Fall guys
“Fall Guys” 6″ x 6″ pastel on paper.
A good art buddy brought me this lil punkin last week when she came over to visit, and I thought it was so cute i paired it with a little striped gourd that I had hanging around. It has a Mutt and Jeff quality that I like and it was fun to paint (in pastel.)
This was done on a dark brown Mi-Tientes paper, which shows through in the texture here and there. I used the rough side.
Painting a Day – Antique Lamp
“Lamp to My Feet”
5 1/2″ x 11 5/8″ Oil on gessoed hardboard
SOLD
This painting started as an experiment in trying to paint two surfaces which I find challenging – metal and glass.
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Watercolor – 11 x 15 cold press paper – plein air at the Santa Barbara CA Botanic Garden for Native Plants
Today we took a drive up to Santa Barbara to scout a location for a work project, and my dear husband suggested I turn it into a painting day as well. I had never visited the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, which enjoys a reciprocal membership with Descanso Gardens, so we spent a little time there in the early afternoon.
Unlike Descanso, all of the plantings are California natives. Just walking through the oak groves and open meadows reminded me what natural beauty we have here without planting water-demanding non-natives. I found a shady place at the entrance to one of the trails and set up my easel.
This was painted using three brushes: a one inch flat, a #12 round and a ‘rigger,’ which is a thin, flexible springy little brush. As usual, the light was changing rapidly as the sun is wont to do. Even in the 75 min. or so that I spent painting, the shadow patterns had shifted dramatically.
So I’m going to call this an entry for the “Go Somewhere New and Draw (Paint) what you see” challenge.
Here’s what the scene really looked like … with my easel in place …
Sycamore Grove
Yesterday I got my first Raffine sketchbook by Lana, recommended by Lin Frye, so I decided to give it a test drive. The 9 x 12″ paper is very thick and slightly absorbent, and I’d say it takes a wet wash pretty well without bleeding through the back side of the paper. There was only slight buckling. I used a 1″ flat brush for this sketch and a thin flexible “rigger” brush. For quick studies (this took about 15-20 minutes) and an economical price tag (12.99 for a 48 page book) this might just be my favorite so far. I even like the slightly rough texture which makes it possible to get some interesting textures.
I haven’t tried a watercolor Moleskine yet, but the large size of this sketchbook appeals in that it allows me to use a bigger brush and to concentrate on large areas of color and value. Watercolor colors used: light red, quin magenta, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, sap green, yellow green.
In the coming days I’ll also try it out with ink, colored pencil, charcoal, pencil and acrylic, if you’d like to check back to see the results of my experiments …
P.S. My first eBay watercolor painting auction concludes Sunday night …
Click to see auction
Watercolormelon
Well, this is a multipurpose painting.
First, it’s for Illustration Friday’s theme of “Clean” – I think I cleaned out that melon pretty well.
Secondly, it’s for Wet Canvas’s 4th “Art From Life” scavenger hunt. This item is “my breakfast.”
It’s a ‘draw a fruit’ for Everyday Matters, too. Mostly it was an excuse to have some watercolor fun.
For those regular readers, I used a very limited palette here – some chrome yellow and vermillion, yellow green and ultramarine blue.
Canson Montval watercolor sketchbook – 7 x 10 size.
Rockrose
It’s stiflingly hot here – today is supposed to be the hottest day of the season so far – and according to today’s radio report it could be 112F. This rockrose, being a native, doesn’t seem to care about the climate. I’m a native, too, but I like air conditioning and copious amounts of cool drinks or I wilt.
Rockroses have crinkly tissue paper thin petals, similar to matilija poppies in the way they look. Those matilijas are also a drought-tolerant native, so I’m guessing that the very thin petals have something to do with water conservation.
Draw something Mom
I had been thinking of an image to represent motherhood for this weeks “Draw something Mom” prompt when I came upon a beautiful reference photo of a mother swan and two cygnets at Wet Canvas for the Weekend Art Event.
