Playing with Watercolor

Since I am not driving all over the state in search of early butterflies I have been trying to get back to my art work. My main focus is improving my watercolor skills, with mixed results. For subjects I am going through my photo archive and selecting photos that I think will be relatively easy to paint, mostly flowers at this point.

Above is a columbine, I selected a photo of an individual flower and tried to paint it without any preliminary pencil or pen work. I am relatively pleased with how it came out. Native columbines are such a  pretty late spring flower and it was fun to try and paint the rather complex shapes.

My next attempt was the above image of 3 cosmos flowers. I have painted this subject before with as I recall not much more success, for some reason these are tricky flowers to paint.

Perhaps it is the color of the flowers, pink. There is no such thing as pink watercolor paint, there are various shades of red but no pink. So to get pink you have to add water, lots of water, which makes a wet paint that I find tricky to control. I am finding it hard to get the brush loaded just right. Paper towels are necessary, at least for me so that I can remove some of the moisture from the brush prior to painting. Still I think this attempt is better than my previous attempt, which isn't saying much. After a lot more paintings maybe I will try again.

 

I tried something a bit different with these daffodils. I drew the image first with pencil, then inked the outline lines and then added color. I started with a light yellow wash, removed some of the paint in some areas, then allowed the paper to dry. The next session I added some darker yellow and orange shading. Allowed that to dry and then added the shadows and the background. I am fairly happy with how this one came out. At least they look like daffodils. Again the reference was one of my personal photographs.

For all my paintings I am using a half sheet of Fabriano Studio Watercolor paper, the cold press, 140 lbs 9 x 12 inch sheets. It contains 25% cotton so isn't as expensive as 100% cotton paper but stands up better to water etc. than a 100% wood pulp paper or a lighter weight paper. 

These next two photos are both of "Violets", though the ones above are wild (and I think native) while the ones in the photo below are house plants that come from another continent. I don't think they are actually related but I may be wrong.

Anyway I usually have at least one African Violet plant that I keep in my bedroom (the windows face North which my African Violets seem to love). Right at the moment one of the plants is in bloom so I thought I would share a photo of them This plant flowers a kind of salmon pink, not my favorite color, I prefer a dark purple but I tend to purchase plants that are on the sale table so they usually don't have flowers when I buy them.

Earlier this week I took a trip into Boston, got off at Park and walked across the common and through the Garden. The flowering trees were putting on a show and the swan boats were out and about on the pond. Above is a photo of a swan boat at the boarding shed. It was a beautiful day, I ended up at the Library for lunch and then headed out to the smaller Blicks store for some spare colored pencils. Next update will have a colored pencil drawing. Something old that I have finally finished.

In the meantime that is it for today, comments are always welcome.

Regarding Snow and some drawings

I have been doing more pattern play with pen and ink. Well the pattern starts out in pencil then I ink the lines, erase the pencil and then ink a background. For the above I was working with a dip pen and my new to me acrylic inks, sepia for the outlines and black for the background and fills. I don't think I will add any colored pencil to this one, as I rather like the subtle color changes between the brown and black inks and I think it would get lost if I added more color.

Not sure where I am going with these, for some reason they appeal to me at the moment. Maybe I have been looking at too many architectural details or too many Greek vases. I am not deliberately copying anything but I wouldn't be surprised to find they remind my viewers of something specific.

I do wish I was a bit more consistent in some areas with the fill lines I put in, though I suppose that the unevenness is a sign that was done by hand and not on a computer. This is only 4 inches square done on 400 Strathmore Bristol Smooth paper, using a Japanese nib.

Drawn directly in my sketchbook with Sepia Acrylic Ink and a dip pen. I think I have the perspective slightly off, but otherwise am fairly pleased with how this came out. Shading is done with just line work and almost no crosshatching.

Back to pencil for the drawing above of a columbine flower, bud and leaf from a reference photo I made a few years ago. I love wild columbine with their red and yellow colors. They are such complex flowers and this was a challenge to draw.

