Watercolor Lessons

 Sunset Palm 2

Watercolor 9.5 X 7.75

Sunset Palm 1

Watercolor 9.5 X 7.35

I've been asked to teach an art class to some young women and it has been a struggle for me. I'm starting from scratch and the lessons have to be simple enough to accomplish in a 2 hour session. Thanks to a video by Jean Lursen, a fellow blogger, I have a simple sunset to try. The top one was done with Mission paints plus payne's gray for the dark area. The bottom one with quin. gold and orange. I'm going to go with the brighter colors for today's class.

I hope I have some student work to post in the future.

Bird In The Hand

Bird In The Hand 

Collage, 6 X 6

I left some of the strings from the string paper on the collage. When the collage is mounted on a panel they will add some interest to the piece. The string paper is made by layering string in between two pieces of tissue paper and then coating with diluted acrylic and gloss medium. 

Bird In The Hand

(detail)

Collage 6 X 6

This shows the collage a little larger for detail. It's made of a combination of hand made papers, magazine pages that have been altered and commercial papers. Everything has been coated with

acrylic gloss medium and heat fused to 140# paper. I plan to mount it on a wood panel but it could be matted and framed as well. I think I'm going to have some fun with this bored looking lady holding different objects,quite a few things come to mind. Do you have a suggestion? Make a comment below. Thanks for taking time to read my blog.

Afternoon Wine in the Garden

Watercolor, 8 X 8

I painted this from one of the many photos I took at Butchart Gardens when we visited a few years ago. It's another watercolor that I intend to mount on a gallery wrapped canvas and apply wax. I really like the looks of the presentation and I hope that buyers do too. The Primroses I posted a few weeks ago were also from that collection of pictures and have been waxed and look great. 

Bright Sunflower

Bright Sunflower

8 X 8 watercolor mounted on wood panel

This is one of three watercolors I have finished  and mounted so that they are ready to wax with Dorland's Wax Medium. This will protect them and give them a soft finish without the glare of glass in a frame. Because there is no costly framing, I can offer them for sale for less expense to me and to the buyer. They are not permitted in the bigger watercolor shows, though. Those still have to be shown under glass or acrylic. 

Small watercolor paintings

Primrose

Watercolor 6 X 6 

Mounted on wrapped canvas and waxed

I'm working on some small watercolors that I can mount on either wrapped canvas or wood panels and protect with archival wax instead of putting them under glass. It's the best of both worlds, watercolor art but displayed with no glass reflections to get in the way of enjoyment. I spay them with UV protective acrylic first and then coat them with several layers of Dorland's wax. I like the results very much and I hope customers do too. 

Painting and Posting

Koi Pond 

Acrylic on wrapped canvas 10 X 10

I've been painting quite a lot lately. I have 3 classes a week during the summer just to keep me busy. So busy that I haven't had time to post in my blog or to read the blogs of the artists I follow. 

This acrylic pour I posted before without the fish. I just thought it needed something more. I printed out some pictures that I took at a koi pond, cut out the fish and positioned them on the painting. When I found the right size and shape I just painted them in.  I like the result. 

Flamingo Collage

Flamingo 

Acrylic and Collage

I don't know how time can disappear like it does. I have a hard time keeping up with the blog these days. That said, on with the painting. This is a do-over. It was an all acrylic painting of a flamingo on a full sheet of watercolor paper. After languishing in a frame for more than a year I decided to take it out and collage on it. My inspiration is Elizabeth St Hilaire, who does this type of collage. I love her work! I decided to crop the Flamingo into a smaller format, picked out some papers that were mostly manufactured plus a couple of hand painted papers and cut and tore pieces to cover the whole bird. It was quite a challenge but fun. Everything is adhered with acrylic mat medium. I left the original background because I like how it was done in a loose, drippy, transparent manner.  

Blue Water

Acrylic 16 X 20

It started out as an abstract, it has quite a lot of collage in it and many layers of paint. Then the two little sailboats turned up so I let them stay. Maybe after awhile I'll paint them out. Right now I think I  will call it finished and start something else. 

Abstract Landscape

Abstract Landscape

12 X 18 Acrylic on paper

I'm still going to an abstract class on Saturday mornings. This is a work in progress, but it's in my attempt at something non-tropical, having a more southwestern feel. It looks quite pink in the picture, instead of the soft orange I was going for. Acrylic color mixing is so different from watercolor, it takes a lot of adjustment. It's quite the learning curve. 
I thought I'd post it anyway, before the day and then the week gets away from me. I miss that push of the 30 in 30, that really gets my juices flowing. 

White Flowers

Bush Roses

Watercolor 11 X 7.25

White flowers are always a fun challenge. You need to keep them white while still laying in interesting shadows. I loved this picture of the roses in the sunlight at Portland's Rose Garden. This painting has an abstract feeling to it with the roses floating cloud like in the picture, cropping it in a little would eliminate that some, but after doing some abstract work I kind of like that feeling. I did the painting by masking out the flowers and doing the dark background first. Personally, I think it's just as easy to paint the dark colors around the subject without using the mask and all the steps that takes. 

