Iris Center

I took this photo of a white iris last spring.

Yellow Zinnias

Yesterday one of our watercolor studio members brought in a nice bunch of zinnias and ageratum. I didn't try to paint the bunch but instead used their colors and shapes to arrange flowers in a sort of "S" shape. I've been reading Janet Walsh's book, "Watercolor Made Easy" (which really is not a book good for a starter book but is very good if you have some experience under your belt). She uses a technique of putting down a color with a round brush then immediately softening one or more edges with a clean, damp, flat brush. I tried it with these flowers and I liked it because my flowers look less paint-inside-the-lines-ish.

Peaches

I painted these peaches from a photo supplied by a member of my online watercolor group for a group project. I made up the background and the tablecloth.

Award

Last night was the opening reception and awards for the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society's 2007 International show. Fran, three other friends and I packed in one car and drove the hour and a half to Lancaster . . . all so they could watch me win an award. It was a strong show with 80-some well-executed paintings and I was amazed and excited that I'd gotten in, much less won an award. We found a notebook with the award winners in it with comments from either the juror of seclection or the judge of awards. The latter's comment about mine included something like a "spontaneous little [it's a quarter-sheet] watercolor" and ended with "any painter that can put green on the paper and not create mud deserves a pat on the back." Anyway, that's me on the right, getting my award.
The painting in question is earlier in this blog, posted July 27th.

Evening Light Pastel

Same photo as the previous painting, new version, this one in pastel. I painted most of this one upside down.

Evening Light

I took the photo for this painting last weekend when we were in Maryland. We were sitting on the deck having dinner when I saw this incredible light on the trees.

The Stump

We spent a couple of days this weekend with our friends Cheryl and Paul in their new (second) home on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay (west of Cecilton, Doris). This is the view from next to their house overlooking the water, which is a lake made by damming the creek with bay dredging goop. Cheryl, Paul and I canoed to the dam and walked from there to the shore of the bay and I made this little sketch. Otherwise, we spent our time visiting and eating. It was beautiful weather and we spent most of our time on their deck.

It's done with brown, ultra-fine Sharpie permanent marker and a wc wash.

Two Pastels

Our new pastel paper finally arrived and I've been itching to do some pastel. The late-day one is from a photo taken out our window at the house across the street (although the house itself doesn't look much like the painting). The other one is a field near the Brandywine Creek.

Sailboat and Charts

It's always hard to know when to stop when doing an abstract like this one. I'm doing it for the second time, since the first version contained collages of charts and old maps, something not allowed in many shows because they are not created by me. So this time I used various colors of ink, in addition to the watercolor paint, to draw my own charts and maps. If you look closely, none of the "writing" is real. I will probably work on this a bit more, but it's looking close to being done.

Heeling

I'm still playing with painting sailboats, this time one that's under sail. Fran suggested I do one in reds and blues, so I did. I painted this about a week ago and didn't like it much, so it sat behind another painting. Today when I uncovered it, I liked it much better; it's often like that with paintings I do.

Accepted!

This painting just got accepted into the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society's their annual International Exhibition. It's going to be in Lancaster, PA, opening in the middle of September. Hooray.

Added later: The painting won an honorable mention!

Sailboat, take 3

This is quite a bit bigger than my other two sailboats and it's on illustration board. I found some nautical charts on the internet and painted a couple, one old-looking and one as I remember paper charts from my sailing days. After I glued down a large chunk of chart in the bottom right, I painted the background, leaving the cabin of the boat white. The boat and the compass were drawn first with sepia conté pencil then with a brown magic marker to make them darker. I added paint to the crayon on the hull and for the reflections. Then I cut and tore more of the charts and glued them in places where I thought they'd work in the painting. I'm not sure I'm finished but now I'm going to live with it for a while and see what it (and you) tell me to do.

Sailboat, take 2

I think this is much closer to the image I was thinking of yesterday when I started painting this sailboat in these colors. This time I painted in the background (the diagonals, mostly) then I used a sepia conté pencil for the drawing. I did do the drawing lightly in pencil before I started to I'd know where to leave that white splotch. I think I should crop it higher so the mast doesn't go off the top.

Sailboat in Sepia

I woke up this morning with something like this image in my head. The tough part was finding an appropriate image in all my photos and then doing the drawing. Boats are HARD. This is painted with gold and purple pigments only, mixed in various proportions. I tried to combine looseness and a more precise way of painting.

Anyone Home?

The dogs and I pass this hollow-ing tree on one of our walks.