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.

Finally Spring

It is the First of May, hope you have a happy May Day. I almost can't believe how long it has been since I last did a blog update. But to be honest I haven't been doing much to blog about. Playing games on my tablet, reading or listening to books, food shopping, those have been my main activities, and there isn't much in the way of interesting blog content in those activities. Hmm book reviews maybe but that has never been my thing, so I will spare my readers.

That said in the past few weeks I have pulled out my brushes and the watercolor paints and paper to do some playing around. First I painted some imaginary flowers, then I cut the resulting painting into 2 inch strips and then using an ink pen I added some top doodles. The results are in the top image, a couple of almost done bookmarks. I plan on coating them with Acrylic Medium and then calling them done. I have plans to do some more watercolor painting. I am not very good, but hopefully well get better.

These next two photos show what else I have been doing since Christmas, knitting socks. So far I have 3 pair finished, and a couple more pairs where the first sock is about half way done (I am doing the heel)

I am working with mostly wool yarns that has some nylon incorporated, the grey socks above have some Alpaca, which means a soft yarn with a lovely hand. I am knitting on double pointed needles, size 2 for the grey socks, and size one for the multi colored socks below, they yarn is dyed with gradations of color, I just knit. The socks don't have the same color gradations, but then the yarn didn't seem to have repeat gradations. I wasn't sure I would have enough for the 2nd sock so I didn't even really try to look for a repeat. Still I don't care, I love the colors in this yarn and found the gradations fun to work with.

For those who haven't tried it, sock knitting is fun and sort of addictive. Esp. if you can find a pattern that is well written and have had some experience knitting. There are various on-line sites that offer free patterns, though I found the Paton's Next Steps Four, Socks and Slippers booklet excellent for the beginning sock pattern (grey socks). I also recommend the Ravelery web site for all things knit, they have free patters and a large community of knitters. You need to join to get the patterns but the site won't bombard you with e-mails.

Our weather, here in Eastern MA was fairly warm in February (for that time of year) but March was snowy and cold so I wasn't doing many trips into Boston. Above is photo I did make on of my late March Boston visits. This is a photo of Boston City Hall from the Quincy Market area, the statue is one of Boston's past mayors, Kevin White, I think but I need to check

The above photo was made from Boston Garden looking toward Beacon Street. The pink azalea was inside the garden, and the white tree was in front of  one of the buildings on Beacon. The photo was made about a week ago, in late April. 

I made the above photo of a violet in bloom this past weekend here in Brockton. There are also various bushes in bloom and some of the trees in my neighborhood are starting to leaf out. I can say that Spring is finally arriving here in Southeastern MA.

Not sure when I will be updating the blog again. I am not currently driving so my access to woods has been severely limited. This means I won't be visiting my favorite sites for spring wild flowers this year. Lack of mobility is also going to limit the number and kinds of butterflies I can photograph. Maybe I can get back to doing more art which I can post, only time will tell, and I am sure there will be more socks.. In the meantime comments are welcome. 

Happy New Year 2018 - Chicago Street Art

I want to wish all my readers a Happy 2018, may you have good health, good luck and good times this coming year.

Per usual I spent Christmas and New Year's at my sisters in Chicago. For the first part of my visit the weather wasn't too bad so on a couple of days (one cloudy) I was able to get out and about with the camera. Then a cold front came in and it was too cold to spend much time outside and with the wind chill factor dangerous to exposed skin (temps were below 10 degrees F on a couple of days) so my photography trips were called off, it was just too darn cold.

Anyway Chicago has a lot of hmm, lets call it street art. These first two photos are buildings that have been painted to call attention to themselves. Both of these are restaurants, the top one a barbecue place and the one below I think was a Mexican Restaurant.  For the barbecue place they just painted the building over the entrance. In the one below they painted the entire rear of the adjoining building, fake windows, fake arch, fake courtyard and even fake stairs. I am sure that in the summer there are tables in this area and it must be a pleasant place to sit and eat. The fountain is real.

Please don't ask me where these restaurants are, I have no clue other than on the North side of downtown Chicago and toward the lake, Lincoln Park area (I think) I do all my wanderings starting on foot from my sisters and usually walk toward the lake (east) and usually south (toward downtown) but I don't really bother with street names or addresses. If I end up over by the lake and Lincoln Park I know which buses will get me back to her house otherwise I am happy to just wander. 

But Chicago also likes to put up sculptures and other types of art works on street corners and in small parks.

The colorful bends above are to mark one of the areas that make up the City of Chicago, The sign says Lakeview East, different areas have different signs.

Above is one of the Corner Sculptures I found, I don't recall what the marker said about it. It just sits out on a street corner, I would think that they might be worried that someone would try to take it, but then again maybe not.

Near a Children's Hospital I found a small park, there was a sculpture of children playing a circle game in the center of the park, and this one on the corner, not sure what it is supposed to be.

As a final photograph, Chicago has a Nature Museum located a bit north of the Lincoln Park Zoo. It is near a pond and also fairly close to the Lake (Lake Michigan) Instead of a lawn with mowed grass they have landscaped much of the area around the building as native prairie: using native shrubs and plants. The photo above is of some flower heads (seed heads) left from last summer. I don't know what the flower is/was but thought the seed heads interesting.

I have visited the Museum in the past, they have a butterfly room with live mostly tropical butterflies, it was fun to try and photograph them, they also have exhibits showcasing native animals and their habitat.  A good place to visit with young children, when my sister and I visited food was in short supply so I suggest a packed lunch if you are in the area and want to visit.

That is it for today, not sure when my next update will be or what it will be about. I am finding that I don't have a lot of motivation to get out the camera when it is freezing cold or the ground is snow covered. Ah well, per usual comments are welcome.