Tag: Flower Art

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Animals Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Life in general Sketchbook Pages

What the Wasp Wants

What the Wasp Wants, ink and watercolor, 5x7 in (wasp in the flower)
What the Wasp Wants, ink and watercolor, 5×7 in

This wasp just wanted nectar from the flower. My friend Barbara just spent big bucks getting rid of hundreds of wasps that built nests in her attic and were invading her house. We don’t know what they wanted. This is the last of the leftover sketches from our endless summer, now being called California’s worst drought in 500 years.

Meanwhile, I’m still spending time previously used for sketching out hiking with my pup (but from now on I’m going to start carrying my sketching gear on our hikes and stop halfway to sketch). Thinking a morning 4-6 mile hike would tire her out, I’ve been painting in the studio in the afternoons while she attempts to re-landscape the yard. She’s a perfect angel in the house, but when we’re in the studio (that opens onto the backyard) she goes wild, digging up and chewing on random junk from under the trees and bushes that circle the yard, despite her comfy bed in the studio, fully stocked with chew toys.

Today I caught her chewing on an old broken hose nozzle, a piece of plastic pipe, various twigs and pieces of plants, and a stinky chew toy she’d previously buried. Then we play chase while I try to swap her for something healthier. That gives me an idea for some sketching tomorrow–all her toys and chewie things, many which are quite weird.

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Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Outdoors/Landscape Sketchbook Pages

Endless Summer Continues: Flowers from Christina’s Garden

Christina's Garden-Echinacea, ink and watercolor, 5x7 in
Christina’s Garden-Echinacea, ink and watercolor, 5×7 in

While the rest of the country is dealing with icy cold, we’re having a warmer-than- summer winter in Northern California. Instead of hunkering down and getting “rainy-day” tasks done at the computer I’m out walking for hours every day in the 72 degree sunshine with my pup. I love it but I miss winter!!!

Christina's Garden 3: Kangaroo Paws, ink and watercolor, 5x7 in
Christina’s Garden 3: Kangaroo Paws, ink and watercolor, 5×7 in

Although these flowers were sketched in a friend’s beautiful garden during the actual summer months of 2013, my roses are still blooming and spring flowers and fruit tree blossoms are bursting out everywhere, despite the lack of rain. It’s weird to see brown dry hills in January.

Christina's Garden 1, ink and watercolor, 5x7 in
Christina’s Garden 1, ink and watercolor, 5×7 in

Every day I look at the weather report, hoping to see rain in the near future, but it’s just not there. They’re saying this may be the driest year in 500 years. I read it’s already the driest winter in California recorded history. Since last winter ended I think all we’ve had are 2 days of minimal drizzles.

Until we get some winter weather, my semi-drought of blog posting will probably continue along with the sunshine that pulls me outdoors and away from the computer.

Categories
Art supplies Drawing Flower Art Gouache Oil Painting Plants Product Review Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Loads ‘o Lillies and Winsor Newton Cotman watercolor review

"Lily White on White," oil on Gessobord panel, 8x8"
“Lily White on White,” oil on Gessobord panel, 8×8″
(AVAILABLE on DailyPaintworks Auction: CLICK IMAGE to visit auction)

I spent some time sketching and painting a calla lily that sprouted in my garden and while I was at it, tested a palette of Winsor Newton Cotman paints. Several of my friends have this clever, inexpensive Winsor & Newton Cotman Sketchers Palette and I thought it was worth a try so I ordered one.

I started by testing the colors, listing the pigments to match them to artists’ quality pigments I normally use (click to see larger with pigment numbers) and making notes about which ones to swap out (at that point assuming I’d continue using the others).

Test of WInsor Newton Cotman pan paints (FAIL)
Test of WInsor Newton Cotman pan paints (FAIL)

I was very frustrated with the results I was getting when painting and in the end, took ALL the Cotman pans out of the palette and replaced them with pans filled with artist quality paints from tubes. I put the Cotman pans in a large jar of water to soak so that I could empty and reuse the empty pans. After dumping and refilling the jar many times I ended up with a jar of tinted water with a lot of white sandy junk at the bottom: the nasty fillers and binders added to the pigments to make it cheap.

