Two Red Irises in Watercolor Pencil

Two Red Irises

Watercolor pencil on pocket Moleskine Watercolor

These are the ones my granddaughter got photos of. They looked violet in the photos, but in person they're cold pink over a deep cold red, clearly in the magenta range. Lovely flowers, two of them bloomed at once and they are so striking. There may be white or pink ones out there too just waiting to bloom.

So I'm having a lot of fun lately with my favorite flowers. These life studies will be good when I want to put together a garden painting. It'll come together with various flowers I've done from life brought together in a composed landscape whether or not they bloomed at the same time or even in the same state. I have some irises from San Francisco too in my photo collection.

Recently my Kindle overflowed, so I went in using my computer and started deleting photos of artwork while keeping photo references of cats and flowers and landscapes. I'm not tossing them out, just copying into a USB key and then deleting to make room on my Kindle.

Edit: Later, Sascha brought these flowers in from beyond the goats' field aka The Dry Lot (it hasn't got a spring or well on it for them to drink from).

Unidentified light purple flowers and red clover photo

So naturally I sketched and painted these as well, from the vase on my desk. The vase is great too but not at that angle half hidden by a plastic travel coffee cup and stuff. So today got two pages in the little Moleskine Watercolor journal. Good thing I bought a couple of extra ones right before the move!

Light purple flower sprays, pen and watercolor

in pocket Moleskine Watercolor book.

Hydrangea in watersoluble crayon

Hydrangea in watersoluble crayon on watercolor paper

Another page in my small Strathmore Visual Journal. The cold press paper has a very strong weave texture almost like Mi-Tientes wove side, but it's good paper and somehow I can get clean lines on it. This one involved some negative drawing and painting. I did it in three passes, with blues, greens and finally the black background with dry green and yellow ochre stems over it.

Had fun with it and may try some other floral subjects with my Neocolor II sticks. They have a great texture, soft and opaque.

EDIT: Later on, I found the watercolor pencils I was looking for and did my Hyacinth again in full bloom. It's very brilliant now in its corner of the garden, this time I brought in the two stones marking the corner of the bed. I love how it blazes there, contrasting the yellow jonquils and bright spring greens.

Purple Hyacinth in full bloom, 3" x 5"

watercolor pencil on watercolor paper, washed and detailed.

Bradford Pear and Hyacinth from Life

 Bradford Pear flowerng tree watercolor on paper, 3" x 5"

Hyacinth bud about to bloom, watercolor on paper 3" x 5"

Two pages in my little Strathmore Visual Journal today with Sakura Koi pocket box pan watercolors. I did pencil under them but haven't inked. 

I went out to get my prescription, so while waiting painted the Bradford Pear blooming in the parking lot. I left out most of the rest, buildings and cars and asphalt, in favor of a field and some more distant trees or shrubbery. Brightened the sky too using a cobalt blue hue that I suspect is actually Pthalo Blue from its brightness - albeit Red Shade.

Bradford Pears are an invasive ornamental tree. They bloom copious white blossoms in the spring, leaf out bright and green then in the fall become gorgeous again shading from lemon yellow through oranges to red and even a red-violet. They're a bit small for trees or really large for shrubs, tend to be symmetrical and seed themselves easily. The fruits are tiny and bitter, birds eat them and spread them - and of course they are invasive so they may crowd out native shrubs and trees sometimes. But they are beautiful and still sometimes planted on purpose.

Then once I got home I set out my impulse purchase, a $1 hyacinth in a pot. Most of my life I've seen and been tempted by those springtime racks of flowering little plants, some annuals and others perennials. Usually I didn't have a place to plant it. 

Sometimes I got talked out of it in favor of buying seeds instead that somehow I never followed through on planting, if staying with people who have  a yard. But I'm disabled! The more labor intensive type of gardening is not necessarily the best idea for someone with limited physical activity!

So instead of going overboard on them I bought one little hyacinth and I love it. The color's a nice rich violet-blue and I'm sure it will bloom bright. It may even survive  from year to year the way the many jonquils around here do. Kitten helped me plant it in the patch in the front where I usually sit outside, so I'll enjoy its blooming and maybe for years more see it split and expand providing a complement to the bright yellow jonquils.

Even if it doesn't, it made me happy and I painted it.

A chicken pecked it already so we may have a problem later on - though it will be raining for the next few days so I might be doing more indoor stuff from references. Or cats. It's not like I don't have several beautiful models inside!

Black Eyed Susans in soft pastel

Black Eyed Susans

9" x 12" pastel on paper

Good old workhorse Rembrandt pastels on Canson Mi-Tientes paper. This is my best Black Eyed Susans to date. These flowers confound me. I've done them many times and remember three frustrating oil paintings I did in Kansas where I got lost in background details but tilted all the flowers toward me. In my defense, the sun was at my back and they actually were all tilted toward the sun - but that doesn't really fly for artistic choices. They'd have been more interesting going in different directions and showing volume.

These three are more or less pointing in the same direction but at least they're at an angle giving them some depth!

Elmo the Cat in Watercolor Pencils

Elmo the Cat and yellow flowers

7" square watercolor pencils washed

Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils are a wonderful sketch medium. This was done as a cat proportions demo for a friend who's using her reference for a pastel still life. She got the setup just as she wanted it and then her cat Elmo walked up to take his place in it and pose for the camera!

