Sunset at Jupiter Beach

 

When my niece was here last week we went to Catan's and I got a few art supplies: a set of Micron pens for sketching, a couple of pointed filbert brushes (don't quite know how to use them yet) and a 6 x 9" block of Canson Montval watercolor paper. I was anxious to see if the paper would hold up for watercolor painting. So I used a photo that my daughter-in-law took at Jupiter Beach as my reference. The paper held up OK for not being100% cotton. I liked the block because the paper didn't buckle. I was happy with how the sky turned out, but I don't really like the waves/water. I might have to try this again on better paper since I want to try another technique on the waves and see if I can actually do the sky the same again.

 

 

 

 

"Almost There" (South Florida Beach with Umbrellas)

I really wanted to use the new Daniel Smith watercolors I got recently and I found a photo of this beach with a lot of color in it. (I don't remember which beach it was--south of Lake Worth somewhere I think.)  I used Bee 100% cotton paper. I did another painting with this paper and I didn't like it, but this time I liked it. It's 140 lb. cold pressed and it's smoother than Arches which is good for small detail like the umbrellas. I used a little bit of masking fluid for the umbrellas so I could paint the water in one wash. I did mess up the line of the beach, but I decided to not try to fix it which would probably make it more noticeable.

I  also used a couple of the Daniel Smith Primatek colors--Rhodonite is great for adding to blues for a soft gray and for pinkish glazes.

In the Country

 

 

This was supposed to be done for World Watercolor Month, July 25 "Farm Life" but I didn't get it done in time. It could also qualify for the prompt on July 27 "Clouds in the Sky" which was yesterday. I guess I'm a day late for that one too. I was supposed to try to get looser, but I don't seem to be getting there. I did this in a small sketch book (5x8) because it was supposed to be just a sketch. I kind of overworked it in places, but it didn't turn out too bad. I almost gave up half way through. I recommend watching Jenny Moed Korpela's summary of all thirty paintings that she did for 30x30 Direct Watercolor for June in which she advises not giving up:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtwI-jf3FTE&t=1639s

Beach Bicycle

This was supposed to be for Monday's prompt on World Watercolor Month, "On the Beach." Lesson learned: If you are not sure of your placement of an object don't use the darkest color you have. I messed up the perspective on the black wheel of the bicycle and I had to make some repairs. I hope they aren't too bad.

Peturnias

I was going to try to do the World Watercolor Month challenge, but I did this July 7 and I think it qualifies for yesterday's prompt, Beautiful Blooms. I need to practice doing flowers a little more. I don't think I got enough contrast in the lighting either. But here goes anyway:

Just Peachy

Here are the peaches I did for the watercolor challenge #30x30Watercolor2018. I got 58 likes which was very encouraging.

I Think I'm Back

I think I'm back to painting again. I took a rather circuitous route to get there. I had cataract surgery in October of 2016, but it took about  a year to adjust to my "new" eyes. I had some reaction to the surgery (macular edema) that took six or seven months to clear up and then I had to adjust to new glasses. I can't see really up close like I used to, but my distance vision is good (with glasses) and colors are spectacular. That's what got me enthusiastic again. I did a lot of perusing on You Tube to keep me distracted while I was recovering and discovered "Junk Journaling." I think it was the color that sucked me in--in addition to an attic full of "junk" that I could use for journaling. Then I did some bullet journaling which led me to decorate a planner that I custom designed for my use.  While searching for videos on You Tube, I ran across videos for watercolors. So I started doing watercolors again. Through some art groups on Facebook, I found out about a 30 day challenge for watercolorists. I didn't do the whole 30 days, but it did get me started--along with a sample set of Daniel Smith watercolors. ( 238 colors on dot cards which are so much fun to test.) However, I think I started out with using my watercolor pencils first. I have several different brand sets and I wanted to see what the difference was between them. So I did an apple sketch eight times with each different set. Here they are:

 

 





 The last apple was done with watercolor markers. I didn't like them. But I did learn the value of painting the same thing over and over again. It is good practice. I did a pair of peaches for the watercolor challenge which turned out pretty good because I had practiced the apple sketches--round fruit.

