Category: Flower Art

My bottle is back!

Watercolor in Moleskine 5×8″ watercolor notebook
To enlarge, please click image, select “All Sizes”

A package was waiting for me when I came home from work tonight. It was this little bottle that I’d loaned to a watercolor student months ago. She started painting it in class and wanted to finish at home so I sent the bottle home with her. Then she injured her arm and wasn’t able to return and since she lived quite a distance from me I told her to just mail it to me. I knew she would when she could and I was so happy to see it today.

It’s funny how finding a lost something like this little Cognac bottle can mean so much. I’ve painted it many times and just really love this little bottle that I originally found on the street. I’ve wondered why it was there–would the average bum or teenager be drinking cognac on the street? I don’t know anything about liquor, but always though cognac was fancy stuff, not on the same level as Colt 45 (had to look this up–I originally said Colt 44 but that’s a gun, it turns out) or Thunderbird (had to look that up too–there’s actually a website about bum wines.)

I’m just so pleased to have my little bottle home. I know some people like diamonds, fancy cars and yachts but I can be just as happy with a quiet hour painting a flower in a sweet little bottle.

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Flower Art Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Rose twice

Watercolor on 7 x11″ Arches paper. Click image to enlarge, select “All Sizes”

I’ve been oddly out of synch all day today, not having energy or focus, which was frustrating. I was about to go to bed, tired and grumpy, having painted the rose below which is overworked and not what I wanted. Then I decided to give it one more try and did the rose above. The top image is better, still somewhat overworked, and still not quite what I had in mind–which I now realize needs a big sheet of paper and more time.

Watercolor on 7 x11″ Arches paper. Click image to enlarge, select “All Sizes”

I wanted the rose to fill the whole page but somehow each time I drew it (3 times) it kept being too small and I hadn’t plan to paint the little handblown glass vase at all. I decided to start painting anyway, rather than doing the drawing over yet again. Then once I started, I just kept on painting when I should have been stopping, looking, thinking instead of covering every inch with too much paint.

If it wasn’t midnight, I’d do it one more time. I like painting flowers by doing each petal wet in wet one at a time, in several layers, and that just doesn’t work very well working small, nor trying to get the painting done in one setting, since each petal has to dry before moving to the next.

Flower Art Life in general Watercolor

Bouquet Play

Watercolor and FW acrylic ink in 9×12 in. Aquabee sketchbook.
(To enlarge, click image, select “All Sizes.”)

QUESTIONS:
1. Are the images on my site taking too long too load? I’ve been saving larger sizes to Flickr and putting their medium size here but they are nearly 200K. I used to keep images to around 60K.
2. Do you like being able to click to enlarge or is this size big enough?

Now back to the regular post….

Playing with watercolor and ink again… I painted the flowers loosely without drawing using Kremer Pigments watercolors and then used a sumi brush to apply the ink over top. When it was dry I added a bit of Winsor Violet to the irises on each side because I couldn’t get a good purple with the reds and blues in the Kremer watercolors.

3 notes from Jana’s World today:

1. It was a beautiful sunny day but I spent the whole day behind closed blinds (to keep the glare off my computer) in my office working.

2. On the way home, I was delighted by a parade of humanity exiting the BART train at downtown Berkeley: an aging bearded hippie folk singer in gold see-through vest and red pants, followed by two Tibetan Buddhist monks in saffron robes, a handsome young African-American guy decked out in expensive designer hip-hop apparel and electronic accessories, several Asian students with fully loaded book bags, a skinny pale white woman with dyed black dreadlocks piled on top of her head, an obese woman who could barely walk, a very muscular woman with a crewcut wearing a sleeveless shirt whose arms were covered with tattoos, a young Latina mom pushing a stroller in which sat a round-faced tot wearing what looked like an organza lavender prom dress that ballooned out around her. I have to draw this! (but too tired now)

3. My silly cat Fiona seems to have spent her day in the cereal/pasta cabinet. She shredded open a box of Special K and two packages of spaghetti noodles (but only the white ones–she didn’t bother with the whole wheat, which is good because I needed them for dinner.)

