Category: Watercolor

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Faces Other Art Blogs I Read Painting People Portrait Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Portrait Swap – Ujwala in Watercolor

Ujwala, Watercolor

Watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor sketchbook from color photo
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Ujwala, Monochrome

Watercolor (Ultramarine Blue & Indigo) in large Moleskine watercolor sketchbook from black & white photo
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Forgive me Ujwala; I fear I haven’t done you justice but I thoroughly enjoyed painting your beautiful and expressive face. Thank you for allowing me to draw and paint you.

Update: Casey just posted her drawing of Ujwala too. Check it out here.

Quite awhile ago my friend and fellow art blogger Ujwala in Bangladesh invited me to do a portrait swap with her to be posted on Illustrator Rama Hughes‘ Portrait Party blog but I got sidetracked. She reminded me again recently when I was commenting on the wonderful series of portraits she’s been working on. The Portrait Party blog is really fun. It’s all drawings, paintings, and cartoons done by pairs of artists of each other. Rama recently posted pictures my friend Judith and I did of each other and when Ujwala finishes mine we’ll send them to him. If you want join the portrait party, just follow the instructions on his blog.

When I agreed (again) to do the portrait swap (which just means I paint you and you paint me), she promptly emailed me two great photos. It took me another few weeks to get around to sending her photos. I took pictures of myself at midnight in my old plaid flannel pajamas, holding the camera at arms length under bright light in the studio. The resulting photos showed every wrinkle and magnified my nose since I was holding the camera so close. I decided to forget about vanity and just send her the photos so we could get started.

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Art theory Other Art Blogs I Read Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Egg Cup with Mushrooms

Egg cup with mushrooms

Watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 6″x5″ in sketchbook
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I was at Berkeley Giclee on 4th Street in Berkeley on Monday to approve a test print of a painting I sold before the final giclee was made. The photographer/printer, Tony Molatore is a genius and so great to work with. The print is the same size as the original painting and it’s really hard to tell them apart.

While I was on 4th Street I stopped at the Crate and Barrel Outlet and bought some inexpensive goodies to use in still life setups including this little egg cup and periwinkle colored square plate. I’m going to paint this in oils too, but tonight my painting group was here and I wanted to join them with watercolor.

In my many years of painting in watercolor I focused on accurately capturing what I was seeing and on watercolor technique. Now that I’m also painting in oils I can’t just leave the white of the paper as background, or easily crop paintings when they’re done. Overall design and composition become very important so I’ve been trying to relearn all those elements from classes I took so many years ago. I tried to apply a couple of “rules” of good composition here:

1. Never “float” a still life. Make it go off the page on two sides or more (Told to me by Nel Jansen who learned it from another artist.)

2. “Never make any two intervals the same.” In other words, no equal divisions of space or equal quantities of dark/light, warm/cool, color, hard edge/soft edge etc. in a painting (The Simple Secret to Better Painting by Greg Albert — a good basic book on composition).

On the other hand, I’m noticing I have a foreground with nothing in the middle ground or background which seems a little odd and a few hard edges that should have been softened (which I will do later).

And on the other, other hand I had a wonderful time painting and being with my dear painting buddies tonight and seeing the lovely colors and shapes in the things I was painting.

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Gardening Painting Plants Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Funny tomatoes from my garden

Funny-tomatoes

Ink & watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper in 6×8 sketchbook
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I don’t know why some of my tomatoes are growing so strangely, with funny little noses and other appendages. Maybe they’re a little crowded? Or it’s just the nature of this type. I’ve got 5 plants of different types of tomatoes and these are the only ones doing this. I live in a normally foggy summer area and last year my tomatoes didn’t get ripe until the end of October. This year they’re doing great as it’s been lovely sunny weather all summer.

I’ve been trying to figure out whether it’s sunlight or warmth that makes tomatoes get ripe. I’m guessing it’s the sunlight but maybe it’s both. If it was hot out but dark all the time, or very bright and sunny but cold, they wouldn’t ripen. But what makes them ripen? I know I could just look this up somewhere but it’s more fun to try to mull it over and come up with theories… But if you know, please do tell!

I’m also curious if what makes tomatoes ripen is the same thing that makes peaches or plums ripen (they’re both reddish) but what about green things. Do they need to ripen to? I’ve never heard of ripe spinach or ripe lettuce.

