Cutting Out the Dog

Cutting Out the Dog 11x15 2010 Arches Cold Press.

This portrait was done in my portrait class. The painting is entirely my own with the exception of the hands, which my instructor redid. The hardest part of doing a portrait like this is the drawing. I don't trace and since I'm still learning, my instructor did correct the drawing mistakes. Each one I do does gets better. The original portrait had the girl cutting out a piece of black fabric. I thought of paper dolls and my instructor thought of repeating the dog that was on her shirt.

A Big Wave

A Big Wave 7x10 hot press.

For the past month, I've been involved with the WDE (Weekend Drawing Events) on the Wet Canvas site. The object is to create a painting from one of the many photos shown each Friday. Two hours are given to create and results are posted whether the painting is done or not. This week I decided to do the little boy standing in the water. I worked on hot-press paper and was thrilled with the results. It took less than an hour including the drawing.

Narcissus 11x15 2010. When I walked into my watercolor class on Monday, there was this beautiful arrangement of white narcissus arranged in an interesting dark blue container that was resting on a lacy cloth. My teacher told us not to draw and to have fun. We were given a suggestion to paint the dark reddish orange rim of the narcissus centers and immediately put in some New Gamboge. Then came the flowers by painting the negative background. This is a fun way to paint, especially when the flowers are the main interest.

Savannah

Savannah, Watercolor 11x15 2010. This was a quick little painting to do. It was taken from a photo sent by my daughter who lives in Savannah. I liked the way the ships looked in the fog. Every painting seems to be a challenge. I want very much to get more people into my watercolors. I always look for the hardest subjects and this one progressed quickly.

Water Wheel

Water Wheel 11x15 Lana Cold Press 2010. This watercolor was done in my watercolor class from a loose pencil sketch provided by my instructor. The original building drawing was weird as it was not a normal building in perspective. The side and front was all front with the roof shown as is. There was a shed projecting out of the right hand side. I could not get the concept, so I treated the building as a regular style building. The bottom portion of the painting is entirely made up as there was nothing drawn on the sketch. Don't look to closely at the building angles as they are off. Such an error is hard to correct without damaging the rest. But, I liked the bottom portion well enough to keep and show the painting.

New York Memories

New York Memories 11x15 Lana cold-press 2010
I currently take a creative drawing class. In last weeks class we had to create a better composition from a reference photo. I chose the reference landscape shown below. Although I liked the scene, I didn't like its long width. In class, I tried different layouts until I found the one used in the watercolor. This was a fast painting to work on. I tried to keep my palette small using four colors: Winsor Blue, Brown Madder, Sap Green, and Permanent Rose.

Reference photo








Reference photo




New York Memories 11x15 Lana cold-press 2010

Portrait B-2

Reference Photo 8x10 Arches 150-lb cold press


The reference for this watercolor came from the WetCanvas site reference library. The portrait was done in my weekly portrait class taking around a month to complete. I painted all but the background, which the teacher finished. The way the light hit her face was what attracted me to this particular portrait. It took quite awhile to get the eyes looking correct. The scarf was the easiest. It was done wet-on-wet dropping in colors.