Tags Cats, Ink

Flower Art Life in general Plants Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Zebra Plant

Loosely painted without drawing first using Kremer Pigments watercolors; then FW Acrylic Ink applied with Sumi brush. In 9×12 Aquabee sketchbook. (To enlarge, click image and select “All Sizes”)

At last, a day without a headache! Every time the weather changes I get migraney. It’s really frustrating here in the S.F. Bay Area because we sometimes go through three seasons in a day, especially in spring and fall. But there’s nothing like the absence of pain to brighten a day and remind me to feel grateful.
I visited my local Dick Blick (did his parents really name him that?) Art Supplies today, to pick up some ink and a sumi brush to carry on with my experiments with loose painting and adding ink. They were playing some weird music in the store that made me feel like I was getting another migraine–it had some kind of repetetive pounding sound, not a drumbeat, something chinky-chunky sounding, that was driving me nuts. I mentioned it to a fellow shopper in the ink section and she, irritated, “thanked” me for bringing it to her attention so she could be annoyed too.

I’m very sensitive to my environment, which is good for being an artist but bad for being out in the world where I easily get overstimulated when it’s busy and noisy and then need quiet downtime (preferably in the studio) to recover. Also not good for driving since I’m constantly noticing everything around me but the road. I try to make myself pay attention to driving so I’m not too much of a hazard–though I did back out of my driveway right into a parked car today (barely touched it, no harm done, but a good reminder to pay more attention!).

Tags Ink

Flower Art Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

White Rose, Long Day

Watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook.
(To enlarge, click image, select “All Sizes”).

When I woke up this morning I opened the living room blinds and saw the sun glowing on my white roses. I knew I’d have to hurry to get a picture before the light changed so I grabbed my camera and ran outside in my purple pajamas, not really caring about the people driving by. I knew it was a little odd climbing around in the rose bushes in my jammies, but sometimes we must make sacrifices for our art, no?

Today was another long day at work–stayed until after 7:00 p.m. to meet all my deadlines. I’m so glad I was able to get all the materials prepared for our organization’s presentations in Germany and Washington, DC. It’s also performance review time so those had to be dealt with this week, in between producing materials for several other trainings and presentations.

After a quick dinner and feeling very tired, I gave myself one hour in the studio, knowing I had a nice photo of the rose that I could post if I couldn’t draw and paint something in that time. One hour later, the rose is painted and I’m off to read more of Matisse’s biography, “Matisse: The Early Years” which I’m so enjoying. I’m up to his early 20s and his association with so many of my favorite artists. Talk about sacrificing for art–these guys lived so frugally and were so poor. For example, when Marquet lost his overcoat it meant going without a coat in the freezing Paris winters for the three years it took to save enough to buy another coat!

Drawing Flower Art Gardening Life in general Plein Air Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Westbrae Nursery Buddhas

Micron pigma ink pen, watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook
(Click image, select “All Sizes” to enlarge)
(This was Monday’s post–I thought I’d clicked “Publish” but when there were no comments on it at all, I checked and discovered I had never actually put it on line….oops).

After working this morning I rode my bike into Berkeley this afternoon to do some errands. Last time I drove down Gilman I noticed that Westbrae Nursery had a bunch of Buddhas on display so after I finished my unshopping at REI (returning a clip-on umbrella that I thought would work for plein air painting but wouldn’t clip onto my easel) I rode over to the nursery.

I discovered that my new bike seat worked perfectly as a table for my teeny Winsor & Newton watercolor field kit. I stood with my bike just outside the nursery entrance to draw and paint this. One of the workers stopped by between delivery bags of manure and big plants to people’s cars. His comments: “Are you painting?” “Don’t you get tired standing?” “Wow you’re fast!”

