20140412 - Sketches

Well, I picked up my pen and paint brush and dashed off a few sketches this week.

First, is an Eastern Bluebird. It is just a sketch, of which I am thinking how to finish the background. I think I'll use some Blue Ridge mountains and an early morning sky. Stay tuned for more to come!

The second sketch is a representation of the small partial walls that you often see at entrances to various neighborhoods. These are not gated communities. It's just a way to show how sturdy and substantial the neighborhood is.

Nothing really spectacular. But that was not my intent. I just wanted to see if I could now better capture the look of real stone and how it varies from block to block. My brush is much looser and more impressionistic than it used to be. I make progress.

The final sketch is a quick sketch of a fountain near one of my doctor's offices. The flame-like structure is a steel sculpture in the center of the fountain.

My hope was to capture the feeling of the fountain. I think I did fairly well for a quick sketch.

Hope you enjoy and remember to keep on looking for the beauty that surrounds us.

20131104 - Sunflower

Well, another day, another painting! As promised in yesterday's post, I completed the Sunflower. Most of it was complete last night, but this morning, I added a few finishing touches. Hopefully you will enjoy this rendition of my friend's photograph.

The camera added a bit of reflective light to the mix. So, the center and the detail around the center appears a bit lighter than they appear in person.

Since I don't have a scanner that can handle larger images, I use a camera. While it does well, it does need to use the flash to get a good photograph of the painting. And then of course, I need to do some photo editing to eliminate perspective distortions to the photograph (to bring it back to an 11x14 sized image).

And of course, for your reference, here is my friend's photograph of the back lit sunflower. As you can see, getting the intense yellow is a fairly difficult proposition. Next time, I will probably try a slightly redder yellow (Hansa Yellow Deep). However, in my defense, the yellow in person is much more intense.

Anyway, hopefully this cheerful sunflower will brighten your day.

20131103 - Sunflower with a Different Perspective

I enjoy finding interesting photographs and subjects within them. A friend recently gave me explicit permission to paint his photographs. This photograph he made of this sunflower with the sun behind it, lighting it from behind. It will make an interesting subject.

When rendering it in watercolor, I think I will shoot for complimentary and split complimentary colors (using the CMY, or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow color wheel). Thus, the compliment of yellow is blue (on the CMY color wheel). I will paint the green leaves toward the bottom where there is more of an orange coloring of the sunflower. This will yield the split complimentary colors to the complimentary color of blue.

But first, I will use pen & ink to create the value sketch (of the shading) of the painting. It will act as the under painting for the finished work. I will use an 11x14 inch Fedrix Watercolor Canvas Board. Unlike a conventional canvas with Gesso, watercolor (and other wet liquids, such as ink) does adhere to the surface. However, unlike watercolor paper, the watercolor and ink doe not fully absorb into the canvas. Thus, it is possible to lift color rather easily. Where this works well is when you do NOT intend to paint one color over another in added glazes. Though it can be done (and I did it with the bee in the Thistle with Bee painting), you must be very careful about adding color onto an area that already has color.

So, here's hoping you will enjoy the final painting.

20131010 - Clematis

Today I completed a painting on the watercolor paper canvas that I created yesterday. This is a pen & ink with watercolor of a purple Clematis. It is based on the Clematis by Nicola B., who graciously uploaded it to the Paint My Photo website, where photographers share "reference photos for creating derivative Artwork without copyright worries."

A bit of an apology. Yes, it has an iridescent medium on it. It's an inside joke in our family. My daughter loved things with purple sparkles. As I was painting this flower from the photograph, I was struck by how it almost seems to sparkle in the light. Well, it was only a short hop form that to purple with sparkles. In person the iridescence is not quite as annoying.

A little on the detail in painting this. I used Noodler's 54th Massachusetts, which is a blue-black ink for the outline of the petals. I used that same color to create the under painting of the shadows. I masked off the center of the flower. After I added the color, I removed the masking and used Noodler's Manjiro Nakahama Whaleman's Sepia on the center. I used M. Graham paints to add the coloring to the paint. After doing research, I discovered that I rather naturally use a CMY (Cyan Magenta Yellow) color wheel to choose colors. In this case, the green and purple are complementary (per the CMY color wheel). This system tends to yield much more vibrant colors than the tradition RBY (Red Blue Yellow) color wheel.

