Halloween Pumpkin

Here is a pumpkin for your Halloween pleasure.  It obviously hasn't been picked yet, but I wouldn't expect that to last.  This on looks good enough to carve up and put on the front porch.



Also, it comes with a video.  See link below.

More Coneflower

I have been out of the studio for about a week.  I didn't really think I would be able to sit on the stool and paint an entire painting without my back erupting in pain.  Last night I ventured out, and the pain was manageable. So, with that in mind i started to dabble again.  This is the result.

Enjoy

Coneflower

I painted a few flowers on my lunch hour today.  They are just quick coneflower, not the most detailed, but for me, thats ok.  I want to give the essence of the flower, not an exact copy of it.  I think they look great and were a lot of fun to paint.  (yes, I realize I forgot the splatter on the first one.)

Hope you enjoy.  (oh, and you might see a video of a coneflower soon.)

Loose Red Flowers

This lovely little painting is the product of my video last night.  I sat down to just paint some random stuff and flowers popped out of the painting.   Ok, I knew I was going to paint flowers, I just didn't know what they were going to look like.

After dabbing some paint on the paper, and allowing it to dry a bit, this is what I got out.  Not too bad.  Looks like some flowers popping out of a little garden area.

More Bougainvillea

I know that I recently posted another bougainvillea, but they look so nice and add such a nice punch of color to my yard that I had to paint another.  There is a slight twist to this one.  I MADE A VIDEO ABOUT IT!!!

True story.  I have had several people ask me how I paint my flowers.  It seems that that is what people think I paint best.  So I finally did it,  I broke down and started filming.

Don't expect Scorsese quality filmography.  This is me were talking about after all. But I kinda had fun doing this, so I'll probably make a few more, and we'll see how it goes from there.

Hope you enjoy this flower,  I'll put up a post when the video is up and then the secret will be out.  LOL.  I'll keep you all informed

Bougainvillea

So you may have noticed that I took a little time off from painting.  Let me tell you why.  I hurt my back and its been hard to sit, stand, lay, move, hold still, etc.  I think you get the idea.  I've not felt like trudging out to the studio to do any painting.  What I've felt like is, well, horrible.

But on Friday, I started feeling a little better.  I made it out to the studio.  On the side of the driveway, next to the door to the garage, is a bougainvillea plant.  It's got these really nice magenta flowers on it.  I gave it a quick study and then off I went to give a try at painting it.  Actually I was trying to film it too, but that didn't go well.  (yes, you may see Dabfly Arts videos soon)  What I came up with, you see on the side.

I did it all with a number 2 paint brush and a couple of watercolor pencils.  I've been watching videos again (i know, that can be trouble) and found something that was mentioned in passing in several, but not highlighted in any.    If you hold your brush back past the bulge of the barrel, you can't paint with any real detail.  You are forced to think more about basic shapes.  You, unless you have the steady hands of a brain surgeon, won't be able to work in tiny little places and wont be able to put in tiny little details.  You'll be using a slightly larger muscle group and as such will only be able to make larger strokes.  The thinking is that if you can only make larger strokes, you will force yourself to try to reduce whatever it is you are painting into its basic elements and only paint them.

I tried that with these.  What I got was, ... , well, kind of a mess, but kind of really nice.  I can see how holding your brush so far back changes how you paint.   I think I'll explore this a little further.

Oh, and I guess I should mention that I did add a few details with a watercolor pencil.

Thanks for the view, hope you enjoyed it.

Some Kind of Red Flower

Just playing around last night.  I thought this turned out nice.  Some flowers of undetermined species.

Got the whole paper wet, and threw down some red, blue, yellow and green.  Then when it dried I put in a little red to bring the petals to the foreground.   After allowing those to dry, went back and drew in the stamen and leaf edges.  A little water to tone them down and voila.

It turned out to be exactly what I wanted.  A loose painting of some flowers.  Done quickly, but with enough interest that it's enjoyable to look at.

Hope you enjoy it.  

White flowers

I was doing a few practice paintings for a watercolor group that I belong to and this is what I came up with. I don't really know what kind of flower it is. The picture makes it look almost like some kind of hydrangea but the green leaves for much larger. What I've painted is just a tiny bit of the overall picture. The overall picture had five pots with plants in them and some garden figurines in front of the pots. The flower I painted happens to be one of the potted plants. And I only painted a small portion of it. I didn't think I could manage to re-create the garden figurines with any degree of accuracy so I just eliminated them.

This is just a quick small study I don't think I'm going to turn these in as my final work on painting this image but I think it's a good start.

I like that the flower stand out on the road in there some greens and yellows and browns surrounding them but I'm not happy that the flowers turned out somewhat flat.  I think I'm gonna have to work on that and get them to look a bit rounder. Regardless I enjoyed painting them I hope you enjoy looking at them.

thank you

Purple Potted Flowers

So while a had a little time off yesterday, I was able to paint this.  I've a friend who paints these unbelievable painting in this loose style that I like so much.  I asked if I could use her paintings as a guide while I'm learning and she agreed.  Mine are no where as good as hers, but I like mine none the less.

So this one is a potted purple plant.  I don't really know what plant it is, and I don't think it really matters.   Looking at it you can just see that the sun must come in from the other side  The plant is growing more away from us than toward us, but looking at it from this direction, we can see the pot.

well, thats all for now. Hope yo u like this little painting.  I had fun painting it.

A Rose is A Rose is A Rose

A nice loose rose for the weekend.  I had a little spare time and I decided to paint a few things.  You can see a painting so close to this that I couldn't crop it out.

I don't know if I like painting flowers or if I think I am good at painting flowers, but.... since I think I do them better than most other things I paint, I just keep bringing them.

Not sure I totally got the top of this, where the petals open up.  But  I'm not sure it really distracts from the overall painting too much.   There is just enough going on to make you a little distracted.

Actually, I bet you look right at the middle of the painting more than anywhere else.  I put in just a bit of yellow to warm up the painting in the very center.  It really does make your eyes kind of hang out there.

Anyone else notice this?

Solitary Cone Flower

So I had a little time while I was waiting for my paint to dry on different painting and I thought I would just get a little more wet int wet practice.

A really simple, but somehow nice coneflower.  I know its nothing special, but somehow being simple makes it nice.

simple coneflowers

So I was doing some doodling again last night.  Thought it would be fun to paint some coneflowers.  Before you begin, let me say that I didn't really look at any pictures of coneflowers to know if I've done it right.  And I know they have many more petals than these have.  And I know that the stems here are just green lines.  Blah Blah Blah.

Yes I should have done at least a tiny bit of research to know what I was painting, but these were kind of a throw in at the end of my painting session.  For what they are, I think they are pretty good.  I'll have to check to make sure these are actually colors that cone flowers come in, and probably change my color palette for my next attempt.  Also, I'll have to find what the stems and leaves look like.  Oh, and the heads too.  Whew, that seems like a lot of work all of a sudden.  Oh, well, for a quick painting at the end of the night, I think they turned out pretty good.   Thanks for taking the time to look.

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.