I know that for the same $17 that this palette AND crappy paint costs, you can only buy one or two tubes of full strength, high quality paint. But I’d rather have only a few colors than use junk. Most of the following sketches lack vibrancy, richness in color, and paint application was difficult and unattractive. Here they are in reverse order of completion:

Lily sketch #6, watercolor, 8x10"
Lily sketch #6, watercolor, 8×10″

I liked the drawing above, but not the grayed colors.

Lily sketch #5, ink & watercolor, 8x10"
Lily sketch #5, ink & watercolor, 8×10″

I liked the shape of the leaf above.

Lily sketch #4?, gouache, 8x10"
Lily sketch #4?, gouache, 8×10″

I painted over an awful sketch with gouache (above), just loosely trying to get the shape of the flower.

Lily sketch #3-4, watercolor, 8x10"
Lily sketch #3-4, watercolor, 8×10″

Two previous attempts at the leaf, on 2 other kinds of paper I taped into the 8×10″ Moleskine.

Lily sketch #1 with Snail, watercolor, 8x10"
Lily sketch #1 with Snail, watercolor, 8×10″

The first sketch. I like the composition but the colors and application were yuck.

I’m still using the Cotman Palette. I think it’s a great for sketching because it’s light,  compact and holds enough colors (12). And at $17 I don’t mind the price, even after throwing away the colors it cane with. It’s handy to have the now-empty, extra half-pans which usually cost about 50 cents each. So really, I got the palette for $11, and 12 empty pans for $6. Not too bad.

Categories
Flower Art Oil Painting

Sunflowers on Blue (Updated) and New York City Trip

Sunflowers on Blue, oil on linen panel, 10x8"
Sunflowers on Blue, oil on linen panel, 10×8″

(UPDATED with better photo and New York news!). It’s summer so it’s sunflower time again. This is yet another attempt (but not the last) at understanding these flowers. I got behind on posting oil paintings while I was doing the Every Day in May sketch challenge so I have a bunch to share. I’ve also gotten behind on posting in general, while planning my trip to New York in September.

I fell down the rabbit hole on AirBnB, looking for apartments to rent for the week I’ll be there. People offer their own apartments for rent while they travel or stay with their girlfriend/boyfriend or have more than one apartment in the city.  It’s fun peeking into the tiny closets that people have as their homes in New York. But it’s also a little frustrating. Some don’t know their schedules yet for September while available places get snapped up quickly.

UPDATE: The good news is that I found the perfect place, a beautiful Upper West Side garden apartment. If you’ll be in New York between 9/25 and 9/30 and want to get together for sketching or museum fun please let me know!

Categories
Flower Art Oil Painting

Sunflowers on Blue

Sunflowers on Blue, oil on linen panel, 10x8"
Sunflowers on Blue, oil on linen panel, 10×8″

(UPDATED with better photo!). It’s summer so it’s sunflower time again. This is yet another attempt (but not the last) at understanding these flowers. I got behind on posting oil paintings while I was doing the Every Day in May sketch challenge so I have a bunch to share. I’ve also gotten behind on posting in general, while planning my trip to New York in September.

I fell down the rabbit hole on AirBnB, looking for apartments to rent for the week I’ll be there. People offer their own apartments for rent while they travel or stay with their girlfriend/boyfriend or have more than one apartment in the city.  It’s fun peeking into the tiny closets that people have as their homes in New York. But it’s also a little frustrating. Some don’t know their schedules yet for September while available places get snapped up quickly.

Categories
Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Sketchbook Pages

A Flowering Gift: Anthurium; plus Camellias Old and New

Anthurium 2, ink & watercolor, 5x8"
Anthurium 1, ink & watercolor, 5×8″

My friend Amy gave me the lovely gift of an Anthurium plant. I couldn’t wait to sketch its interesting shapes and colors.