Today was warm and sunny but by the time I started for home, the fog and wind had returned. Having not carried a jacket (a foolish mistake in the Bay Area), I had a chilly downhill ride home.

Tags Pen and Ink, Plein Air

Drawing Flower Art Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sunflowers and Copper Pitcher

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date October 8, 2006
27 Comments on Sunflowers and Copper Pitcher

This was the last of the four little paintings I did tonight.

Kremer Pigments watercolors painted loosely, without drawing; then Pentel Brushpen with black ink loosely drawn over the dry paint. In Handbook Journal Co. square 5.5 x 5.5 sketchbook (purchased from Wet Paint in Minnesota) .
To enlarge, click image, select all sizes)

Today was a gorgeous summery day in the Bay Area and I spent it with a migraine, covers pulled over my head, wearing a sweatshirt over my flannel pajamas, with my electric blanket turned on, waiting for the pain to subside and my cold body temperature to return to normal. Finally around 6:30 tonight I felt OK enough to do something enjoyable and headed to the studio. I decided to experiment with some new art toys and a copper pitcher filled with sunflowers that I’d used as a set up for my watercolor students on Saturday morning.

First sketch: Ink (Pentel Brush Pen) in square Handbook Journal
(to enlarge, click image, select All Sizes)

I did this ink sketch above as a gesture drawing to warm up. I’m loving the Pentel Brush Pen with black ink that I used in the two images above–basically a waterbrush with an ink cartridge. Unfortunately I was sent the wrong one–this one is not waterproof or lightfast, so I need to get the one Roz Stendahl recommended: Pentel Pocket Brush pen with the letters GFKP on it. That one IS waterproof and permanent.

The Handbook Journal Co. sketchbook was also recommended by Roz as an alternative to Moleskine watercolor notebooks. I give it a wholehearted thumbs up! It took ink and watercolor very well, and has all the other nice features of the Moleskine notebooks (elastic strap, hard black cover, back pocket, nice paper; however the pages are not perforated). They come in many different sizes and configurations and have more pages than Moleskines. I really like this square shape.

Third sketch. (Click image, select All Sizes, to enlarge)

Above is the third version I did, first drawing with a Micron Pigma pen in square Handbook Journal and then painted with Kremer Pigments. I worked much more loosely than the second one I did. I like the way the leaves and pitcher turned out. (I decided not to post the second one since it’s icky and overworked–if you have to see it I’ll leave it on my Flickr as Sunflower2.)

Tags Pen and Ink

Flower Art Watercolor

Morning Walk Tidbits

To see larger size, click image, then click “All Sizes”
Ink & Kremer Pigments Watercolor on 1/4 sheet Arches 140 lb cold press (didn’t quite fit in scanner so a bit of top and bottom got cut off).

This morning I met my friend Barbara for a wonderful walk from her house near Berkeley’s Live Oak Park up through the hills to Tilden Park and back. It was a great walk and talk and I collected these bits and pieces of plant life along the way to paint when I got home. We’ve been friends since we were roommates before we had kids (and our kids are now older than we were when first met at the old Berkeley Co-op bulletin board where I was posting a “roommate wanted” sign). Barbara is an amazing artist and it was so exciting seeing her new work in clay and mosaic, which I’m looking forward to posting here when it’s finished.

I decided to paint on “real” watercolor paper today, rather than in my sketchbook, and to finally try out my Kremer Pigments watercolor set that I learned about from Carol of Paris Breakfasts blog. These paints are amazing! They are so responsive and juicy and rich–unlike anything I’ve used before. Many of the colors included in the 14 pan set are different than my usual palette but seem to be a very astute selection of colors. I can’t wait to play with them some more on a larger scale. I actually started the top twig with my usual palette of mostly Winsor Newton colors and then painted the rest with the Kremer set.

