Autumn leaves, watercolor

This is my favorite time of year, and with the beautiful weather here in California, I have been enjoying going for walks along the American River.  The fall leaves have slowly been turning colors, and it just amazes me how the colors just blend into each other on every leaf, each one a little piece of art!
I decided to try my hand at blending the leaf colors together. I worked with wet-on-wet to bleed the colors together, with lots of little accidents along the way...some good and some bad.
And here are the results...

Abandoned art, watercolor squares

I started this project a while back with some Earth Day art, and it was supposed to be an "abandoned art" project where these pieces were left in public places for people to find. Somehow, it never came to fruition. The part that was missing seemed to be the most critical part of the project, a scannable code or URL on the back of the artwork to direct whoever found the piece back to a website to get information about the artist.
So here are the pieces that I had created to be abandoned. I'm kind of attached to them now and I don't think they deserve to be abandoned any more. All of these are done on 4x4" squares of watercolor paper. Great for Christmas gifts or maybe I should mount them into a grid in a collage frame to display them as one piece.

Just some thoughts about the art...
For some reason I was stuck on creating negative spaces...for the lettering, the flowers, the eye.
I love the eye, but realize the challenge in portraits is not in creating one eye, but in creating a second mirror image that matches! The "imagine" piece is a bit chaotic, but I suppose the universe as well as my imagination might seem like that.

Should I make one more to finish the 3 by 3 grid? What word would you use?

Lotus Pond, watercolor

I offered to donate an original watercolor for the Spiritual Life Center silent auction. I decided to create something new, instead of looking through my old paintings. The idea of the lotus pond actually came from a picture on their website, slcworld.org.
I think the lotus flowers turned out very well. The shape and size of the "lily pads" seem to throw the perspective off a little, but I like the textures that I was able to create on them.
What are your thoughts on this painting?

Framed and ready for auction.

Ball point pen sketch - The Men's Group

Quick half hour sketch of the men's group drinking coffee while listening to a speaker. I was using what I had available: lined notebook paper and a very bad ball point pen. Since I missed my usual 2nd Saturday portrait practice, this was the next best thing. It looks like a rather somber group but we really do have fun!

Pencil portrait practice

Here's a couple of pencil drawings that were in my notebook that I had done this past year. My focus was on simplifying facial features.  The first one was copied from a picture on the wall in a Starbucks...I need more practice simplifying the hand. 

This second one was from a picture online with stark lighting.

Kiva beach, plein aire

There are so many opportunities to paint plein air at Lake Tahoe, sometimes I get overwhelmed. I just want to soak it in mentally, take pictures, and say I'll do it later at home. That defeats the purpose of plein air though. So on a beautiful fall afternoon, I finally decided on a spot out on the Camp Richardson pier...the beach was all shady and cold. The sun seemed to be going down really quick and the shadows were changing even quicker. I did the majority of this piece in an hour. When I was finished, I was looking straight into the sun.
My goal was to make it look like the foreground trees were all in shadow with the light filtering through. I tweaked the details a little more once I was home. I think I could have gone even darker for the shadows, but I always worry it will go too dark and lose the color. 

The fun part of this was that every 10 minutes or so, people would be walking down the pier, stop and watch for a few minutes, make a few comments to each other about my painting and then keep walking. At first it was a little intimidating but then I got over myself and enjoyed the commentary.

Haunted house, plein aire watercolor

A friend had invited me to an "Artober" festival where they invited several plein aire painters, face painters, etc. It was centered around a house that was decorated to the hilt with Halloween decor. Although the task of simplifying it down to paint was daunting, I took the challenge! A majority of the piece was done plein air, but I have to admit, I took a photo so I could finish it at home.
My perspective lines are still off a little bit...seems to be an area I need to work on if I keep painting houses. I used a couple of new techniques as well.  I used a crayon on the street sign to write the numbers and letters so it would resist the watercolor. I also had to lift color off a couple of areas, which I did with a stiff damp brush.  Luckily I was using heavier paper so that this worked. Otherwise the paper would have just started falling apart. I used white paint several times as well with varying success. The cob webs on the bushes just didn't show up like I wanted them to.  Next time, I would darken the bushes and try scraping the webs in with a knife.
At one point I thought I was done, but then realized there were a couple more details that I could add, but eventually I just have to say, "I'm done!" Can you find the four changes I made to the second pic?

On another note, my daughter decided to come with me to try out her artistic side...special effects makeup. Here are some pics of her creations.

Check out more of her work on Instagram:  @autumnelizamakeup

The 4 differences are: I added cobwebs on the bushes (which don't show very well), there's another pumpkin on the right side of the porch, the bat above the new pumpkin, and I moved the base of the street sign :)

Experimenting with watercolors

I taught a class about water coloring to my Artist Way group, focusing on different effects that can be created with watercolor. We started by talking about the different consistencies of the paint, depending on the water-paint ratio: tea, milk, or cream.  Start with tea, and work your way up to cream.  We discussed the nature of water always going to where it is dry...going from wet brush to dry paper, or wet paper to dry brush. I showed how to do washes and wet on wet blending of color, as well as resist with crayon, blotting, and even trying a salt effect. Sometimes I think I know just enough to be dangerous! It was just a fun night of playing with watercolor. Here are a couple of pieces I created...there was no plan, both of these just developed into something from trial and error.