Plumeria Update

I'm still not finished with my plumeria watercolor! I've made some progress but I have fine-tuning to do. It's been a hectic week, I flew back to the US from Poland and have been a busy (and jet lagged) bee ever since. I hope to finish it this week!

I tried ripping tape so I could have an irregular border but the paint leaked a lot underneath and I couldn't lift it out. It didn't have the effect I was after so I'll probably just crop it out when I finish the painting. 

Plumeria In Progress

Still working on the watercolor Plumeria flower painting.  I wish I could have gotten a little further or finished by now, but it's been so unbearably hot and I haven't had the energy to put into it. It's supposed to be cooler this week so hopefully I'll be able to finish it up! :)

Tropical Inspiration

In honor of our upcoming trip to Hawaii, I'm starting a new watercolor painting of plumeria.  These beautiful flowers are all over Hawaii, and it is what they make lei's out of.  

I am so excited!  A friend of ours is getting married in Maui in January, which is the reason for this trip. I've always wanted to go to Hawaii and I cannot wait to get there! We booked our flight, condo and a car. And who knew that even 6 months in advance, things start getting sold out already. We just booked our car yesterday and lucky for us we even got one, most places were out of cars and the ones that were left were outrageously expensive. Our crappy '04 Nissan Sentra cost over $400 for 2 weeks. Yikes. So if you're ever going to Hawaii, make sure you book what you need like 9 months ahead. 

Anyway, I'm doing this watercolor on high quality 9x12" Arches cold pressed watercolor block. 

Arches blocks of paper are great, but very expensive!! It was I think $50 at Michaels, but, being the thrifty artist I am, I would never go to Michael's without a 40% off coupon so it wasn't too bad.  These blocks (which come in many sizes) usually have 20 sheets to a block, and they are glued together at the edges to keep them from buckling while you work. When you're finished with your painting, you then take a palette knife and cut the paper off the block. 

I drew the flowers in my 9x12" sketchbook, traced it and then transferred the drawing to the watercolor paper.  I never draw straight on the watercolor paper anymore, because you can make too many mistakes that don't erase completely or just scratch too deeply into the paper.  It's always good to draw on a separate piece of paper, work out all the issues there and then transfer your final drawing. 
But before I transferred my drawing, I put some clear Liquitex gesso (artist primer) on the watercolor paper. 

One thing I don't love about watercolor is how flat the color is when it dries, no glossiness at all. I've tried adding gum arabic to my wet paint but it doesn't work very well for me. It comes out glossy, but I don't like how the paint reacts with it. (Maybe I did it wrong?)  When painting on top of this gesso with watercolor, there is a slight sheen to the finished painting. I discovered this because I recently gesso'd over a failed painting, first using cheap, opaque gesso. Once the painting was covered with a few coats of that, I used the clear Liquitex on top of it so I would be painting on a much better quality surface. I like the results! So I'm going to do it again with this painting. 

So my paper is prepped and ready to go, I will begin painting this today. I have the ragged tape around the edge so it will have an irregular border. I got this idea from artist Judy Morris, featured in the June 2012 issue of my Watercolor Artist magazine. 

Sunflowers

This is a watercolor painting I completed in late 2010.  (Mexican Sun, watercolor on paper, 10"x10")

It's probably my first successful still life composition.  I realized I am good at drawing or painting objects alone, but arranging several things and putting in a background is more tricky for me. 
I was inspired to do this painting by the gorgeous, vibrant sunflowers we had bought the day before and really fun and bright pattern on those dishes we had from Pier 1. I set them all up in front of a west facing window in my house that gets great, bright afternoon sunlight and took a million photos from several angles and re-arranged the dishes constantly. This was my favorite angle (obviously...) and is one of the most fun paintings I've ever done. I love all the bright colors on the flowers and dishes and that great afternoon light shining on them. Now I'm going to highlight one of my least favorite parts of the painting and one of my favorite parts. 

I made up the old wooden table surface the objects sit on. This arrangement was actually sitting on an old wooden chest in front of a window in my parents dining room.  The wood of the chest inspired the made up table, but the very dark spot in the upper left corner was in the photo, just a dark, shadowed area. While I was making things up, I should have just continued the wood grain in that corner, but I went with the almost black shadow that was in the photo. Mistake. 

It bugs me a little but I don't know that I can change it now, since I've sprayed it with a varnish. D'oh well.  What I have learned from this mistake is not to rely too much on your reference photos.  Making changes and just plain making things up really can help a painting, and these super dark spots that sometimes happen in photos are not something that should be copied in the painting. It's just a dark, empty void in the corner that looks a little strange. 