Anthurium 2, ink & watercolor, 5x8"
Anthurium 2, ink & watercolor, 5×8″

I keep it in the studio because my cats eat house plants and then give them back partially digested. The plant held up well during the week and a half I was too sick to go out to the studio. It just wanted a little water and repotting.

Camelia in Blue Bowl, ink & watercolor, 5x8"
Camellia in Blue Bowl, ink & watercolor, 5×8″

I can never remember the name of this large flowering bush in my yard. I have to go through the same stupid chain of thoughts to get to it, always starting with “It’s not a gardenia it’s a….” which always leads to remembering when I moved to New York City at the age of 19 with one suitcase, a few hundred dollars in savings, and lots of dreams.

When I arrived and opened my suitcase, my bottle of (cheap, intense) Jungle Gardenia perfume had spilled all over everything. I still hate the scent of gardenia. Camellias have no scent and are a wonderful vibrant pink color, but are challenging to sketch. I did this large watercolor of a camellia (below) several years ago.

Ruffled Camelia, watercolor on paper, 16x19.5"
Ruffled Camellia, watercolor on paper, 16×19.5″

Seeing my earlier watercolor work makes me want to go back to doing large watercolors. My process was so different when painting rather than sketching with watercolor. I worked slowly and with control, section by section, on very exact drawings or tracings from photos. You can see more of my watercolor flowers on my website JanaBouc.com here.

Categories
Colored pencil art Flower Art Sketchbook Pages

I’m Not Number One, I’m 2 Million! plus 1 More Crab Apple

Crab Apple Blossoms with colored pencil sketch on tan paper
Crab Apple Blossoms colored pencil on tan paper in 8×11″ Moleskine Journal

Once more with the crab apple blossoms, this time on tan paper using mostly a Prismacolor black grape colored pencil and white pencil (and then pasted in my giant Moleskine).

I sketched these before I did the oil paintings posted previously below. I wanted to try the approach of sketching with only three values: the tan paper as mid-range plus highlights and shadows. But I wasn’t seeing a lot of variation in value in the subject. Everything except for the whitish pink blossoms looked like a medium dark value. So what I was trying to do didn’t really make sense. But it was fun anyway.

The Visitor 2 Million Prize on Making a Mark

Katherine Tyrrell credited me with being or generating the 2,000,000 millionth visitor to Making A Mark, my favorite blog about art on the web. We were both down with a nasty flu bug then so she missed seeing the counter tick over to 2 million. But she could tell it was either me (reading her blog from bed with box of tissues in hand) or someone referred from my blog, so she named me the prize winner. Her blog is such a gift to the artist/blogger community. I learn something new every time I read her weekly “Who’s Made A Mark” column.

Categories
Flower Art Glass Oil Painting Painting Still Life

Flowering Crab Apple Blossoms in Bottles: Oil Paintings

Crab Apple Paired, Oil on Archival Panel, 10x8"
Crab Apple Paired, Oil on Archival Panel, 10×8″

The branches I snipped from a tree in Berkeley provided many opportunities to sketch and paint. The first were watercolor sketches. Then I did these two oil paintings and some other sketches I’ll post later. Two of my favorite things to paint: flowers and glass. Crab Apple Paired (above) is available here.

Sake Bottle with Flowering Crab Apple
Sake Bottle with Flowering Crab Apple Under Warm Light, oil on archival panel, 6×6

This sake bottle is from a nice sushi dinner I had with my son. He’s much more knowledgeable about such things so he ordered the sake. I was delighted by its wonderful peach colored bottle with a kind of etched surface. I knew it would be fun to paint. I used a very warm light for this still life set up which made everything a little peachy. This little painting is available here.

Categories
Art supplies Flower Art Gouache Ink and watercolor wash Sketchbook Pages

Flowering Crab Apple Blossoms on First Day of Spring

Flowering Crab Apple Branch, left page, ink, watercolor & gouache, 8x11"
Flowering Crab Apple Branch, left page, ink, watercolor & gouache, 8×11″

Happy spring (or autumn if you’re on the other side of the world)! Despite it being a rainy, grey day here, perfect for spending indoors in jammies (which I did since I was a bit under the weather) spring has definitely arrived in the Bay Area with blossoming trees and green things sprouting everywhere.

