Wednesday, November 24, 2010

New paintings

Here are 3 new paintings of dried fall woodland detritus. I'm really enjoying getting back to details. I spend hours and hours on each of these and get totally lost in them. I've found it's rather like meditation. I get up from my chair after 3 hours and I'm not stiff or sore, just relaxed.

Leaves and Grasses


Watercolor on Fabriano Hotpress paper

Sumac


Watercolor on Fabriano Hotpress paper

Pine Branch with Lichen


Watercolor on Fabriano Hotpress paper

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Workshop with Lara Call Gastinger

This past weekend I took the workshop with Lara Call Gastinger and 11 other students at a delightful bed and breakfast near Charlottesville. We all worked from actual bits of trees, bushes, berries, leaves, etc. I chose to draw the seed pods from a redbud tree which I have always found fascinating. We drew on tracing paper then transferred the drawing to the watercolor paper. This gave us a clean line with no erasures which disturb the surface of the paper. The paper itself was new for me as I am accustomed to using coldpress paper. I found I really liked the hotpress. I was able to get cleaner lines and the color blending was smoother. It was ironic that I've been trying to get away from being so exact and putting in every detail and here I was doing just that again. But I really enjoyed it. The only problem with the weekend was we were stuck inside and it was a gorgeous couple of days. I would much preferred to have been working outside. I did get to take a walk each day so that helped.

Hope you enjoy these. I still have a little work to do on the poppies but thought I'd put them here anyway.

Redbud seed pods

Watercolor on 140# Fabriano hotpress paper

Redbud seed pods detail 1

Redbud seed pods detail 2

Poppy Seed Pods

Watercolor on 140# Fabriano Hotpress paper

Thursday, November 4, 2010

New Challenges

Two new exciting challenges for me this month: I'll be taking a workshop with Lara Call Gastinger doing botanical drawing/painting and beginning a 6-week online class with Cathy (Kate) Johnson on sketching and drawing. I am really looking forward to both of them and will post my work (good, bad, and indifferent) here for your always-welcome feedback. I love the autumn and having these artistic endeavors to look forward to makes it even better this year.

P.S. thanks to all of you who came to my opening in October and to those who visited the show later. It was an interesting experience.

Monday, November 1, 2010