One of my favorite parts of this painting is the bit of green vase showing on the bottom left corner. 

I'm not an abstract artist, and I'm not crazy about most "non-objective" and abstract art. Jackson Pollock really gets on my nerves. Paintings of squares? Seriously? (I'm talking to you, Josef Albers...)I don't want to offend any of you who may love and do abstract work yourselves, to each your own. I just personally don't like it. But painting the reflections and shadows and all the abstract shapes that come with painting glass was so exciting. Also, those gorgeous blues and greens!!! I would honestly love to zoom in on this part of the photo and do a large version of it. Maybe I'll just do that...

Just for fun, here is a preliminary sketch. I always love seeing peoples sketches and doodles, so here's one of mine.

Plumerias

If you hadn't noticed, flowers are one of my favorite things to draw and paint.  I love their delicate, organic shapes and colors.  I've been known to go through phases of flowers, having a different favorite every year or so. A list of some favorites include orchids, plumeria, sunflowers and currently, the gerber daisy. But I've been going back to the plumeria a little bit and it reminded me of an old acrylic painting I did that I wanted to put up here. I had several different sized mini canvases (canvaii?) that I didn't know what to do with. I collected them thinking, "they're so cute!" and then I wondered, "what am I going to do with all these tiny things?" I sat down with them and tried to think of an idea to use them all up, and realized they all fit together perfectly! So I made a single painting with all 8 little canvases. 

The painting in total measures about 8"x6".  The 6 canvases on the sides measure about 2x2 3/4...they should be 2x3" but who's counting? The long skinny one is 2x4" and the square at the bottom 2x2".  I really love this little painting, but I have yet to find a good way to display it without nailing 8 holes in the wall. ;)

A Collection of Self Portraits

I just finished my latest self portrait, what I call a random experiment in drawing completely from life. I sat and stared at myself in a mirror, sometimes a large full length one, sometimes using my little handheld mirror, and drew. This is the first project I've ever done completely from life, aside from some small studies of fruit and veggies. 

This is called "Self Portrait with Dragon".  The dragon is a little plush toy I've been wanting to draw for a while because it's so friggen' cute ;) My hair isn't really that color, but I kind of wish it was! My facial expression is very serious, and that's about the only real problem I have with the finished product. I wanted to be smiling a little without looking too much like I'm posing for a picture but I kind of got the opposite result. Oh well. For this I used pencil, colored pencil, micron pens, acrylic pearlescent ink and silver ink pen.

I've done two other self portraits previously.  Every now and then I get the urge to draw the figure, and what better figure to use than yourself?  Rembrandt did it all the time!  So much easier than bribing friends or family into posing for you and trying to get them to stay still and stop whining "are you done yet"? ;) I've always used photos though, and it's much easier. But I really felt I needed to challenge myself with the new one by not only drawing the figure and face (my weakest subject matter) but doing it from life instead of a photo.

Anyway, here are my other two previous portraits done from photos to compare.

 This one I did two years ago using only Caran D'Ache watercolor crayons. (And a pencil obviously to sketch the outline). 

This one I've posted on here before, I just did it this winter. I only did this one for the hair. I came across this picture my boyfriend took of me and thought my hair looked like a lot of fun to draw. So this is more of a portrait of my hair ;)

New

Once again, I've decided to branch out and do something other than flowers. As much as I love drawing and painting them, it's fun and necessary to do something different once in a while ;) 

I saw this little girl playing in a sandbox at a restaurant I was at last week. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and we were sitting outside having a drink. She just came right over and jumped in the sandbox and had a great time playing there by herself. She found an old paper cup on the ground and some pieces of cardboard and was using them for her sand adventures. I couldn't resist taking a few photos. She was so cute and I was very interested in the bright sunlight of the scene. I don't draw or paint people very much, just a few self portraits.  I'm fairly happy with the results, but I did struggle with her hair, because I have no idea how to paint blonde hair! I just don't know what colors to use, so it was trial and error. Skin tones are also a bit baffling to me. And the sand...yes this was a tricky painting ;) But it's a learning experience. I may do this painting again in larger format at some point, I really love how she's sitting and the bright sunlight against the shadows on her body, clothing and hair.

 

My other goal for this painting was to do it in a loose style, as opposed to my usual tight and controlled style. 

Here are some sketches I did before hand, trying to figure out which pose I liked best.

The final result is Sunny Sandbox, 4"x6". Watercolor.