Saturday, April 9, 2016

Golden Barn Cat and First Iris

Golden Sutekh barn cat and first iris
3" x 5" pen and watercolor on 140lb cold press paper

Only two pages left to fill! I had to capture golden Sutekh, the long haired ginger tabby barn cat. He is magnificent! I love that cat, he's my outdoor friend just like Calcifer. Very friendly and easy going.

The first iris of the year finally opened yesterday. I knew it would be purple but the hue is spectacular! Not the blue-violet I expected but a rich deep saturated red-violet that I managed to capture by shading in Dioxazine Violet, then glazing over that with Permanent Rose. It didn't entirely come through in the photo but in person the color's a true match. I kept the green of the leaves a little muted and leaning toward Quinacridone Gold to keep the saturation emphasis on the flower.

This is a good page. I don't know what I'll do on the next two, but happily I found my pocket watercolor Moleskine after weeks of searching. It was in the art supplies bag that I had in the hospital when I had pneumonia, but slid to the bottom where a magnifying glasses holder clipped onto its elastic so when we searched before all we saw was the glasses holder. Took getting everything out of the bag to actually find it - so now I have something in hand to keep going with small pen-watercolor life sketches!

White Lily from Life, 3" x 5"
Watercolor pencil on cold press watercolor paper.

Now there's only one page left in the journal. Very tempting to finish with a sketch of Ari or Kyra or both of them together. Get back to my sweet loving fur buddy as I keep getting distracted by flowers and other animals!

2 comments:

  1. Both are beautiful, Rob. I especially love the Iris and the gorgeous violet colors, especially since we woke up to 3" of snow this morning!

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    1. Oww! Oh we are lucky here - spring is fully here and trees are turning green, it's nice out unless raining, it's awesome. Hope you get better weather and spring flowers soon!

      That color totally took me by surprise. I was expecting something more like the blue-violet ones I saw in San Francisco all the time. There's more than one color out there too according to my daughter, just have to wait to see what they all are!

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