Out walking in Berkeley on a Sunday morning in a nice neighborhood, I spotted a beautiful flowering tree between two homes. I was debating with my walking buddy  whether to knock on the door and ask if I could take a cutting to sketch and paint from. He thought not, since people might still be sleeping, and suggested I take a photo. But I wanted to draw from the real thing. I was trying to figure out which house actually owned the tree and he was trying to figure out how to get me to keep walking.

Flowering Crab Apple Branch, right page, ink, watercolor & gouache, 8x11"
Flowering Crab Apple Branch, right page, ink, watercolor & gouache, 8×11″

Just then I heard people chatting, coming towards us on the sidewalk from around the corner. It was the homeowners who’d also been out for a walk. I asked if I could take a branch to paint and they said yes. This is the first of several pieces (two oil paintings and another sketch) I created from their branch.

I wish I’d thought to take their address so I could send a thank you card with the image on it. Maybe my friend will remember what street we were on since he chose our route.

Flowering Crab Apple Branch, 2-page spread, ink, watercolor & gouache, 8x22"
Flowering Crab Apple Branch, 2-page spread, ink, watercolor & gouache, 8×22″

This is the full 2-page spread in the giant Moleskine Watercolor A4 sketchbook I’m using now. It’s 8.5 x 23 inches when opened so rather unwieldy when sketching outside the studio but I’m enjoying it anyway. I drew directly with a sepia Sakura Micron Pigma Pen and then painted with watercolor and a bit of gouache.

I used gouache for the background on this sketch because I wanted a fairly smooth/flat background which I couldn’t get with watercolor because of the way the paper buckles and doesn’t lie flat because of the seam. My favorite part is the enlarged pure watercolor blossoms in the white circle on the left hand side, visible if you click and then click again on the top image. I’m craving some “real” watercolor painting on good paper.

Categories
Flower Art Ink and watercolor wash Oil Painting Painting Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Sunflowers: Studies, Struggles, Stubborness

Sunflowers #4, oil painting on panel, 8x8"
Sunflowers #4, oil painting on panel, 8×8″

It seems like I’ve been struggling with painting sunflowers forever but with each attempt I understand them a little better. I’m very stubborn and will continue trying until the sunflowers and I are really good friends.

I lit the flowers above with very warm light which made the olive-green backdrop cloth look gold and kind of bleached out the color of the flowers. The pictures in this post are in the reverse order I made them, with the last first.

Sunflower #3, ink & watercolor, 5x8"
Sunflower #3, ink & watercolor, 5×8″

I did the sketch above after having such difficulty with the two below, trying to better understand the shapes of the flowers and their structure.

Sunflowers in Vase (#2), Oil painting on canvas, 16x12"
Sunflowers in Vase (#2), Oil painting on canvas, 16×12″

After working for hours on the vase in the painting above I looked at it in the mirror to check the symmetry and couldn’t stop laughing. It was completely off kilter, slanted to one side as if it had melted. It’s just amazing how our eyes and brain work together to correct things and fool us. I had to completely start the vase over to get it close to right. I experimented with using a dark background and tried to paint duller, darker colors for flowers not in the light but vibrant color kept sneaking back in. After days of repainting I called it done so I could move on.

Sunflower #1, Oil painting on panel, 10x8"
Sunflower #1, Oil painting on panel, 10×8″

The first problem with the one above was my drawing. Instead of taking the time to carefully draw these sunflowers I jumped into painting, combining a few specifics with some generic version of flowers. All the pointy, sharp shapes and droopy flowers are a good visual representation of my struggle, frustration, and ultimately, disappointment with this painting.

I completed these pieces at the end of last year and had to give up when I couldn’t find any more sunflowers. Soon sunflowers will be available and I can start painting them again.

I have a feeling it’s going to go better this time around. I am studying nature drawing with John Muir Laws at his Bay Area Nature Journal Club. This month’s session was all about drawing flowers and I learned all sorts of cool stuff. More about that another time.