Pepper Trees – Daily Painting
“Pepper Trees near Lake Piru” 7.5″ x 11″ Watercolor on 140# paper
For sale
Almost as common as eucalyptus are California’s pepper trees, which, in the summer, are heavily laden with pink peppercorns. These tall fluffy trees are especially common along highways, and scent the air with a spicy fragrance when the fallen peppers are crushed.
After I painted this I thought it almost verged on the abstract with large bands of color, shape and texture but no real center of interest.
Snowy Field – Painting a Day
Snowy Field
Watercolor on paper 5.5″ x 13.5″
An exploration in monochrome for a Wet Canvas Weekend Allmedia event. The challenge was to take a reference photo provided by Wendy/Sundiver and adapt it in some way to make it more interesting.There was no foreground in the ref photo, and no shadows. My solution was to turn it into a vertical format, rather than horizontal, and to let the cast shadows of the trees be part of the design. The shadows point up to the sun (or moon, as the case may be) which is the center of interest.
Now if any of you wants to get technical, yes I know that the cast shadow from a point source (the moon) should radiate from that source, and that the trees furthest to the right should not cast shadows to the left. But I did it for a design reason, ok?
The provided reference photo:
Illo Friday “Clear” – Wild Stream
SOLD
“Wild Stream”
7.5″ x 11″ Watercolor on 140# paper
Clean, clear, water – what a precious resource. Can anything match it for clarity and freshness?
I did this painting today just for fun for some water practice, using a very limited palette of two blues, a red and a yellow. That’s about it. Oh, and a little gouache white for some ripples here and there. The Angeles Crest forest above La Canada is just full of places like this.
I don’t think there’s any way to paint wild water in a quiet, contemplative way. For me, it’s necessary to be a little bit excited about the subject matter and to paint quickly and almost impulsively, even though that usually means making a lot of mistakes. The vitality of the water flow is communicated by the energy of the brushstrokes.
(My watermark and blogaddress is not in the painting – only in the scan.)
Yorkshire Pals – Daily Painting
11″ x 9″ Watercolor on 140# paper. Available.
This was my (very) early morning project for Wet Canvas’ weekend drawing event, in which reference photos are provided to draw or paint from. One’s work or work in progress must be posted within 2 hrs of starting.
Well, I had a dilemma. I liked parts of two photos but I wasn’t sure either one would make a good painting on their own. So I composited the two in Photoshop and used that as my ref.
Something I observed this week at LACMA when I wandered through the 18th century landscape galleries. Almost all of the skies were full of interesting cloud formations – and the reason appeared to be so that certain landscape elements could be highlighted by the sun, and other, less interesting parts thrown into shadow. Hmm, pretty clever those Dutch. So it occurred to me that I could make a more interesting pattern of light and darkness on the ground if I put some clouds up into the sky. (Look at the horse photo and you’ll see it’s a clear day.) The fluffy clouds I experimented with in Photoshop were my way of seeing if that solution would work. I also wanted some strong diagonals in the composition so I exaggerated that with color and shadows.
Here are the two source photos which were taken by Deepat’s friend June
Mango and Mates – Daily Painting
Watercolor on paper 10″ x 7.5″. Available
What I learned on my weekend vacation that I decided to apply today …
Colorful shadows with reflected light. Playing around with complementary schemes.
Being bold with wet in wet painting.
Getting more daring with saturated color.
Painting watercolor standing up (even when not plein air) to give more arm/shoulder range.
Mixing colors from a limited palette.
Oh, and this is not the same mango that my husband was pining for before. That one went into the margaritas.
Chili and the Dumpling – Daily Painting
8 in. x 10 in. Oil on gessoed hardboard
SOLD to a collector in New Mexico
Sure, they’re an odd couple. Chili, he’s a hotty with a sharp, peppery personality. Dumpling, she’s tender, sweet and rounded in all the right places. But they get along just fine. Maybe you know someone(s) like that? I know I do.
Painting a Day – Redwood Cove
7.5″ x 11″ on 140 lb. watercolor paper
Click to bid. Bidding starts at 99 cents for the monthly Nibblefest contest.
What’s Nibblefest you may be wondering? It’s a monthly activity in which the objective is to get the most number of bids from different individuals. That’s why the price starts so incredibly low. So help me out, folks, I’d like to be a contender this time; it will help my visibility and newly-launched store.
You can bid in very small increments and win yourself a nice little original painting. It’s not the number of bids that counts, it’s the number of different unique bidders. I may not do this every month, but I thought I’d try it once in a while just to see what happens. And of course you can bid twice, but your seller name will only count once for the contest.
The monthly NFAC theme is “gnarled trees” so this one seemed to be old and ropy enough to qualify. The location is the Northern California coast, near Humboldt County, where we went several years ago for a video shoot about a food bank.
What else can I say about this? Well, it was painted with only two brushes – a 3/4″ long-handled flat … and a very small thin “rigger” for the little twigs.
Near Lake Piru
Watercolor on paper – For Sale
I posted this so late last night that I didn’t even get time to write anything, sorry.
More thoughts on painting later today … work calls …
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.
Painting a Day – Capistrano Bougainvillea
Original pastel. 8″ x 12″ on Canson paper
I’ve been wanting to portray this scene ever since I saw it earlier this year, but somehow I could never get the brilliance I wanted using watercolor. Pastel, on the other hand, gives me the opportunity to capture some of that fluorescent look.
Yesterday I spent the better part of the day at an art expo held annually in Burbank, and had a great time strolling among the booths of the trade show, trying out brushes, testing different brands of pastels and experimenting with different kinds of paper. One of the highlights of the show was watching one of the demonstrators in the Winsor and Newton booth make French Ultramarine Blue paint by hand, using various binders and a glass muller. At the end he scooped it up and gave us free samples. The milled paint would be more brilliant, he advised, but I think this has its own beauty.
More about the show later this week, please check back.
Did I mention I’m lusting for Sennelier and Girault soft pastels? This painting (yes, pastels are often called paintings, not drawings) was done with Rembrandt pastels, but I’d sure like to get my hands on some Giraults …