Irresistible Elmo! Of course she's doing the version with the cat in. Who wouldn't? A fleeting moment of feline intervention and he's a very handsome cat. Got his proportions and markings well, so hope this helps her. Eye color was a little bit hard to discern but looked more green than gold. I went with greenish golden. 

Day 18 of 30 in 30 - Silver Tabby in a Garden

Silver Tabby in a Garden - 6" square

Painted earlier today! This is part of the Pastel Spotlight monthly challenge, photo reference by SweetHuia from WetCanvas.com. I meant to paint this cat sometime during the month. Today I felt good enough to do it!

Theme of the challenge is Line, so I did something tough - picked out the main subject with linear accents and added some lighter ones to the vegetation to unify that. I used very soft pastels for my early layers. Blue Earth for a local colors underpainting softly blended on light green Canson Mi-Tientes. Then went looser over that with Great American half sticks. No blending on that middle layer or layers, did several layers of color in some areas. 

Finally, when I knew hard pastels wouldn't give the effect I wanted, I tried Girault over the softer pastels. Girault are firm but in some ways act like very soft pastels. They lay down that easily with that much density from very fine-ground pigments, they're heavy in the hand from pigment-rich formula. They gave me good lines when the paper tooth was mostly full, so this worked in a big way. I'm happy with it and looking forward to more this month!

So far have gotten 18 of 18 posted on their proper day's blog at 30 Paintings in 30 Days. The weather's getting better and the landlord removed the radiator that turned my room sweltering whenever the temperature goes down a notch. It's bright and lovely, not sweating hot or bitter cold, I can relax today and maybe even get in two paintings, get ahead for once!

Vase and Fruit finishing Lightwell Page

 Twilight Lightwell and Floral Still Life Page

pen and watercolor

Floral Still Life with Five Apples

pen and watercolor on large Moleskine watercolor journal.

So far I've done 10 of 14 "Animals" ATCs and once I finished another Ari cat one this morning I wanted to do something I could post. So I glanced across the room at the arrangement of silk flowers and thought, let's do the first version. I'll probably paint this several times over in different media, but this is a start to get a feel for it. I love the variety in it and the different forms. I love the crystal vase my friend bought me too, will be doing some much more detailed, realist renderings of that. 

Silk flowers are as good as live ones for painting. Sometimes better. Especially across the room, the forms are natural enough and the light strikes them well. For details I might compare them with some of my photos but if I'm not getting that detailed, it's much better to be able to return to the subject again and again!

Ari posed for me in a lovely way while I was typing this up, so I quickly sketched, inked and painted #11 of the series. I love the way he'll do that. He was in an odd pose but I managed to get the gesture and someone's getting a good cat ATC out of this. Next up, I've got a bobcat reference!

May Daffodils in Pastels

May Daffodils

8" x 10" horizontal

Pastels on paper, photo reference by DAK723 on WetCanvas

Breaking out of my art block, today I did a bad watercolor sketch that I won't post, followed by a couple of daffodils in a limited palette. I liked the reference and was frustrated by something about the one I did on March 28, so replaced that with this one. Liked it a lot more.

It's spring! Enjoy!

Tulip, Marigolds and Petunias

Tulip, Marigolds and Petunias

7" square 

Pan Pastels, Rembrandt and Terry Ludwig pastels

White Art Spectrum Colourfix Suede pastel card

This little painting took three stages to finish, first blocking in the tulip over a bright orange background, then the yellow-orange marigolds and greenery and most of the tulip's form, then the last details came very fast and I added the petunias to balance the composition and unify the colors. Also some little forget me knots between the flowers. 

This garden is overgrown and unreal but I don't care, it looks the way I wanted it to. Or maybe the plants just filled out enough to fill up the spaces between them. I always liked that look in garden plants. It's not weedy though, all garden flowers. I love being able to use the bright colors in a painting and still be true to life. Ruffled petunias and the tulip were both from the Pastel Spotlight challenge this month on "Violet" theme at WetCanvas, photos by BlackHorse and DAK723. The orange marigolds were more or less taken from another painting I did some time back from a photo by DAK723 but I changed their color based on ones I remembered.

This month has been a bit rough for changing weather. Not that bad for pain but I've been sleeping a lot and doing less sketching and painting. Need to get back to sketching and painting so I scheduled myself an extra hour in the garden on Wednesday's clinic visit to be able to settle out there and sketch something from life. I will be packing art supplies, probably water media.

Azalea Blossoms

Azalea Blossoms

7" square, WN markers on S&B Zeta journal

Today was my nurse appointment at the family health care clinic. As usual I got out into the sun and saw the azalea bush at the patient drop-off blooming brightly. So I went ahead and snapped a photo. Then sketched from it in the waiting room. I didn't have time to get a lot of photos in the garden but did snap one or two of a patch of jonquils, may paint from those later if they're clear enough. I won't know till I go through them whether they're blurry or not.

I love these markers for fast sketching. On days that I'm not feeling up to art they can make the difference between whether I sketch or not. The water brush really brings out the lighter values too. I was pleasantly surprised to find the Sap Green and Alizarin Crimson Hue were exactly the right match for the real plants, though if I had started bringing in darks around them like the photo I'd have been doing a lot of layering to match both color and value. I decided on leaving it white because I liked it. One of those moments of recognizing less is more.