Showing posts with label Spanish Blue Bell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spanish Blue Bell. Show all posts

Saturday, May 24, 2014

New Watercolor and some colored pencil works


I am calling it done, esp. as I think I spent way too long on this, well not in actual working time, but from when I started to when I finally finished has been over a month, and for such a small work a month is a long time. Painting is only 4 x 4.5 inches on Canson 140lb Watercolor paper.

This was done for a challenge/lesson in the Watercolor forum. We had to first photograph, then draw and finally plaint some small plant material. It was early in April when I made the photograph of a plant that looked like it had just started putting on some new growth when we had a cold night and the plant suffered some frost damage. Ooh I though perfect, some great colors from the damaged growth but still some greens.

Hmm it was easier to make the photograph than to do the actual painting. Still I am fairly satisfied with how it came out. There are some areas in the background I think are a bit overworked but I also think I successfully managed the plant. For a pretty much beginning water colorist not too bad.


Another colored pencil drawing with a bit of whimsy. A couple of years ago I was in an ATC exchange where the subject was owls. One of the cards I created for the swap had a family of owl chicks on a branch. The other evening I was sitting, listening to the radio and trying to come up with something to draw that would be a bit fun and I thought of those three owls.  Instead of putting them on a branch I put one of the parents there and had the 3 poking their heads out of a hole in the tree.

Drawn first with graphite then ink then colored pencil was added. It occurred to me, too late for me to add it in, that I should have had a mouse dangling from the parents claws. Oh well maybe I will redo it with the mouse.


A quick colored pencil drawing of some Spanish Blue Bell flowers. The plants are growing in the side yard of my Apt. Building. I have noticed them in past years but never bothered to identify what they were. This year I made photographs and then picked one of the stems of flowers to draw. It did take me a bit of time to research what exactly they were. I have several wild flower books but these aren't wild flowers so they weren't in it. Finally found a web site that pictured spring flowers and I found them there, not quite the same color as they have color varieties and this pale lavender isn't the standard color.

Not the best job, the flowers are good, but I sort winged it with the leaves, though they do sort of spread out and are flat on the ground. I should have left out the grass background. Ah well, isn't it the way that you realize too late what doesn't work.


Above is one of the photographs I made of the Spanish Blue Bells, pretty aren't they. No one has cut the grass so they are very happily blooming this year. I think it past years they got mowed down before they actually got to bloom.

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