Colorful Peach

Colourful Peach

5 x 7" Pastel on Paper

This small painting took me two days and a number of experiments. I used Unison pastels on Canson Mi-Tientes and loved the way the smooth side kept taking layers. There are eight or nine layers on the more detailed areas of the peach. 

One of the hardest fruits to paint is a peach because of the soft pale fuzz over the whole thing. I added that last and sweated over every light stroke,  but succeeded in getting the haze that appeared mostly around the edges in real life. The photos I took enhanced that and paled the entire fruit, but I worked from life right to the end. I changed the colors of background and surface but not the angle.

I got a bit playful with the shadow and liked the way the colors played within it, so decided to leave that more whimsical than literal. The photo's a little off but in person it has some peacock iridescence that I loved seeing. I could have muted it more to get a more realistic effect but decided not to for artistic reasons. So it's one more step away from literal representation. I knew what I needed to do but that pool of color reminded me of completely different subjects and I liked it.

I can always experiment with these. The realist triumph here was the fuzzes, the shadow can be more transparent next time.

Gesture and Pencil Portrait of Ari Cat

Pencil Portrait and Pen Gesture of Ari Cat

9" x 12"

Still working and ruminating on a pastel landscape with good preliminaries that I plan to turn into a good demo on my Art Lessons blog. Ready to do that on the sanded paper, but haven't started that yet. Paper is chosen though and so are pastels.

Tomorrow's another clinic visit day - and that means doing water media! Maybe some charcoal and pastel sketching too, we'll wait and see. Till then, enjoy the first serious pencil drawing I've done in a long time.

Ari posed today with the sun shining in early afternoon brightness, all the lights on and for once, his beautiful eyes weren't heavily dilated. My room gets pretty dark and I was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with his eyes. Nope. They dilate and retract just like any cat's, but he's fond of the low light and has no problem seeing anything even when it's too dark for me to see at all.

I meant to do pen and watercolor or just watercolor, but got going with an HB pencil and light shading turned into better shading. It was nice working that large for a change, the original is close to life size. My handsome model is now draped on the bed in a relaxed pose and I'll soon be joining him for the night. Sleep well, Ari Cat... your midnight crazies will probably wake me to laugh a little before I get back to sleep.

He already treated me to the Rowdy Cat Yell earlier and a thrilling pinball cat game all around the room ending in a triumphant trampoline tail chase on the bed. One of these times I need to start video on the first yell!

Spring Twig and Tree with Shrubs

Spring Twig and Tree with Shrubs

3 1/2" x 5 1/4" Pocket Moleskine watercolor journal

Pigma Micron 01 (black) and watercolor

Yesterday was my clinic visit and the weather's getting successively better. Enough that I was still functioning well after going down the stairs and could draw! 

My elevator's gone down. There's only one antique elevator in the building and apparently it's going to be months before the replacement motor arrives. This bites. It's going to cut deep into my summer plans. Hopefully if it gets fixed by August or September, I might get a 2015 outing late in the year. But while it's down, my best hope is to stay in for all but essential medical appointments.

I was reading a Claudia Nice book on my Kindle when the van stopped to take on another passenger who was late for the pickup. While we waited I saw this lovely sapling with scanty old dead foliage and its first few new spring leaves opening up simultaneously. Had to sketch that from life.

Then snapped photos from the van window and captured a ridge next to the road with trees and bushes and grass. Later in the waiting room, cropped that photo visually and sketched the tree scene above. Both of those I penciled first, then inked with a waterproof pen and then washed with watercolors. I used watercolor markers in Burnt Umber and Sap Green on the twig and washed, tapping the brush tips with the water brush for lighter color. Then used a little pan set of 8 Daniel Smith watercolors on the tree scene.

A couple of years ago I found that Richeson had a tiny children's watercolor set only an inch and a quarter by under 2" with tiny like quarter-pans round pans of kid color. I bought those for my grandkids as stocking stuffers, I got an extra one for myself, popped out the kid pans and filled the empty little plastic openings with Hansa Yellow, New Gamboge, an orange-red, quinacridone magenta or rose, quinacridone gold, pthalo blue, ultramarine and Paynes Grey.

Weirdly that little keychain set has become so handy. I've always got it in pocket, never have a problem with it other than the ultramarine popping out of its hole, just seem to reach for it and mix those colors easily. Bizarre but it's one of my favorites along with my ubiquitous water brush. Love that quinacridone gold, it's the one color that's wearing down fastest!