Hummingbird study in watercolor

Hummingbirds are my wife's favorite bird and with a feeder right outside our window, we see them all of the  time.  Hummingbirds symbol enjoyment of life as well as being the only bird that can fly backwards. They are facinating creatures. This particular painting was inspired by a photo posted on the G+ community Group Watercolor Painting.

You rarely see the wings of a hummingbird in focus since they move so rapidly, but, as in this photo, if you have a fast enough shutter speed, it can be done. I made the colors in the flower  reflect in the hummingbird's feathers to create a continuity between them, but for some reason I really struggled with keeping a smooth background color.

Study of hydrangea in watercolor

Here is a painting based on a photo posted by the Group Watercolor Painting community on G+ Of a hydrangea. The hydrangea has a ball with hundreds of flowers, so I tried experimenting with detailed areas and less detailed areas...

Then I thought I would do the same with the leaves. I don't think it works with the detailed leaf next to the less detailed part of the flower, so next time I would plan my placement out more ahead of time. I tend to paint first and plan later.

Plumeria- hawaiian flowers in watercolor

The plumeria flower, most popular for its use in leis, comes in such a variety of colors. This painting is based off a photo my wife had taken. Although I like the composition of the painting, I think that I could gone with a different color for the flower.

Going Tribal in Maui, Hawaii

Everywhere you look here in Hawaii, you see tribal drawings...logos, window decals, tattoos. I thought I would give it a try on some of the wildlife I've seen here in Maui: the honu (green sea turtle) and the gecko, specifically the gold dust day gecko. I also have hibiscus flowers. I tried to put aloha into the one, but it's not very legible. I actually started these in pencil and realized it just didn't look right so I went over them in Sharpie and erased any stray pencil marks.

focusing on tulips

This was an interesting challenge that a fellow artist, Isabella Kramer, posed to the Google+ community, Group Watercolor Painting, The concept behind the group is that we all paint in different styles, and to demonstrate this, we all paint the same picture in our own way. So this particular challenge is a tulip patch that was photographed with a very small depth of field, resulting in most of the blooms being out of focus.
I kept a spray bottle nearby to try to keep some edges "out of focus". I'm not sure if it's done yet but I had to step back and let it rest for a while.  What do you think?

Here is the original image.

April Gerten, by Isabella Kramer

Wild irises along the river, plein air

A beautiful spring day along the American River, I went out to enjoy the river and sun with some friends. Of course I was inspired to do some painting, with the wild irises all in bloom along the banks.
Why do I paint? I paint because it allows me to escape from work and go within to find joy. Painting creates an intimate connection with my subject, in this case, my favorite model, Mother Earth. This plein air painting done at William B. Pond is a perfect spot for demonstrating this: a quiet spot away from the bustle of the city where I can reconnect with nature.

I actually painted this same tree cluster a couple of years ago as one of my first plein air paintings, but from a different angle, William B Pond.  It is amazing to see how much my painting style has improved over the last couple of years.

Woman with flower basket, pencil sketch

Ok, after last week's portrait practice, I decided I better practice some more. Here is a sketch I did during a watercolor workshop by Steve Walters. Even though he was up on stage and I was sitting in the audience, it was still easier to sketch from a photo than from a model. Here is my interpretation of the portrait he was working on in pencil. My next challenge will be to interpret this in watercolor.

Steve Walters' photo, sketch, and beginning of his watercolor demo.

Mealtime for a monarch

This painting was inspired from a photo posted by a fellow painter in the Group Watercolor Painting community. It is not something I would normally choose to paint, but in order to grow, I have to be willing to step out of my comfort zone. The layout of the photo was very similar to the one I had created in my sketch of Skull Moth Flower, but I never challenged myself to paint it.
I loved working on the butterfly, as it had lots of geometric shapes and lines. The flower on the other hand was where I felt I was struggling. I could probably go in and work the flower some more, but the butterfly is where the focus should fall, and so I call it finished.

Study of a bearded iris, watercolor

I have not done very many watercolors of flowers...it seems to be a popular subject though, and spring is the perfect opportunity to get some practice in!
From a photo provided by fellow artist, Ute Sturm, from Google+ community Group Watercolor Painting, here is my attempt at a bearded iris. I challenged myself with not tracing the photo reference I had, but I did do a quick pencil sketch. I layed down yellow on the top of the flowers. Then I wet the bottom of the flower and dropped in some maroon perylene. It quickly took over the bottom "beard" petals as well as half of the yellow I had already laid down.  It was a great effect but I needed some of the yellow back. After it dried, I had to go back and add in more yellow.
The last couple of paintings I have done have had a dark background, and this background was white. I had to put in a little color on the background.
Taking a step back, I can see my lower flower is "floating", and I forgot to add a stem for it. Oops.

