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.

Bouquets of Roses

Another bunch of roses.  I'm still trying to get them right, whatever right is.  I definitely think I'm on the right track.  With the single rose, I tried putting in a loose stem and leaf.   On one of the groups of three I tried to let the undercoat show through to represent some leaves, and on the other group of three just some dark shading under the bottom of the petals.

I am thinking that I can make these a little better if I let the darker color reach all the way to the outside of the petals in at lease a couple of areas.  I might try that tonight.  I guess that's why they call it practice.    

I'm not sold on having a full green background around the roses.  It really does make the flowers pop off the paper, but it seems to take away from the rose a bit.  It's like its just floating in a sea of green.  With no definition.  I think I'm kinda on the track with allowing a base layer to show through in leave.  If I overlay several leaves it might provide enough interest that I'll like it a lot.  More practice and trials are called for.  

These are all painted on the back side of old paintings.  I've kept all my painting for the past 5 years (the entire time I've been painting).  I've got a huge stack of old paintings that aren't really good, that nobody but me would like.  So on the sheets that can be used on both sides, I'm using the back.  If I decide to sell a few of these, whomever gets them is gonna get two pieces of art for the price of one.  

Also, I'm toying with the idea of putting together a video or two to show people how I paint.  I like this new style so much, I want to pass it along.  Any ideas on how I should go about it?  I'm accepting ideas.  

Thanks for the view and the advice.   Hope you enjoyed this post.  

I've got so many flowers I ought to be a florist

Some more quick loose flowers.  Still trying to get coneflowers right (don't ask me why).  And working on roses.  I like the way my roses turn out.  From a distance they look really good, and as I keep at this method, they should continue to get better.   The coneflower is interesting.  I keep adding layers, and it keeps looking better.  I start with the outside petals, and then the inside and finally the ones in the back.  seems like it works, but I still have a little way to to to get it right (whatever that is).

At any rate, I'm having fun painting the flowers.  Hope yo enjoy looking at them.

A rose by any other name

Having gone through a poppy phase over the last two weeks, I might be going into a rose phase.  Here are a few I sketched out.  Some good, some bad.  Hope you like them.

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.

Some Sketching From My Back Yard

I was reorganizing my office this morning (It was badly overdue).   For those of you who don't know, my office has many many paintings taped to the walls.  The picture below is just one portion of one wall.













Well, while I was moving the pictures, I noticed that I had painted on the backs of many of them.  A way to save paper as I am learning to paint, no doubt.  One painting in particular, an old rusted truck (go figure) which is the one that got me started painting old rusted cars and trucks in the first place, had a few quick sketches on the back of it.  I remember doing them.  I did them in two settings.

   
The first setting, which, if I remember correctly, was done in about a half hour in my back yard. They came out ok, but not steller.  They were done when I started outlining the subject matter of the paintings.

The last one, if memory serves me right, was done the next day.  Living in Morro Bay, it's hard not to paint the Rock.  It is hard, however, to get a good painting of it.  It is kind of just a big hump out at the end of the beach with nothing else around it.  Well, this one was done with me sitting on my front porch.  Before you ask, yes, that is my view, and yes there are two different types of trees that frame the rock.  Well, without further ado, here it is.  Hope you enjoy.

I really feel like I learn a lot when I go back and look at these old paintings.  I can almost remember everything I was thinking while I was painting them.  I can also see how far I have come from these meager beginnings.  If I were to redo these, and I may, they would look radically different now (and with any luck, radically better). 

Next week, I am hoping to have at least 3 new painting.  No quick sketches like these.

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.

Tomatoes anyone?

I wanted to accent the green of the leaves and tomatoes with a nice blueish/purpleish color, but I think I got it too dark.  Well, it does really set off the green and make it pop off the page.

This one was really fun to paint.  It was a challenge to try to get all the greens side by side so that you could actually tell where one leaf or tomato stopped and the next started.  Im really happy with this.  I didn't need to line everything in black and you can see all the shapes and make everything out.

Hope you all enjoy this one.

random weekend sketching

These are just some pictures that I painted over the weekend.  The top of a chair with a red box on it.





The lamp hanging in the corner of the living room.



These are some of the plants growing in my front yard.  Not sure what all of them are called.

 These are some of the plants growing in my front yard.  Not sure what all of them are called.







This is the tree from across the street.

This is the lamp from the dining room.

Bunny

I am trying a new technique that I think is working out smashingly.  Instead of trying to paint everything at once and keep the paint and paper wet, and blend the colors, I'm working on many thin layers.   This allows me to paint smaller areas, and not worry about keeping the paper wet as much.

In this painting, I did all the leaves at one time.  Just a quick fill with green, but kept light.  Then the bunny, and the blue grey background.  The flowers were all done individually.  That took up one lunch hour, though if i had to do it again, I could cut that time down considerably.

So for my next lunch hour, i came back and put the color on the leaves.  When I left just the little bit of light color come through, it instantly became the viens of the leaves.  And if I didn't let the veins go straight, it looks like the leaves are curled.  Who knew!   As for the rabbit, he was totally a light brown except for the red in his ear.  I had to add on all the hair during the second go round.  Also, the head looked really flat during the first wash, so I had to paint the fur in such a way that it would give his head some contour.  I am extremely happy with the way this turned out.