Aerial Perspective and Lilies

 Rain Recession, watercolor 3" x 5" trees and clouds

Lilies and Stone Wall, pen and watercolor, 3" x 5"

I'm happily filling up the little Strathmore Visual Journal with its coarse 140lb cold press watercolor paper. It's small, it's handy and it's a good journal for wash techniques thanks to the heavy paper.

Rain Recession is what I painted on 3-29-2016, a view from the window over several layers of trees on a rainy-misty day. I loved the view and will probably do it many times, as Spring progresses it gets greener and greener. Living here on my daughter's farm in Arkansas, I'm surrounded by paintable scenes and almost any change in weather gives them new charm. I didn't add pen details because when I finished loosely painting, it didn't need them.

What I did though was condense trees from several angles into the painting. It's not a photo of the window view so much as an impression. I've gotten away from exact realism and even make small rearrangements on botanicals without losing the identity of the plant. It just has to be plausible. Removing a leaf or two in imagination or adding another flower that's on another plant but at an angle that'd improve the composition doesn't change that the plant can be identified by someone that knows it. It's not a portrait of that exact plant.

My son in law got that Easter lily in a pot with purple foil around it as a gift after volunteering at his church. This happens often to people who belong to big churches that really lay on the floral displays, many poinsettias go home with folks too after a big Christmas mass.

So he put it in the little garden patch in front of the house, where it tipped over and leaned against the short mossy stone wall defining it. There's stone-edged plots on both sides of the door and a pathway of big flagstones between them, which is very cool. I loved the way it looked and the day he brought it home, it hadn't bloomed yet. Now it's opening up.

So yesterday I sketched it in pencil, inked with a Pigma Micron size 01 and brought it inside to give it a watercolor finish. I do intend to paint it again later in more detail, the reflected colors on and inside the white blossom are beautiful and the inside trumpet has a smear of yellow that I thought was reflected but is actually pollen that fell off those stamens. I got a good long look at the structure and today got some more photos of it along with outdoor cat Calcifer.

He's one of three official Barn Cats who keep the rodents down around the grain kept for horses, goats and chickens. All three are sleek, well fed, perfectly groomed with silky coats and very affectionate personalities. I got a wonderful photo of him with the lilies today, one I may develop later as a serious painting.

The flowers seem to glow a bit due to the camera, but the cat's great and I can work on shading the flowers later after studying other photos where the flower's the main subject. The day is overcast, which helps!

Calcifer and the Easter Lilies

He's a sweet, super friendly lap cat. When I go outside to sit in the lawn chair and smoke, Calcifer is my number one lap warmer. Dampness, chilly weather, rain, anything inclement will guarantee a warm lap cat purring loud and cuddling. Calcifer likes it even when it's nice and sunny. Sometimes I stay out longer petting cats and talking with my daughter, the spot right outside the door has become our lounge area.

I like that habit. I'm smoking a little less because it takes a few steps and some effort to get out there, seeing a lot more of the yard and getting lots of sun on good days. It's also helped me get out of my chair a little more unless I'm really, really in bad shape. I didn't realize how much I stayed indoors till I moved here to have a good place in reach to go outside and good models always in sight. The chickens hang out there too on and off, which cuts way down on bugs. I may not need the Vitamin D supplements any more, unless it's winter and I get the winter problems that led me to take them in the first place. It's a good feeling.

Today I might be fooling around with colored inks and dip pens since my Blick order came in on the 30th. Twelve year old granddaughter got her birthday present early, a big set of Snazaroo face paints and the small set of six crayon face paints for drawing on her arms. I couldn't resist her excitement! The rest was all colored Bombay India Inks, silverpoint supplies and new dip pens, so I'll be experimenting with both period medieval stuff and modern pen-watercolor things with all those colored inks.

Crowquill dip pens give a very fine line like a Pigma Micron or Rapidograph but are as easy to clean as a brush and don't clog. Also even if I wreck a point, the nibs are so much cheaper! They also change colors as fast as a brush so I could really have some fun with the Claudia Nice style of pen-watercolor stuff!

Rain Clouds over San Francisco Hill

Rain Clouds over Hill

5" x 7"

Winsor & Newton Watercolour Marker, Ivory Black on

W&N Bockingford 140lb Not surface watercolour paper

I already reviewed the paper on Rob's Art Supply Reviews blog. But I had to post this here as well.