Waylaid

I had to take a break from art; my house and my "stuff" were getting away from me. But just when I had gathered enough stuff for a yard sale, I wound up in the hospital with atrial fibrillation and pneumonia. It seems to take a couple of months to recover after that kind of setback. I continued with cleaning up the yard and reorganizing the house "stuff", planning to start painting again after the holidays and a wedding. (My grandniece got married.) It also didn't help that our desktop computer is being finicky; sometimes it stays on and sometimes it doesn't. I have a laptop, but I prefer the larger screen (I'm also getting a cataract in my left eye so it's harder to see detail than it used to be).  I also got a smart phone so I always have a camera on me if I see something that might make a good painting. That's going to take a few days to figure out. But I thought I had better post something before my blog disappears since I hadn't posted for almost a year and explain the absence.
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So here it is January already and I haven't started painting again. I'm not sure where to start to get back to where I left off. Maybe I should start with a trip to the optometrist so I can get new glasses and see a little better and get some inspiration back and put that smart phone camera to use.
   

Future Painting

 

This was one of the first flowers in my garden this year. It's a tree peony blossom and it was gigantic. I'll have to figure out which is the best medium to use to paint this. I can see this in watercolor, but I've been using acrylics lately so don't know which I'm going to chose yet. Maybe acrylic on watercolor canvas?

Moon Over the Ocean 3

This one I painted for my nephew Dennis since he was the one who sent me the photos. He is visiting here from Florida and his birthday was yesterday. I hurried up and started this last evening and finished it this afternoon. It's slightly different than the smaller ones. I used the watercolor canvas again. It's supposed to be for all mediums, but I'm having a little trouble with blending with acrylics yet even after I coated it with a layer of gesso. I need to use it again and make notes. I think I like the water and waves better on this one, but the clouds better on the smaller ones.

Seascape - Bird and Boat

 

 

No wonder I'm not getting the house cleaned. Here's another painting I did yesterday and finished today. I went to the craft store last week to get some matte medium and of course I had to browse. I found some 5" x 7" watercolor canvas panels and I had to try them. They are smoother than regular canvas board and can be used with watercolor and acrylic. Of course it's a seascape. I thought it would be easy since I've been doing them lately. Still not easy. The other seascapes I did had the waves on the left side. Apparently, that's easier for me to do since I am right handed I guess. I might have to straighten out the horizon line though. Also, the next time I use the watercolor canvas, I think I will put a coat or two of gesso on it.  The paint sinks in too much unless you are using watercolor paint and leave the white of the paper for the white areas.
P.S. There are two photos of the same painting for a reason: The bottom one was a regular scan and a lot of the texture on the canvas shows up as glare. The top one was edited in Windows Live Photo Gallery with "Noise Reduction" and I think it makes a difference by cutting down on the texture glare. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. I had fish for dinner yesterday. Maybe that helped.

Moon Over the Ocean 2

I took a break from cleaning the attic and did another mini painting. Here is the second version of Moon Over the Ocean done on ACEO size watercolor card. The paint soaks in a little on the watercolor paper, but it helps make the clouds look more diaphanous or fluffy.  Also, the moon is not paint; it's the white of the paper showing through.

Crossover Lesson from Art

I decided to take a break from painting for a little while and try to do some spring cleaning since it is getting warmer. I thought I should start in the attic since that is where we store things and the downstairs is getting cluttered with things that should be stored somewhere else. I read somewhere that you should start in your storage areas and get rid of unwanted items so you can clean up the main areas of the house.  The attic has stairs and is sort of finished in an over 100 year old house. (There are nails above the window frames where they strung clothes lines to hang clothes to dry in the winter or when it was rainy.) But it hasn't been cleaned out for a while (40 years?) I have old magazines, fabric, sewing supplies, quilting supplies and a whole bunch of unfinished projects or projects that never actually got started. My husband is also a "collector." We have "antiques" passed down from relatives and mementoes from our college years. Not to mention stuff from the boys that they haven't retrieved yet.  I hardly had room to turn around in the one corner that I decided to start on. I almost gave up, but I am starting to see progress in getting rid of things. The lesson learned from painting is, "don't give up." Sometimes I would think that a painting wasn't worth finishing, but if I kept going it turned out OK. I also need a place to work on framing and a place to store some art supplies. That's another corner.

ACEO - Moon Over the Ocean

Since I read somewhere recently that you can paint acrylics on watercolor paper (even if you don't use the watercolor technique), I thought I would give that a try. However, I have a package of Strathmore ATC size assorted papers that I looked through and decided to use the paper made for use with acrylics first (made sense to me). It has a slight texture and is sort of a light cardboard thickness. At first I didn't like it, but after finishing the painting, I decided I did like it. I used a photo that my nephew sent me that I thought would look all right painted small. I might try the watercolor card with the same scene and see if there is much difference in painting technique.