As I noted, I painted this on the watercolor paper canvas that I created yesterday (see my previous blog entry). I will still need to spray it with a UV Protectant Varnish. Since the back of the paper is open to the elements, I will need to spray both the front and back (as well as sides) of this canvas. Once that's done it can be hung "as is" without a frame, or put in a frame, such as is used for oil or acrylic paintings.

20130926 - Garden

In a word ... YES!! I am very happy with this painting. I have been looking at courses offered during the Art of the Carolinas show. One of the instructors is Tom Lynch, an internationally known watercolorist. One of his courses is titled "The Magic of Leaving White Paper". The sample photo (which you can see below) intrigued me and made me want to try something along that line. I know I'm not as good at watercolor painting as he is, so I simplified the painting quite a bit. And I added some flowers behind the picket fence. And Voilà!


For the first time, I feel as if I've crossed the boundary from primitive watercolor painting to more artistic watercolor painting. Not that I could (since it's a copy of Tom's painting), but for the first time, I would not be embarrassed to sell this painting.

Hopefully you enjoy this adventure as much as I enjoy the process.

20130918 - St. Francis Statue in Garden

I finished the painting of the St. Francis statue in a flower garden. This painting came out okay. It's not quite what I wanted. But it's not bad either.

I intended for the statue to be the most detailed object. The rest of the garden was painted to provide the impression of a flower garden. For a reason. It's the saints among us who are the most concrete (pun somewhat intended) individuals. We assume that their positions and beliefs make them less "worldy", when it is they that make the most difference. At once they see the world both as it IS and as it SHOULD BE. Then they go do the impossible. They transform the world in which we live to make it more like what it should be.

Isn't it odd that the saints among us see the world and us as the clay beneath their fingers. As much as we try to venerate them, but hold them at arms length, they wade into life and live it fully. And in so doing, they change our world for the better.

20130917 - Starting St Francis in Garden

Well, I've decided my next pen & ink with watercolor painting. I will do a Saint Francis statue in a flower garden. The Saint Francis statue will only be done with pen & ink and the garden will only be done with watercolors.

As you can see, I've already done the Saint Francis statue. Now to add the garden. You might be interested in seeing the reference photograph. What's important to understand is that sometimes the perfect painting is something that's tucked away in a corner and not very conspicuous. Take a look at where the Saint Francis statue was located in the garden. It's very easy to overlook.

The role of the artist is to find that interesting item and highlight it through the painting. And in many ways, that's the role we all have. To highlight those things that are important to us. We highlight them to our children and our friends. Funny how my art is more about learning to live life well than it is about the mechanics of the art.

20130916 - Misty Marsh and Golden Koi

First of all, our objective today in the art class (Pen & Ink with Watercolor) was to create a misty marsh scene. As I've noted, I'm not very comfortable creating a very loose painting. This was my third or fourth attempt. I was doing wet into wet. Perhaps if I try a wet onto dry painting technique, I will have better success. I'm not completely upset with this one. But it's clearly not one of my better paintings. A clear sign that I have a lot still to learn. I knew it, but this clearly demonstrates that.




Of course, when I go to a more structured pen & ink with watercolor painting technique, I am much happier with the results. It's the engineer in me that wants the structure of a detailed drawing before I just start painting. I am not sure I will ever get past that completely.

Additionally, today Brian (my son) gave me a three bottles of Daler-Rowney FW Pearlescent Acrylic ink. So, I had to try it out. The result was a combination of pen & ink with the Pearlescent Acrylic Ink. The three inks were Galactic Blue, Mazuma Gold and Silver Pearl. So, I also decided to do a golden koi. As you can see, the pearlescent inks my son gave me work very well with pen & ink. I am much happier with this painting. You will no doubt see more of this type of painting in the future.

20130914 - Dragonfly

Well, the dragonfly painting is done. There are some things that I would correct. But overall, I'm pretty pleased with this one.

