“Animal Bone and Daffodils,” gouache on watercolor paper, 11 x 8.5 inches
My dog found this animal bone on the trail in Wildcat Canyon. I don’t know what critter it was from but I assume possibly a deer that a bobcat, mountain lion or coyotes left behind. It was well-gnawed and growing moss.
I’m enjoying learning how to paint with gouache. It’s a lot of fun but definitely has its challenges!
Continuing on with my big May catch-up on posting work from the past few months. It was a gloomy winter day but one of the volunteer calla lilies was blooming and I had to paint it. This was a one-session alla prima oil painting.
I painted these from life, but first did a value sketch in Procreate to help me stay within the range of values I chose for the painting. That’s a concept I’ve been pondering: that you can design whatever value range you want for a painting, from mostly light to mostly dark, and then mix the paint colors accordingly. I printed out the Procreate value sketch and put it on my easel for reference as you can see in the work in progress photos below.
I’ve been working on doing Alla Prima (all at once) paintings in order to become more decisive about the paint I put down instead of noodling around. It requires getting the drawing right, understanding what I’m seeing and if it fails, starting again instead of trying to keep fixing, which usually goes badly. This was the third attempt at painting a rose in my mom’s yellow glass bowl. The previous attempts and photos of the set up (as the rose opened) are below.
This was a quick little painting from life that happened spontaneously one afternoon when my tenant came out to my studio and presented me with some freesias in a vitamin bottle.
It might have been a more interesting painting if I’d a) included the lettering on the bottle and b) taken time to do a preliminary thumbnail sketch so that the flowers weren’t almost touching the top of the panel. I was interested in looking at white in shadow and gray in light and shadow and the colors found in both from the warmish light and flower reflections.
It was time to face something more cheerful than my own face in the studio. This pretty pot of begonias was just what I needed. I worked on them a bit at a time, between visits to my mother in hospice. My mom passed away very peacefully last week, in no pain and with family at her side. She taught me many things in life; her final and maybe most important lesson was how to let go and fearlessly accept this final passage with grace (and the help of amazing hospice nurses).
This painting is sold. Below are the steps in the progress of the painting.
My mother loaned me this beautiful vase years ago to paint. When I was looking for a subject to paint this week it called out to me from the shelf where it’s been waiting for so long. Below is the step-by-step progress of the painting, which is available on DailyPaintworks here.
When I received an email from a woman in Switzerland, asking if I’d be interested in a commission to paint the site of her wedding (the Brazilian Room in Tilden Park) as a 10-year anniversary gift for her husband I said an enthusiastic, “Yes!” We agreed I would have the painting completed when she visited the Bay Area a couple of months later so that she could hand carry it back to Switzerland.
I visited the site, took photos and we agreed I would use the one above as reference for the painting. Since I shot the photo in late spring it wouldn’t really match the colors and light of her August wedding so I also used my imagination and memory of the park in summer to capture the warmth and strong light of August in the Bay Area. Below are some of the steps in the painting process.
My hydrangea bush is doing great this year, probably because it’s on the side of the house that is now a dog run and every day I empty the dog’s water bowl on the bush. Also it’s no longer competing with its two siblings that I removed because one never blossomed and the other had annoying teensy flowers that shed all over the table.
These remotes live in the studio and operate a little combo TV/VCR, a DVD player and the stereo. There are another half-dozen that live in the house. I’m glad remotes were invented but they are ugly and annoying. I so wish I had this remote (a brilliant sketch and concept!)
As I noted in my journal above, drawing a fan seemed like it would be even more boring than drawing the remotes but in fact it was really fun. I was really surprised as I sketch to discover all kinds of interesting design features I’d never noticed before when just turning it on or off (without the using the remote that came with it, which I’ve lost).
So I didn’t make it to every day in May, just 75% of them. I went away for a 3 day retreat and when I came back had lost the momentum. Oh well.
Do you think people born around holidays grow up to reflect the qualities of that holiday? My friend Judith was born the day before Valentine’s Day and she’s extra sweet. I took her out for a birthday breakfast this morning.
Our waitress must have had a bad day (trying to be generous here). The other waitresses all gave long stem red carnations to their customers. We had to beg for a coffee refill and she didn’t give us flowers.
I started to drive away after we’d said goodbye but felt sad not to have a flower to take home and draw. So I parked again, went back into the restaurant and asked for a flower. And here it is.
The other thing on this page is a round plastic “bottle” with pop-top that I found in the street. The product name and contents are equally disgusting: a cocktail of vodka, apple liquor and apple juice called Buzz Ballz. Really? Who is this being marketed to? (And yes, I washed my hands and the container before painting it.)
Jana Bouc, Artist 