Mini Big Clouds Over the Beach- Acrylic 5" x 7"

I finished a small painting today, a smaller version of "Big Clouds Over the Beach." I guess you could call this "Mini Big Clouds." I wanted to see if I could do another one like it since I didn't make notes on colors, brushes or technique on the larger one. Well, if you scale down the size I learned that you need to scale down the brushes. I had a lot of trouble with the foreground water in this one, but didn't on the first one. Maybe I should stick to 9 x 12" instead of 5 x 7." I could probably keep adjusting things, but decided to just quit while I'm slightly ahead. I did coat the canvas board with several layers of gesso so it would be smoother. I think it helped some. There is still some glare from scanning and I probably should try to take a photo, but I'm not having any luck with that either. I tried Carol Marine's instructions for taking photos of paintings, but haven't found a good spot for lighting yet.

Breezy Beach

Here's another beach scene, but I'm not as happy with it as I was with "Big Clouds Over the Beach." It is smaller, 8" X 8" and done on a different texture canvas board. I did the Big Clouds painting on an older canvas board that is no longer available (Grumbacher) and it was really nice to paint on. I probably need to switch to gessoed artboard, but I have a lot of the regular Fredrix canvas panels in all sizes. I need to figure out how to make them smooth so I can use them. I'm working on that. It's a good thing I used the old canvas panel when I did Big Clouds or I might have given up on acrylics. I also need to make notes of which brushes I used for what and what colors I mixed to get the colors I got. 

McIntosh and Friend

 

This was more for practice than anything else. I watched a video on values and read a chapter in "Daily Painters" on values. I'm also still trying to get acrylics to look like oil paints. I learned a few things by doing this "study." It's hard to see values when the apple changes color on top where the light is hitting it. Dark red mixed with white looks chalky not lighter. Backgrounds are hard to paint when the lighting on your subject is coming from a lamp right next to it. Shadows are not as dark as you think they are and a few other things I can't remember right now, but I hope I will remember them when I paint something else again.

Big Clouds Over the Beach - Acrylic 9 x 12

 

I had a difficult time getting back to doing any painting after another trip to visit my son and family over the holidays. I watched several art videos trying to get inspiration and read an art book, "Daily Painting" by Carol Marine. (recommend it). Then I cleaned up my "studio"--half of a bedroom-- and rearranged it some and put together a stand for my laptop so I could look at a photo while I painted. It took me forever to decide what to paint. I'm so far behind on all the ideas I have, but I wanted to do something new and in acrylic paints. It seemed like I had to learn how to use it all over again after I had been using watercolors and oil pastels, but I was determined to be able to use acrylic paints so they looked like oils. I think I may have gotten that result in "Big Clouds over the Beach." At least I was happier with the results since the last time I tried acrylics. The picture is a little fuzzy because the painting was a little too large for the scanner. I tried to redo it, but it is still a little fuzzy.

Little Copper Watering Can

 

 

I finally got a chance to try out my new oil pastels by entering the Daily Paint Works "Copper Challenge." I decided to do a small still life with a small copper watering can. I almost gave up--oil pastels are difficult enough, but the copper was even harder. But I persisted and I think the can came out looking like copper. Not sure about the perspective and flower though.

New Oil Pastels

I decided I liked working with Sennelier oil pastels well enough to order some new colors. I got them about two weeks ago and haven't had a chance to use the new colors yet. Also, I needed a box to keep all of them in (and a few extras) since they were shipped in five small separate temporary boxes. I checked the art supply web sites and couldn't find what I wanted at a reasonable price. So I decided to make one. I had a metal candy tin with a lid that seemed like it would be the right size so I made pleated paper dividers to hold the individual pastels. I used Bristol paper, but card stock or some paper a little heavier than computer paper would do. On the first try, I made the dividers too wide and the pastels didn't stay in place. I also didn't have enough spaces for the new ones and the extra ones I already had.

 

So I took the paper dividers out and cut them down to three inch width and glued the pleats (which made the spaces narrower) and put them back in.Then I added some Styrofoam dividers to further corral the pastel sticks. I could have used a third paper divider section, but I just used some thin Styrofoam strips to make four sections. I tried to organize the sticks by colors as much as I could.

 

 

I had a piece of Styrofoam that fits on top of the oil pastels when the box is closed to keep the sticks from moving around in the box when carried. To the right of the homemade box, is a set of 24 Sennelier oil pastels that I already had. Now I'm all set to use my new pastels, soon I hope.

 

While I was organizing the rest of my art stuff, I made a water color brush holder out of an old plastic desk tray. I used Styrofoam strips again in the bottoms of the sections and stuck the ends of the brushes down into it. It's easier to see what brushes I have--at least the ones I use most.