Fauvism

Yellow Road

Acrylic on paper 18 X 24

My Saturday Abstract class was on Fauvism. They were the artists who wanted to deviate from the norm of realistic renderings after photography became popular. People no longer needed an artist to do a portrait, they wanted a photographer. Instead of smooth strokes, they painted with short strokes of varying hues. This painting is my attempt at that style. Only the red roof is smooth for contrast.  I outlined my subjects with black at the end. We painted very quickly without over thinking it. It was harder than it looks! It sort of reminds me of Van Gough, at least that's what my husband remarked. It was fun getting out of the usual way of doing things.

The Collage

Well, I fooled around with PicMonkey for about an hour yesterday and gave up. I could not find the way to make my own grid. Whenever I hit the "make your own" button it came up with one big square, when I tried to add another picture it went underneath the first one. No way was I getting a grid! I may look in another program for the collage feature but right now the frustration level has me feeling quite negative. 

One the other hand, my abstract class this morning was fun. We worked on Fauve-ism. Everyone in the class came up with wonderful pictures, I will post mine when it is ready. 

February 30 in 30 Days- Day 30

Sail at Dawn

Watercolor 15 X 15

30 days completed! Hooray! I'm very happy that I did this, it's a good kind of discipline. Sometimes I haven't been giving myself "permission" to paint because of other things I think I ought to be doing. I could now set that aside, I had a deadline to keep. 

This painting was started as a wash a long time ago, I don't remember what I had in mind when I did it, but I had an iridescent coating over the whole thing. I decided to put sailboats in it and define the horizon line and clouds a little more. Maybe I'll put in some seagulls as well. It was a fun find to work on. It was difficult to photograph well, maybe the iridescence interfered. 

February 30 in 30 Days- Day 29

Speckled Rooster

Watercolor 5.5 X 7.5

I took a picture of this rooster at a friend's house. She lives in a rural area on a few acres and has a few chickens. It's a hassle to keep them safe from the coyotes and other wildlife but the reward is wonderful, fresh eggs. 

It's the second to last day of the 30 in 30, it's been quite a challenge. I think tomorrow will be a collage of all my paintings if I can figure out how to do it. I remember getting very frustrated with the process in the past, I hope it will be easier for me this time. 

February 30 in 30 Days- Day 28

Lacy Flowers III

Watercolor 11 X 7.5

Of the three lacy flower paintings so far, I like this one the best. I love the purple and green combo and the way it makes the white of flowers just glow. It goes to show you that doing one thing over a few times leads to improvements. These are great fun, if you are into watercolor do try them. The flowers are made by dipping a sea sponge into masking fluid and dabbing it on the paper. When it's dry, try different combinations of watercolor, the darker the better. When that is dry remove the mask and put in a few details on the stems and flowers. 

February 30 in 30 Days- Day 27

Sky Windows

Acrylic on paper 18 X 24

This is a departure from the norm for me, although I get into it from time to time. I'm always learning, something I love to do. I'm taking an abstract class every Saturday morning for at least 4 weeks. I want to get better at making abstract art and learn what makes a good one. I'm finding it's fun and easy to throw on paint, something else to make a good piece. I've always loved the cruciform design so I fall back on that. I want to stretch myself to try other designs as well. There is lots of texture and movement inside each window. Click on the picture to see more detail.

February 30 in 30 Days- Day 26

Lacy Flowers II

Watercolor 11 X 7.5

I wanted to try another example of the lacy flowers with lighter colors. They are not as dramatic as the ones done with the darker colors but I do like the soft, delicate approach. I may try them again with a bit darker palette. They are fun and easy to do, a great lesson for a beginning watercolorist. Because watercolors dry so much lighter that when they are wet, you have to go in with much darker colors than you think. 

February 30 in 30 Days- Day 25

Robin-Is It Spring?

Watercolor 11 X 7.5

When I was living in Minnesota it was always encouraging to see the first robins of spring, even if it was far from spring-like and you really wondered what they were doing there. I miss their cheery morning and evening songs but I don't miss the cold, damp, dreary weather that March often brought. Here's hoping my friends up north have an early spring. If not, here's a robin for you! 

February 30 in 30 Days- Day 24

Little Green Heron

Watercolor 5.5 X 7.5

My painting got a little more detailed in the background on this one but it sort of frames the bird so I decided to leave it alone. Sometimes when I look at my photo I get carried away by the literal. I could improve this painting by making the background behind the head darker so that it becomes the focus as it should. It takes time away from a painting in order to see the obvious. I've known artists who have taken a painting out of a frame to "fix" it, maybe more than once. Ah, well, 6 more to go.

February 30 in 30 Days- Day 23

Rocky Shoreline

Watercolor 9 X 11.5

The last of the paintings done in the Elaine Charney workshop. Elaine did a quick demo of this while waiting for paint to dry on her other piece. So, while I was waiting for paint to dry on one of my pieces I did this one very quickly without any drawing. Had I drawn, I would have made my rock shapes a little more believable. The idea was to work quickly and let the paint flow. It would be a good warm up exercise in loosening up.