little plants

Well I took another trip to the arboretum today.  I found a nice place in the shade where there was a seat and a table and I sat down and drew and painted this.  This planter was on the side of the pathway and looked like a good subject to start with.  Start to finish was just about 1/2 an hour.    Thats pretty good.  With something like this, I want to work a little quickly.  What i hope is that working fast will make me be less literal in my interpretation of the subject and force me to focus on getting color on the paper.  I have to say, to some extent I think it really worked.

Looking at the top of the planter, it really does look like the plants in front are closer than those in back.  Also, the rocks look like they have some depth to them.  Wonderful!!  The bowl of the panter is a little flat.  I could have fixed that with a little richer color, but I guess that is what I learned from this lesson.  Hope you enjoy.

Campus Market

Can you guess what this is a picture of?  Yes, you got it, the Campus Market.  And guess what else, they have a potato bar.  Woooo Hooo.   I love the look of the metal, stone and glass on this  building.  I tried to do it justice.  In reality there are a few picnic tables in front of the building, but I tried to draw them and it got to be just a bit too much, so I left them off.  Looking back now, it really could use something in the lower right hand corner to balance the picture out a bit.

Dorn's The Original Breakers Cafe

Double click this picture to enlarge.

This was done over the weekend.  I found out one really important thing.  If you have two sick kids who are pretty needy, you aren't gonna be able to paint very much at any one time.  This entire painting was drawn and painted in one to two minute segments.

Even with the challenges this turned out ok. Now, I will say that I have been past Dorn's a thousand time, and I don't think the colors are right.  As it turns out, I had to paint the entire thing from a black and white picture.  I should also say that I felt so confident when I started this, that I didn't even do it on really good watercolor paper.  I did it on a slightly lower grade paper.