Speed Painting With My Daughter (Now with Sparkle)

I love painting with my daughter.  Like me, she makes up stories about the things she paints.  (She got that from me, and I in turn, got it from Bob Ross.)  Her stories are always outrageous and seldom have any place in reality.  Perhaps thats the imagination of a 5 year old.  I could just sit next to her and listen to her stories all day long, but I'm lucky enough to be able to paint with her while being regaled with these outlandish stories.

This past Saturday we were sitting at the craft table painting when we were just finishing out first paintings when she decided that fruit would be a good thing to paint.  I would quickly sketch out a couple of pictures (one for her and one for me) and we would set out to paint.  She got to the point where fruit was a solid color with a green leaf all lobbied onto the paper in one gleeful moment.  We both ended by laughing and painting furiously.

Then she remembered that she has glitter watercolors.  We had to revisit and add the glitter (she calls it shimmer or sparkle.)  The following was my contribution to our time together.

Apples and cherries were the first pictures we did.
 

I didn't have time to draw my own grapes, so I just freehanded them.

This peach has a generous amount of shimmer on it.  I guess it is substituted for fuzz


No, a chili isn't really a fruit, but she suggested and I obliged

Second attempted portrait.

First portrait attempted.

Strawberries definitely have shimmer.

A tree to end out fun for the day.

More Grapes

Ok, well, I'm at it again.  Trying to put together a nice painting that someone would be proud to hang in their home or office.    This had great promise, but i think got a little muddled.  I like the grapes, I can live with the vines on the left, but the leaves in the middle, all kind of run together for me.  I tried so hard not to let them do it, but perhaps I should have tried to simplify my painting just a bit more.

Well, I'm not gonna sweat it much.  I'm enjoying painting again, and this one was a lunch hour painting.  The way I see it, I had a great time on my lunch hour, and when its all said, and done, the paintings not too bad.

Grape Redux

Ok, I warned you this was coming.  I painted a second painting of grapes.  I don't know which one is better, and I'm not really going to try to figure it out.  I like them both.  This for me turned out to be as much an exercise in figuring out which paper I like better as much as it was painting grapes.

So I said in the last post that the other paper allowed me to play with the water a bit more.  Well, sure enough, this paper, holding true to form, sucked up so much water so quickly I had quite a hard time with any kind of details.  As I was putting the second wash on the leaves (and forming the veins) it was all I could do to keep the paper wet enough not to have terrible hard lines in it.  I had to use a small brush to paint the small area where all the veins convers (on the big leaf), but before I could move away from that spot, there were hard edges.  Happened on each of the veins I did.  I just dind't have that problem with the other paper.  I guess I could have tried to do something like cover the whole paper with a quick wash of water, but I'm always afraid that the undercoat of paint is going to run, and I really dind't want that.

Well, enough of me griping about my paper.  I'll just have to adapt and move on.  On a positive note, I think I did a good job with the different colors of purple and blue and red of the different grapes, and given that I only used Sap Green as my green in this painting, I am happy with the many shades I was able to make out of it.

Nuts!!!  I just looked back and I have no details on the wooden post.  Ah, well, it's not something that is hard to go back an put in.  After I put them on, I'll update the picture.

Well, I hope you all enjoy this one too.  I did really like painting it.  I will admit however that I don't really wanna paint circles again for a while.

Are Grapes Really Made Out of Rehydrated Raisins?

Ok, so, like so many of my other paintings, I had an idea of what I wanted to paint, and then set about searching for the right picture.  In the course of looking for that right picture, I take about 300 detours and something completely different catches my eye.  This painting falls into that same category.  I started by searching for a truck to paint.  Don't ask me how I made it to grapes, I couldn't tell you.

What I can tell you is that this painting is not painted on watercolor paper.  It is painted on Mixed Media paper. Its the same weight, but has slightly different properties.  In my little region of the world, the air is quite dry and I have trouble keeping my paper even slightly damp as I paint.  As a result, I have to be very careful or I have A LOT of hard edges.  This paper has a slightly different surface that typical watercolor paper.  It's like its a bit slicker, or harder.  At any rate, this paper gives the paint a chance at flowing on the surface without immediately being drawn into the paper and drying out.  I found the paper in several different weights,   I bought a book of 90 lb paper to use for quick sketching, but this painting was done on 140 lb paper, just like my normal watercolor paper.

I made a concerted effort to use that to my advantage in this paintings.  You can see how wet the paper got if you look at the largest grape leaf and at the post.

I did an initial wash on this painting not worrying too much about what colors were where, and not trying to keep everything in between the lines.  Just tried to get the right colors in the right general area.  Then I went back an painted everything but the veins in the leaves.  What was the most fun for me was painting the dark between the grapes.  The grapes started as just a giant blue, red, purple blob.  Then I painted the in between parts and, Ka-Pow, there were grapes.  That was fun.  Iv'e actually got another version of this painting that I am working on.  Slightly different color scheme, but same basic grapes and leaves.  Hope you enjoy this one and that one.

The Second Harvest

Ok, we are on to iteration number two.  I didn't look at the first one when I painted this one, so i think I suffered from some of the same problems, but to  a lesser extent.  This one, to me, makes it look more like the grapes are growing on individual plants, whereas the first one looks like a giant mass of vines.  I don't know that I am really blown away by the way it turned out, but I definitely like it.

Grape Harvest

The painting challenge for august is harvest.  This is my first attempt at painting a harvest.  I thought since the central coast is known for its wines, that I would paint a grape harvest.  I think I got a bit too heavy with the mottled colors on the leaves, especially in the foreground.  Im gonna try it at least one more time.  I love the picture and would really like to produce a nice painting of it.

Vineyard

I was asked by a friend to paint a vineyard, barn, or boat.  I've done a few of each with varying degrees of success.  I decided to take up the challenge of a vineyard for her.   This is one attempt.  Actually this is a picture of a vineyard in the Paso Robles area, about 40 minutes from where I sit typing this.  It won't be my last attempt at painting a vineyard.  Like with all of my paintings, I think that I am getting better at painting them.  I might end up just doing a bit of pen outlining on this one to give some definition to the grape leaves in the foreground.  If I make any changes, I'll repost.  Hope you enjoy.