Lily pond in watercolor

This is the second challenge that I have taken on that was presented by the Google+ community Group Watercolor Painting. The concept behind the group is that we all paint in different styles, and to demonstrate this, we all paint the same picture in our own way.

I'm not sure if there is much difference between a lily pond and a lotus pond, and I took a similar approach to painting both this piece and the Lotus Pond that I painted 6 months ago.  Both were from a photo, then traced onto watercolor paper. The lily pads really make or break the perspective of both pieces. This one had so many lily pads, it got a little muddled. Some turned out really well, while others, not so much. (My eye keeps focusing on the manatee shaped leaf on the bottom right) I can't  even imagine Monet's garden with hundreds of lily pads.

Process painting, acrylic

Sometimes painting is more about the process than the end product. This piece was inspired by my Artist Way group, and started with a meditation to tap into the creative flow. I was feeling artistically blocked because of so much other "stuff" going on in my life. To represent that my "plate is full", I traced a circle using a paper plate onto a piece of paper. I wrote everything on my mind out onto the "plate": stresses, worries, things to do, etc. Occasionally I would write a positive word just to raise my energy. After I had filled the plate, I glued it down onto another piece of paper. Using acrylic paint, I put down a background color. Then I started coloring over all of my negativity with bright yellow, imagining the bright sun washing away all of my worries, while letting my positives peek through.  As I continued to cover up the plate with paint, it transformed from a sun to a sunflower. I still know all the writing is under there, but I need to remember to focus on the positives!

Skull-moth-flower pencil drawing

I came across this art competition on Instagram called skull-moth-flower. The rules were simple...the art has to include a skull, a moth, and a flower. There are three categories: color, black and white, and sketch. I figured I would start with a sketch and then maybe I  would do a watercolor as well.  The concept behind my drawing is that the skull is part of the wings of the moth. I thought that the eye sockets would appear to be "spots". The moth turn out a little cartoony and the "wings" don't really fit the body.

So here is the sketch. It took about 45 minutes to do, maybe a little bit longer with shading the background. I used a mechanical pencil, but it seemed like all of the leads were broken. It was really frustrating because every time I would get on a roll, the lead wouldn't feed right.

Red Flowers in watercolor

This painting was inspired by a video posted by Mikko Tyllinen on Google + demonstrating how he painted "Blue Flowers". I love how loose his painting is and how he takes advantage of watercolors' unique qualities. Here is my attempt at imitating his work although I changed the color profile from blue to red. I have put my paiting on the left and stills from the video on the right to show approximately what step I was working toward.

Quick pencil sketch 

first washes going onto the paper

working very wet, already I can see my colors aren"t as bold

Trying to put some bold colors in, A lot of bleeding colors

 At this point, I feel it is almost done ,but I'm not even halfway through the video! Mikko has a way that he keeps working the painting to get more depth but as I continue, it seems to get overworked. And I;m trying so hard to keep some of those white spaces 

Mikko states that his total paint time is 16 minutes. I took me about 30 minutes including some drying time in between. This was a great exercise in keeping my painting loose but I think I need to work on putting bolder color into my painting.

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.

One, three, five daisies in watercolor

Just thought I would share some daisies that I was practicing. These were created by painting the negative space around the flower and then adding in some shadow and detail. Each one is less than 2 inches wide since I was working on a scrap of watercolor paper from a previous piece...yes I am frugal with my watercolor paper. The odd numbers of flowers just seem to balance the composition better without being too symetrical.

Easter rose, a watercolor of a single rose

Happy Easter! With all of the flowers in bloom, it's hard to resist painting them.  I had never attempted painting flowers other than in a landscape where they are generalized to a blob or dot. So I decided to start simple instead of a bouquet:  A single rose, inspired by a recent visit to The McKinley Rose Garden.
At first, I was overwhelmed by the detail of each petal but then realized that I needed to generalize the details, just like I would in a landscape, to get the gist of the rose. Artistic license is a great thing! Now to paint a dozen roses. . . we will see.

Easter Rose, 6" x 9"