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Illustration Friday Painting People Portrait Watercolor

Wedding: Illustration Friday

Matt & Margot

Watercolor, 22″ x 15″
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Illustration Friday’s topic this week is Wedding. Usually when I participate in IF I create something new. I love the creative process of coming up with a concept for an illustration that is fresh, unique, and not the first thing anyone would think of (e.g. Paris = Eiffel Tower = trite). The second fun part is imagining and visualizing the image and then bringing it to life with pen and paint.

But this week I couldn’t resist posting this wedding portrait I did a couple years ago for my friends Matt and Margot, especially since this month is their anniversary and they’re expecting their first child in less than a month. Congratulations M&M!

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Art theory Glass Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Kelp Pickles & Creative Blogger Award

Kelp Pickles from Sitka Alaska

Watercolor & ink (black & white in label) on Arches hot press in 6 x 8″ sketchbook
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The Pickles
A co-worker who lives in Alaska part of the year brought back delicious treats, all made from seaweed. These crunchy pickles taste like sweet pickles except better–with a touch of the sea in them. I love anything tasting of the sea, including raw oysters. Eating raw oysters is like eating peaches: the texture is the same, the soft bite through, and then the sudden juiciness. They always remind me of my childhood in Southern California where I practically lived in the ocean, tasting that fresh salty flavor every time I dove or got knocked under a big wave.

The Painting
I painted this from life (well, from jar) with a light shining on it. I added a few highlights with Golden Absorbent Ground, a product that also allows you to cover and repaint problem areas in watercolor paintings. It creates an absorbent texture that doesn’t bleed or dissolve and is similar to the original texture of watercolor paper. It’s best to apply in thin layers if you’re using it to cover an area to repaint it so that it dries smooth.

The Creative Blogger Award
Two art bloggers and wonderful artists, Nel Jansen and Bonny Racca, both honored me by nominating me for this award. I wanted to acknowledge their kindness and admit that I’m a naughty Creative Blogger. When one receives the award one is supposed to pass it forward, nominating 5 others, who nominate 5 others, etc. For a number of reasons I’ve chosen to opt out of that part of the process, but do appreciate the nomination very much! I’ve also learned these kinds of “pass it on” awards and questionnaires are called memes and their definition on Wikipedia is quite interesting.

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Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Summer Corn

Corn

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper in 6×8″ sketchbook
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Yay! It’s the weekend at last. Today was about making a lengthy To-Do list and then checking things off, one at a time. I got halfway through the list but all the important stuff got done and I rewarded myself with a latte from Peets. By the time I finished cleaning up and organizing the studio I was too tired to work on an oil painting (which I do standing at an easel…with all those brushes to clean at the end). But sitting at my drawing table painting with watercolor and listening to a good book was just perfect.

First I drew with pencil, including every kernel, which was fun (thanks to the strong Peet’s coffee?). After I put a tiny dab of masking fluid on the kernels I painted every other kernel with a touch of the brush so that each kernel would dry separately rather than all blending together. I went back and added a darker golden color color to shadow each kernel and added some cobalt violet in the shadowy spaces between the kernels.

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Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Salad rubbish

Salad-rubbish

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper (in sketchbook)
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After I chopped vegetables for a salad today I looked down at the little triangular rubbish container/drainer in the sink. It was full of cucumber peels, red bell pepper core, radish ends, and mushroom trimmings. I thought it was pretty enough to paint. So I did. Happy Labor Day to everyone who has the day off today. Now back to my fun struggles with oil painting…

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Drawing Other Art Blogs I Read People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Sketchcrawl 15 – Berkeley’s Fourth Street

Sketchcrawl15-peets

Peet’s Coffee. Larger

All are drawn in ink and painted with watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook
Yesterday was Sketchcrawl 15 and I joined a friendly, talented group of artists (including Oakland artist Carrie, Sonoma county artist Natalie, Cathy from East Bay Plein Air Painters, and fellow art-bloggers Martha, Vern and Pete) on Berkeley’s Fourth Street to sketch. We had a good time sketching in nice weather, and met up again at the end of the day at Brennan’s Pub for drinks.

Brennan’s used to be a favorite hangout in my late 20s — a place to meet friends for drinks and partying back in the day. I hadn’t been there in at least 20 years so it was fun to see it was still virtually the same and to have a yummy Irish Coffee for old times sake. I learned today that Brennan’s will be demolished in the near future to make room for a new development but they will be moving to a historic, former train depot nearby.

