these as much as I enjoyed painting them. Thank you.

More Chickens

Ok, a little more chicken sketching.  Seems I've got so many chickens I should open a chicken farm.

I don't know what has caused me to paint chickens, but I've found painting them to be quite fun and relaxing.  I used to scoff at chicken pictures and kind of make fun of the videos people would post of painting chickens, but I've got to tell you,  Once you start, you'll want to do more.

I think what it really is, is that chickens really lend themselves to be painted.  You can quickly and easily throw down some paint, let it mix on the paper, and voila, chicken.  Theses chickens and the last ones I did, I painted with 3 colors, and let most of the color mix in the paper.  When dry, I just went back and dabbled a few feather shadows and there they were... Chickens!

I'm hoping this exercise will allow me to loosen up in the rest of my paintings, but even if it doesn't,  I'll still have some fun chickens .

Thanks for the quick read.  Hope you enjoyed the chickens.  

Another Pin Up

One more for good measure.  Pin ups seem to be my thing right now.  That's ok, I guess I could be painting worse things.  I did this one a little different than the others.  I put on all my shadows first, then went over with the body of color.  It seems have had an interesting effect.  For the most part it has worked, but I might still have to refine my technique.

At any rate, I had fun painting it.  Hope you have fun viewing it.  Enjoy!

Chickens

Was doing a little doodling, and decided to doodle some chickens.  These were super fun to paint.  I had the intent of letting the paint mix on the paper.  I still wanted to try to maintain that each had a crown, wing tail, legs, etc. while not being so tight with the paint.  I think for the most part i worked pretty well.  You can see that the tails are a dark, and their underbelly is dark, and their necks a bit lighter.  If you look you can see the color blend from one to another.

Well, I had fun with this practice.  I'll probably put the ground and a background on at some time, so these might just pop up again.

Thanks for the look and enjoy.