Looking at the picture in this smaller view, I feel compelled to note that the dark brown item on the right is not a piece of cat pooh with litter stuck to it, despite the resemblance. I didn’t pay much attention to the relative size of objects, so things are not quite to scale.

I’d like to find out what each item is and write that on the painting but the only one I know is the Magnolia seedpod. Any identifications are welcome–you might be able to tell better from the scan of the actual objects in the image below. The leaf at the bottom of the painting is fuzzy and soft and gray green but isn’t in the picture below, since I’d already tossed it.
(Click image and select All Sizes to enlarge)

Tags Pen and Ink

Drawing Flower Art Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

What kind of tree am I?

Please CLICK image then “All Sizes” to enlarge

I don’t know what kind of tree these came from, do you? Actually I drew the parts of two identical trees that are next to each other in my neighborhood. The only difference is that one has impossibly pink flowers and the other has impossibly bright orange flowers. I planned to draw both but discovered I was allergic to them and in order to finish more quickly combined their parts in one picture. Then I had to take a Claritin.

When I asked the neighbor if I could take a cutting from his tree to paint he said I could take the whole tree. He hates them because they bloom all year and constantly drop horrible stuff on his car: sticky sap, sticky little orange stringy parts of the flowers, and the hard seed pods (I know I’m using all the wrong names of the parts, sorry). He showed me the huge stump of the one he’d already cut down. Looking at the mess I had to clean up on my drawing table, I know what he’s talking about.

But the bees and hummingbirds love these trees. In the afternoon its swarming with bees and in the early evening it’s filled to capacity with chirping hummingbirds. I hope he doesn’t cut down the others. They’re stunningly beautiful and our neighborhood doesn’t have enough trees. Here’s some photos of the tree parts:

Drawn with Lamy Safari Pen, Noodler’s Ink & watercolor in Aquabee Super Deluxe sketchbook

Tags Pen and Ink

Drawing Flower Art Other Art Blogs I Read Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Orchid cartoon

Non-artists, today’s post will probably be boring, sorry.

I’m reading two books about art right now, “The Unknown Matisse” (the first half of a 1,000 page biography) at the recommendation of Laura, and “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art” by Scott McCloud at the recommendation of Nora, who’s studying to be a graphic designer.

I’ve been working on my drawing in two directions: One is to be very specific and really draw what I see, not using the symbol of the object. The other is to learn to simplify and find the essence of the thing/person/animal and exaggerate it to make it more interesting and to be able to do wonderful cartoony drawings like Mattias, Paula, and Sparky, for example. I was asking Nora lots of questions about how illustrators create the characters they draw and she recommended reading Understanding Comics.

It’s written in comic book format and inspired me to try drawing my orchid in cartoon panels. With it’s long spindly stem, flower at the top and big leaves at the bottom, the orchid is awkward to compose on a page, so drawing it in panels was ideal. Conveniently, a pretend Discover credit card arrived in the mail today–just the right size to use to outline the panels.

The orchid is painted in a Raffine sketchbook, which was recommended as having great paper for 1/3 the cost of Moleskines. I’m not thrilled with it. It’s wire binding is huge, making it difficult to scan (gets shadows), the cover is flimsy, and the pages are smaller than my preferred Aquabee 6×9 Super Deluxe sketchbook which is about the same price, has about the same quality paper and smaller binding. I did learn a cool Photoshop trick to get rid of the shadows though: I used the Dodge tool set to Highlights at 50% with a large sized brush and it erased all the shadows without changing anything else.

I traced the panels using my trusty old Sharpie, but didn’t like the way the ink spread on this paper so switched to the Lamy Safari fine point to draw with. I’m liking the Lamy more and more for drawing and the Sharpie less and less. Then I added watercolor, but before painting the dark background (Daniel Smith Indigo) I scanned the drawing and added dark backgrounds in Photoshop to see if I liked it. I did, so I went back and painted them.

Tags Pen and Ink