Purple Poppy

By now you must all know that I have a thing for Poppies.  I think because they are simple flower, but look fantastic.

I started with a light wash of a nice reddish purple color.  Then, kept adding layer upon layer of paint.  Each one just a bit darker than the last.

Throw on a nice background that helps to make the flowers stand out and you've got a nice little painting.

Hope you enjoy


For anyone that wants to see a video of my painting this, there is a video below.

Sparrow

I don't think I'll ever be able to get all the way away from painting birds, and I don't think I want to.  Like most areas of the country, I've got plenty of sparrows flying around my house.  I thought it might be nice to paint one.  I think I did one years ago, but they are nice birds and I always enjoy watching them at the feeder and flitting about too and fro.

This isn't any particular sparrow, but one of many that could be around my house.  He's just sitting there on a little branch looking for his friends to play with.

He was great fun to paint.  If you want to see a video of how I did it, check out the video below.

Practice Agapanthus

This is an agapanthus.  We have them all over here in California.  I was asked to attempt to paint these.  This is a first attempt.  It's ok, i suppose, but it dind't quite turn out how I wanted.  I think my paper was too wet, and got too much run in my colors.  I'm gonna revisit this and see if I can't do something a bit better.

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.

Pouring a Glass of Wine

So I was trying to paint the act of pouring a glass of wine.  I totally obliterated the right side of both glasses, but I think its totally cool.  I should have been a little tighter with the wine bottles, but.... you know, sometimes you just get a little carried away.    They were both fun to paint.  Hope you guys enjoy them.

Power Outage Painting

We had a power outage on camps yesterday.  It lasted about 40 minutes.  Just long enough to disrupt everyone's day, but not quite lone enough for anyone to really enjoy the extended break time.  I, being the quick witted one I am, grabbed paper and paint and set to work.

I originally tried to find my sketching partner, but after looking in his office and several of the classrooms in which he teaches, abandoned hope of finding him.  I set off across campus trying to find a place to sit down.  (by this time, nearly everyone had started to come out of the buildings, and was starting to enjoy the beautiful day.

I sat to start to paint, when after only about 2 minutes, it was announced that the power was back on, and we could all resume our normal day.  Well, I quickly finished, packed up, and went back to work.  What I got out of it was this nice little painting.  Enjoy

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.

Another Portrait, and maybe more to come

This painting for sale. 8x10 $20

Once again I have a challenge to paint portraits.  I guess I could try it a little more conventionally but... sometimes you just don't wanna do it that way.  If I had done this the conventional way, then you would know what everything was supposed to look like exactly.  You would immediately look and see flaws in the picture, and they would stick in your mind.

Painting this way, you see the colors, and the the shapes, but not necessarily what you mind tells you you should be seeing.  There is a little leeway for me to make a few mistakes.  Actually, I think it makes it a much more dramatic picture also.

Here is the picture I started with.  You can see the drawing and that I had just started to paint.  There are a lot of coats of paint on top of the one that is down on this picture.

Actually, I should say that I really like to paint this way.  It takes longer to paint any particular picture, but I think its more fun, and I think the result really looks nice.  I don't know if I could do something like a landscape this way, but for defined shapes, I could do this all day.

Here is the picture that I used for the basis for my painting.  I still might go back and splotch in some freckles to give her face a little more detail, but if I don't do anything, I'm totally still satisfied.

Oh, and yes, like the headline says, expect mor portraits.

Female Face

This painting for sale. 8x10 $20

Inspired by February's portrait painting challenge, or maybe by re-finding an artists work that I had hoped to duplicate, or getting some inspiration from a newly found friend, I trudged ahead with a new style of painting.  (You may link to the inspirational sites here and here.)

I used a lot more water than normal, and allowed the paint to do whatever it is that the paint does on the paper.  I'll admit to not being the most proficient with this right now, but  I love this style of painting.  I'm gonna be doing more, so get ready.

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.

New Birds

Watercolor 9x9 SOLD

Well, I'm working on my blending technique.  I think the first bird here, I did  a good job.  The second, not so much.  The background in the second got out of control a little fast.  But the picture I took it from was pretty similar to that.  I actually think I did justice to the real picture, I just think i neet to not be quit so literal.

House Finch  SOLD