Some paintings don't get planned. This wasn't intended to be a good painting. I was on the Paratransit van going to my twice a month clinic visit and at the top of a very tall hill, saw dark rain clouds stop just short of a cluster of trees on top of a far hill which had no houses or anything on it. That took my breath away.

I scrambled to get a photo but the camera showed only white sky, the clouds I wanted the photo for were invisible. So I decided, heck with that. I'll sketch it. Chose the black W&N Watercolour Marker and sketched rapidly at a stop light, then swished my wet Niji waterbrush around scrubbing out the sky marks as thoroughly as possible, then swiped across the hills once each and jiggled it.

I wasn't even thinking. This painted itself. I knew what to do and just tried to get the effect. In under two minutes I stared at it and even wet, I knew. I even said "Stop now" or something like that. I had the moment's recognition that kept me from ruining it. 

This was the time the paint did the work. 

There are effects in this little monochrome painting that I've tried for years to get. They came naturally. I didn't think about it while I was painting. I told my nurse, who's fond of my art, that this one painted itself. It actually did, in under two minutes. Mind and heart and hand and eye were one, it happened on that nonverbal right side of my brain at the pace watercolor needs to happen for some of that kind of effect to happen. If I'd stopped to plan it I would have ruined it.

So this is something for anyone who struggles with watercolor to keep in mind. Keep striving. Keep learning. Keep wasting paper on paintings you hate and duds, keep turning them into pastel underpaintings or store them to see how much better you are a year later - always a good idea. The day does come when the things you learned move out of the right brain into the left, when the tools are at your hand and it's your fingers that know how to use them.

It was my favorite brush this happened with. The lazy easy one. Whether you lean toward flat brushes and blocky, painterly strokes or round brushes and thick-thin calligraphic strokes, there will come a time you can feel your favorite brush and give it exactly the right pressure and wetness, respond in the moment to what's there and let the watercolor guide the process. 

It is a lot of fun, like getting stoned on painting.

It does come, no matter how frustrating its long learning curve is. Usually when trying to do something else and not thinking about it. Watercolor and zen, go together a bit like paint and brushes, right?

Last tip - using good supplies increases your chance of the happy day. Cheap paint on cheap paper sometimes cockles and puddles, is too absorbent or not absorbent enough, gives you problems that mingle with lack of experience to cause disasters. Students learning watercolor are better off getting a triad of good artist grade paint like the Winsor & Newton Permanent Rose, Lemon Yellow and French Ultramarine, or Daniel Smith's Primary Triad set, than trying to get good effects with lesser paint.

Likewise, good paper 140lb or heavier that's adequately sized can make it easier to get those effects. Bockingford is the medium quality Winsor & Newton paper, their Artists' all rag paper is even better but this stuff performed uch better than most and my Stillman & Birn journals also perform brilliantly. Arches and Fabriano Artistico are great too. They each have character and as you try different papers you'll find their strengths and the way they affect your style. 

I don't soak and stretch my watercolor paper because my disabilities and small living space make that completely impractical. I would have to go down to the bath chamber (not latrine) in the hall, then staple it to a big wooden board or clamp it into a stretcher and bring the dripping thing back to my little room. This would throw my back with the carrying and bending and walking, so I wouldn't feel much like painting afterward. 

I like working with the gelatin sizing still in the paper. Other artists prefer stretched paper as it becomes more absorbent. I don't much care for unwanted soft edges in detail areas and like wet-and-dry effects like this, so my style is affected by my body the way it is in all mediums. Those who prefer stretching say it gets more absorbent, but I like paper to give me good sharp details when I want them and dislike that sense of working on a blotter that some papers give. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Do it your way. If I did ever stretch I'd get one of the clamp stretchers though. They seem a lot easier than tape and staples and all. I don't have the patience to wreck my back doing that and not get to use it that way. Nature didn't design me to do a lot of heavy preliminary work like stretching my own canvases either or grinding my own pigments.

What I learned from that applies to busy people too. Make it easy on yourself and you'll paint more often, thus learn faster. Years of practice with brush tip pens sketching just to record this or that or taking notes in art classes with brush tip sketches helped lead to this day too. 

I'm still that happy to get to this point. Purring loudly.