Want to know what I should improve? Here goes. They are not "nit picky", but they don't absolutely spoil it either. But it is a chance to learn more as I work on a piece.

Here's the first item. The upper right lily pad is not oval enough. Thus, it suddenly feels as if the perspective of the painting warps. You go from looking down and sideways toward the lily pads to down onto that upper right one. Lesson learned.

The second item is that the color of the purple in the lower two wings (toward the body of the dragonfly) was created rather than selected from my palette. The purple works better when it's from the palette.

The third issue is that the wings are a bit darker than I would like. They would appear to appear to "shine" more if there was more of the white of the paper showing.

There are other minor things. But as I noted. For the most part, I'm pretty pleased with this one.

There are some things that are right. I got the right gossamer wing effect. You can see through the wing to the lily pad in the center. And I tinted (using a glaze) the wings to make them slightly green in that area. That worked well.

But the most important thin is that I hope you enjoy seeing this as much as I enjoyed making it.

20130913 - Dragonfly Start

Well, my last painting got me thinking about lily pads and ... dragonflies! .. Yup. I started a new painting. And while doing my research, I found a wonderful video to demonstrate how to paint a dragonfly by Judy Bergsma.

So, I am basing this painting on the style she uses in her demonstration. However, I decided that it should be a pen & ink with watercolor painting. I used her template as a guide. As you can see, the dragonfly is in flight above the lily pads.

I've finished the pen & ink drawing. I've done a little bit of shading work. Now to tackle the painting. I think I will use some of the techniques that she presents. However, I will attempt to show a little more of the background through the wings than she has in her painting, which you can see in the print of her painting.

Also as you can see from her print, there is a lot of detail in her painting. More than I am ready to try to tackle. I want to get a simple painting looking "right" before I attempt to tackle a more difficult background.

20130912 - Water Lily (A Happy Accident)

Today's painting is not any sort of masterpiece. In fact, I might normally have trashed it due to problems I had when painting it. But I decided to "stick with it" and try to rescue the painting. The result was a bit of a "happy accident".

This started as an attempt to render the photograph of the water lily I had taken at the JC Raulston Arboretum. Unfortunately, when I went to add a little pink into the water lilly, it exploded out of the brush and filled the water lilly. No smooth transitions.

As I noted, normally this would qualify as an unmitigated disaster. Time to take the paper off the pad of watercolor paper, crumple it, and throw it away. But for some reason, I decided to see what I could do with the painting anyway. I figured that I could still continue to hone techniques, even if I didn't want to hang the painting.

Of course, being careful about the amount of paint on the paint brush was my first lesson in this painting. If you take the time, you learn as much or more from your mistakes. Lesson one .. Brilliantly demonstrated!

Part of the problem with this painting is that I have a ceiling fan right over where I paint. If it is running, the flow of air tends to dry the paper too quickly. As a result, "washes" (or large areas of paint that should appear uniform) tend to dry way too quickly. The result is that you can see the brush marks in the painting. Notice the blue water to the left of the lily? See how uniform it appears? The other areas of water show the brush marks. Yuck! Lesson Two .. Sigh! I should have known better!!

So, I finished the painting, but the water lily was a blob of color. What could I do to "rescue it". I decided to add pen & ink to the mix. While it helped, it seemed to make it appear a little "cartoonish". Compare the water lily to a cartoon (such as the Red and Rover cartoon). So, I decided to try to play up that sense of cartoon and added more pen & ink lines to the drawing. And suddenly the painting went from disaster to whimsical. Ta-da! Lesson Three .. By adding lines to a painting with vibrant colors, you and end up with a whimsical painting.

It's still not a painting I would give as a gift. But instead of a failure, I ended up with a painting that taught me more than I knew before I painted it. A "happy accident". Though like all things in life, such "happy accidents" occur to those who are prepared to learn from mistakes and take advantage of those "opportunities".

From failure to "happy accident". Is it all just our perspective? The answer is, of course, a resounding "Yes!!".

20130907 - Rose

It's classic: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" .. Shakespeare realized the essence of a thing is not its name. It is the characteristics of the thing that define it. This is true of roses. It is true of people.