Although this wasn’t a picture that I took, I felt very strongly attracted to it, and it holds a special meaning for me. So, it will be my interpretation of the challenge.
Arty bits: painted on Fabriano Artistico 140 lb. paper, 7″ x 5″. I did a very light pencil drawing first.
My window view – a not so faraway place
This is my return to the “Draw the view from your window” challenge. My intention is to do it for every season and to notice the differences in foliage and flowers. The tree is a Chinese elm, a hardy and vigorous grower that puts up suckers all over the yard, and promiscuously drops seeds with wild abandon. This elm, in fact, is a child of the four large elms that line the front of our property. Unlike American elms they are not vulnerable to Dutch elm disease. Come to think of it, they’re not vulnerable to anything – even severe trimming and drought. You couldn’t kill them if you tried, which makes them a good plant for drought prone areas like ours.
I painted this in my sketchbook this afternoon, looking out my window onto the end of a sunny day – a welcome change from all the rain and cloudy weather. The colors snapped, the light was good and I just had to stop what I was doing. But here’s my question: If you paint a nature scene from life but you’re not outside, can you call it plein-air? Should I call it faux-air? Or office-air? I am so confused; I will have to ruminate on this for awhile.
Edited to add:
Here’s a fall window view …of the oak just to the left of the Chinese elm (elm not seen here.)
Coffee at The Alcove
What a wonderful day … we started off in the LA Flower Mart at 7 am for a tour with a Descanso Gardens floral arrangement expert (more on that later) … then brunch at Operetta, a French cafe at the Flower Mart … then over to Barnsdall Park to see a show of fine art by Otis art college graduates (a show which ends tomorrow) … then a brief stop at an art supply store which my dear husband called to my attention, ending up at a charming coffee house called The Alcove on Hillhurst, near the Greek Theater, where we sipped cappucinos and I drew this courtyard tree. I drew a few people also but those will have to wait for another scanning session. Because I hadn’t intended to paint today, I took a simple sketchbook with eh paper for note taking and pencil drawing, so the color here had to be added digitally after the drawing was scanned. A 4B pencil was used for the sketching part.
I wish I knew the name of this tree, I’ll have to look it up in the Sunset garden book. Rough striated bark, grayish brown trunk and limbs, very “ordinary” looking leaves, oval, pointed, smooth edges. You see them all over So. Cal. It appears to be a deciduous tree as the leaves look new, bright green and on the small side. This is going to bug me until I figure it out, y’know?
Edited to add
The raw scan out of the sketchbook
I’ve created a grad from green to brown, pulled back the opacity to 50%, and set the grad to multiply
I made a composite of the previous layers and put it on a fresh layer. Then I added new layers and painted some foliage where it made sense. There are three layers of leaves, in varying opacity and color, to suggest volume and depth. I also painted a little color on the trunk.
The tree was a 15-20 min. sketch, the time it took for my husband to stand in line to get coffees while I claimed a table in the crowded courtyard. Photoshopping took about another 10 minutes.
I made the conscious decision not to fit all the tree on the page but to concentrate on the parts that interested me the most, the sinuous trunk and limbs and the textured bark.
I hope you found these additional “work in progress stages” parts interesting
Spring lilacs – challenge 59
It was cool and partly cloudy, but spring was in the air today at Descanso Gardens, where the lilacs are beginning to bloom. I painted this botanical study in my paperblanks journal which I am using for that purpose, exclusively (see callistemon, earlier this month.)
I used a combination of tube watercolor paints and caran d’ache watersoluble crayons for this one – with just the barest pencil drawing underneath. A Niji waterbrush provided the water. It was a special treat to have several conversations with other garden visitors who like plants and art.
Now, this is in complete contrast to “Union Station Sketchcrawl” (March 12) in which I changed almost every aspect of the courtyard to suit my composition. Here, I tried to faithfully represent the subject as best I could. I think that both are good styles for drawing, you just need to be clear about your objective before beginning.