I took a bit of liberty with the drawing and upped the contrast in Photoshop. I used a F lead for the drawing and the scan was looking a bit lighter than I wanted. F leads are rather hard, harder than an HB but not as hard as a 2H and I am finding them a good weight to use for my preliminary pen and ink drawings. The graphite erases easily, is light, but doesn't mark the paper. I purchase this lead in Chicago and it is Koh-i-Noor lead which I haven't seen for sale here in the states for quite a few years. Good to see them back.

Regarding snow, I have two photographs today, and the way our weather is looking (lightly snowing today, as I type) there will be more in my future. After weeks of hardly any snow we finally received some. Well a bit more than some, we had full fledged blizzard with high winds (wind gusts approx. 60 mph) and lots of snow, about 2 feet or 24 inches in my area, though it may have been more. The wind blew it around so much that it is a bit hard to judge just how much actually fell. The storm lasted about 24 hours and basically shut down the eastern half of MA for two days, one for the storm and one for dig out. It also appears to have moved us into a different weather pattern, since we are getting some snow today, more tonight/tomorrow and still more is forecast for Monday.

I think that after Monday I will be just as happy if it decides to stop snowing for the rest of the winter, though it doesn't seem likely. For the record I am fine, didn't loose power even once during the storm, and even if I had I have enough supplies on hand to hold up or as actually happened I could even have done food shopping on Wednesday if necessary.

I gather the news folks in other areas of the country made it sound like we were having a natural disaster up here. Well a few communities did suffer greatly from the storm, Nantucket Island lost power, and a couple of coastal communities suffered major damage from Ocean surges and beach erosion. Homes were lost, roads damaged but I don't believe anyone died. Still for most of us here in Eastern MA, Tuesday was a day to stay inside, watch the snow fall, maybe feed the birds and wait for the wind to drop prior to starting the clean up. Travel isn't easy, side streets are still mostly snow covered but things are getting back to normal, more or less.

OK, photos, the one above is of an almost buried headstone in an old cemetery that is just around the corner from me.

This next one shows how the city attempted to clear the sidewalk and then contractors working for a business came along and closed off one end as they cleared the parking lot/driveway for the business. This isn't a very, hmm, artistic photo but it does give the viewer a good idea of just how much snow there is that has to be cleared off of streets and sidewalks. To be honest I think I am going to be walking in the street at least some of the time for quite a while, and yes I will be careful.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

May 16th Figure Drawing and a Zentangle

Above is last nights drawing. Scott pulled a chair and an ottoman together to make something similar to a chase lounge so our model could lay prone on it. She was then lit with some very dramatic lighting. I was almost the only one who chose to draw her from this view. Most of the gathered artists chose a more frontal view opposite to my position. I suppose I could have moved, but actually I sort of enjoyed drawing this pose. It certainly was a challenge. Not sure I  have her face correct. She had a tendency to turn her head even more to the side so that my view was less rather than more of her face. Not to mention that I don't usually draw faces where I see more of the underside of the chin than of the front of the face. Still overall I am happy with this drawing and how it came out.

Below is a pen and ink drawing that I finished coloring yesterday.

Another of my take on Zentanles. This one I started with just one meandering line, which I then proceeded to pretty much ignore after I had reached a certain point with the drawing. After I was done with the inking I decided to experiment with my Inktense and watercolor pencils and add color. I call this Dragonfly Fantasy, because of the 3 dragonflies drawn on the right side of the image. My goal was to work on blending colors together. I used frisket to mask various areas while I painted the background, and then for some areas I went in after removing the frisket and added color. Not sure how I feel about this piece. I like some of it, but other parts underwhelm me. Guess I will just have to try again and see what happens.

My final image for today is a close up photograph of a columbine blossom.

Isn't it lovely. I really love the colors in this photograph which I made last week at Stony Brook, a MA. Audubon site. They have a garden area around the site's center and a wild columbine was madly blooming away in it. Since from our weather forecast I am not going to be able to get out to make more photographs until at least Sunday I will just have to enjoy this one. I have posted other photographs I made at Stony Brook on my Facebook fan page for anyone interested. Hope your weather isn't as damp or as chilly as mine is here in the Northeast. Signing off for today, per usual comments are always welcome.