This is particularly true of how the world often views "christians". Why is that? Well, for those who follow Christ, it's important to sometimes hold up a mirror and really look at ourselves. Do we endorse folks like Westboro Baptist Church? They claim to be "Christian". Yet, they spout hate speech whenever they get the chance. Is that the message of Christ? Is it fair to then say "All Christians are fanatics"?

Is our society any different when we turn and claim all Muslims clearly are violent and preach violence? Are we not lumping all adherents of Islam into the same boat as the extremists? Are we doing anything different than when someone claims "All Christians are fanatics"?

Ah, well. See what happens when I contemplate a rose for a day. Interestingly, I find that on my journey to develop my skill with watercolor, I find time to contemplate the world around me. It's a chance to learn some perspective .. in many different ways.

Back to a Rose .. This rose is based on a rose that I found at the JC Raulston Arboretum. The color is a wonderful cream / coral color with a blush of rose pink toward the edges and a light orange color inside the blossom. Getting that transition of colors is very hard to accomplish .. at least for me at my level.

But I learned a trick yesterday in class that I wanted to apply. It involves wetting the area to paint with plain water. Then painting the base color (unless you are leaving a little bit unpainted to have some white show). Then you drop a touch of color in the area you want to blend together. It takes practice. As you can see (just barely) from the detail in some areas of the rose (top left highlighted area) the blending went just right. But if you have too much water then you get some distinct water marks when the water evaporates. It looks for all the world like a "high tide" mark on the painting.

Ah well, it's a process of learning the techniques to accurately portray what I see. The important thing for me is that I enjoy learning and trying. Hopefully you also find the process enlightening.

20130906 - Tomatoes

I started a couple of watercolor courses today. One is a watercolor course with fall colors. The second is a pen & ink with watercolor course. The course today was the watercolor only course.

Rocky Alexander is the instructor. Of course, as you would expect, her skill with watercolor is amazing. As I expected, I learn as I watch her work. Seeing her do a rendition of tomatoes was interesting. I learned a new technique to blend together colors. By dropping wet paint into wet paint, you can get a graduated color change. Of course, the round shape of the tomatoes is a good way to exercise that skill.

So, here's the first painting from that class. There are many more to come. Hopefully you will also find my journey with watercolors interesting.

As you look about, remember how wonderful the fall colors are and even in the midst of decline we can see some very spectacular results. While that's true for our gardens, it's particularly true for us. So, take the time and shine out with the radiance that's in your heart.

20130901 - Completed Garden Path

Here is the completed Garden Path painting. As you can see, the color added a great deal to this picture. I managed to capture the face that boards on a boardwalk are often replaced. I have a mossy/algae stained area on the boardwalk.

As I mentioned, I forced the perspective a little bit so it feels as if the boardwalk if wending it's way through the bushes. Even in the original picture the angles are odd. I just accentuated that a bit.

Overall, I find that I really enjoy doing the pen and ink drawing and then adding the watercolor to build onto the drawing. It's a fascinating process. One I hope to enjoy many more times!

I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed making it.

20130901 - Garden Path Pen & Ink Drawing Completed

Well, I changed my mind and decided to add more detail in pen & ink. As you can see, the boardwalk no longer floats in space. So, the tonal sketch is complete. Now to add the color.

20130831 - Down the Garden Path

I remembered a photograph I had taken many moons ago at the JC Raulston Arboretum. It was a wonderful garden path wending its way through the garden. Here is the original reference photograph:

I particularly enjoy the shape of the walk way. So, I decided to use this as the reference and create a pen & ink with watercolor painting. I've not completed the painting. But I've done the pen & ink portion of the painting.

As you can see, I intentionally accentuated the perspective. I just love that shape and thought a little bit of emphasis would help others see how unique it is. But I'm pretty pleased with the plank of wood effect that I was able to create.

In addition to that change, I will change some of the background. For example I will probably add a phlox bed in front of some ornamental grass. I will use watercolors to create the impression of wood chips and pebbles. I should finish it some time tomorrow evening.