Sketchcrawl15-lilly

Lilly. Larger
“Good Afternoon. Could you help me please?” “Good afternoon, could you help me please?” “Good afternoon, could you help me please?” “Thank you Jesus.” “Good afternoon, could you help me please?”

Martha and I sat on a bench across the street from Hear Music so she could draw their storefront. Just to my left was this cheerful and charming (and repetitive) blind woman soliciting money from the shoppers in this upscale area. For the half hour we sat there she continued her chant, while her sweet but old, grizzled male friend gave her quiet little cues about who was walking by, what they looked like and what they were doing. She was excited we were sketching her. I gave him my card and promised to send a copy of the finished sketch, which he liked. She also allowed me to take photos and I plan to do a painting of her as she was quite beautiful (which you can’t tell from my sketch, sadly.) We put a few dollars in her begging bowl (a quart-sized yogurt container).

Sketchcrawl15-gate

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The last sketch of the day in the little courtyard behind Sur la Table. Martha went inside and drew kitchen goods.

Sketchcrawl15-spengers

Spenger’s Fish Grotto
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This is the first sketch of the day I did while we waited for everyone to arrive. I painted it later at home from little color notes I penciled in to the sketch. Pete did a fabulous drawing of Spenger’s using a blue Copic fine liner and watercolor, so please be sure to visit the Berkeley Sketchcrawl website to see his drawings and Martha’s, and the cool photos Martha took of everyone sketching.

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Every Day Matters Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life Studio Watercolor

Peach: EDM 133 & A peachy new homemade sketchbook

EDM #133

Watercolor on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico hot press paper
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This week’s Everyday Matters’ challenge is Draw a Peach. I’ve been eating at least one juicy sweet peach a day all summer. I start the day with a peach cut up in a bowl of cereal for breakfast and have one cut up in plain yogurt for an afternoon snack. This variety is so huge that breakfast looks more like a bowl of peach than a bowl of cereal.

New sketchbook

I made myself a new sketchbook and this painting is the first page. Here’s a photo of the sketchbook:

Homemade Sketchbook

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I didn’t have the inclination or patience to learn actual bookbinding for sketchbooks like Martha and Kate nor the budget to have them beautifully custom made for me like Laura’s. So I came up with a quick, inexpensive way to do it (mostly) myself. I tore two sheets of watercolor paper–one hot press and one cold press–in half and then in half, etc. until each piece was about 7 3/4″ by 5 3/4″. Then I sorted so that every other page is hot press/cold press, and brought the stack to Kinkos (a U.S. photocopy shop). I had them punch and bind it with a spiral wire thingee and a frosted cover and black back for which they charged about $6.00. The paper is way better than the Moleskines and Aquabees I’ve been using, the dimensions are more to my liking, it’s bound on the short side so can be used more easily in landscape format and the spiral binding lets me fold pages under (which means not easily drawing across two pages, but I rarely do that anyway).

The day after I made it I read about the way Miguel makes his own sketchbooks, using a Filofax (day planner) cover and punching three holes in the paper with a special Filofax punch. I’ll try that next, since I have a similar kind of day planner with a nice leather cover that I’m not using and could convert to a sketchbook. The only problem with that method is that when you finish the pages you remove them and box them and refill with new paper. The finished pages don’t remain an intact sketchbook.

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Life in general Painting Plants Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Remains of the Day

feather

Watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook (Larger)

I picked up this feather and some sort of dingleberry/pod that fell from a tree on a walk by Lake Merritt (which has a bird sanctuary). I actually collected several feathers of different sizes, textures and colors that I wanted to draw. But trying to keep the cats away from the feathers got to be too much trouble so I put the others away. After repeatedly removing the cats from the drawing table I gave up and put this one away too, switching to drawing this little pod thingee.

Tonight my painting group got together at my studio after several weeks of not meeting and it was so nice to see everyone again and catch up on each other’s art, work, life, and families while we all painted. We’ve been together for at least 10 years (nobody can remember when we actually started), and though we’re all very different we’ve become a wonderfully close, supportive, loving little family. Together we’ve survived divorces, deaths of loved ones, romances (failed and successful), surgeries, cancer, teenagers, empty nesting (and kids who won’t leave home) and more. And all the while we’ve kept painting, learning, and growing as artists and friends. I’m so lucky to have their support and friendship.