Friday, May 25, 2012

Bridge Scene and Cat from Life

 Bridge landscape painted in acrylics on Sunday, May 20th during Johannes Vloothuis online Paint-Along hosted by WetCanvas Live! I simplified the source photo drastically and used stronger colors than Johannes did, also made other changes. This is one of the best landscapes I've ever done in my journal, perhaps the best. Both this painting and the next are in my Stillman & Birn Beta journal, which has 180lb rough bright white watercolor paper. I love that paper. It stands up to everything I throw at it. The paper never bleeds through either, it's very easy to paint on both sides of a page.

I've been out of it dealing with medical issues and resting up from appointments. Chronic fatigue can get rough when I have to go out immediately after having gone out the day before, then it takes longer to rest up to the point I can do anything. Very frustrating, so this month's "as can" is a very slow daily painting attempt. However, I'm approaching 20 small paintings and already happy with my progress!

Below is today's watercolor life painting of Ari, my longhaired colorpoint cat. He's a "street Siamese" with no official papers but clearly has the markings. I did a quick gesture in pencil while he more or less stayed in that pose. He turned his head, but not till I'd gotten his face sketched. I decided the sketch was too light and so painted in watercolor.

I don't usually do pencil sketches under watercolor, preferring a purist look without guidelines showing. This time I just let it show and painted anyway. The final embellishment is white whiskers sketched in with a white gel pen because this is in my art journal and I don't need to be purist in a journal.

7 comments:

  1. You nailed the reflections in the water, Rob. They look fantastic! Great sense of light and I love the violets in the shadows. One of your best, for sure.

    Ari was a very good model for you again. I can hear him purring. Great job.

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  2. Wow, thank you! He was purring while I sketched him. Now he's making funny little cat noises and bouncing on the bed chasing his tail. I should try to sketch him doing that!

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  4. Spam comments will be removed as I find them. If you want to link back to your site to sell your artwork in a comment, that's one thing. But I need to know you and I'd like to give permission to those links myself. I do this for individuals, on a personal judgment basis that's entirely arbitrary. If I like it I might even blog about it. If I don't like it, I won't leave the links up.

    This one was borderline because it was on topic, it was selling actual paintings at least. It was relevant. Spam on anything else, I reserve the right to get as arbitrary and personal about it as anyone can be. My editorial policies are that unique, bots just never will figure them out. Humans should actually contact me.

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  5. Fold, hero, shot, colour – elegant! You have really done a fab job with this painting. Is it in water colours or some other medium. I liek the way you have desribed everything.

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    1. Thank you! The cat's done in watercolor, the landscape in acrylics where I was working with opaque paint. I also use gouache sometimes.

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  6. Paper writing service is an automated bot..

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