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.

Portrait practice, sketch and watercolor

It has been more than 6 months since I have painting from a live model so I'm a little out of practice. I headed over to Patris' Studio since it was the second Saturday of the month which is when they usually have a clothed model doing a long sitting. When I got there, they told me they have not done the model on second Saturday since the beginning of the year, but they just happened to have a model doing a long sitting for another artist that was there that day. Just my luck that I showed on the right day of tje right month.
I decided to start with a quick pencil sketch, just to get some practice with proportions. I think I was off a little bit. The other artist that was there used the word "unresolved". The sketch is still unresolved!

I decided to move on to watercolor. With an overhead spotlight, her eyes fell into dark shadow, which gave her an odd look, but overall I think it turned out well. Her eye on the right though is still... unresolved!

gristmill plein air reworked

Sometimes after letting a painting sit for a while, I will go back and see if I can improve on it.  Usually it doesn't take a month before I do this, but in the case of my Gristmill Plein Air painting, it has been longer than that.
It did not seem quite finished but I could not quite figure out what it needed.  I decided to post it onto a facebook paged where fellow artists critique your work.  Wow, talk about putting myself out there! There was lots of input as to how to improve it.  One of the comments was that the waterline cut the picture right in half, it looked like two different paintings put together, and there was no point of focus.
So I decided to just go for it, and try to apply some of the ideas that had been thrown out there.  I raised the waterline and broke it up with some grasses. I lightened the foreground a bit and darkened the background to try to create more depth in the painting. And I added a point of interest, the fisherman. I rarely put people in my plein aire paintings so this was a big challenge. He looks a little stiff but I think it works.

 

Before

After

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.

Watercolor of a Goldfish

I challenged myself with painting a goldfish. It has been a while since I painted any animals so I found a pic on Google images and started painting... 

As I added in the shading with blues and black on the fish, I couldn't help but ask if this fish is gold and white or is it really blue and black!?

Tapping into inner child through art

I usually paint from a photo or plein air. I rarely paint straight from my imagination, but it's good to exercise my imagination once in a while. In our Artist Way group we had a meditation to tap into our creativity and childhood memories of it. What do we remember about being creative as a child and how has that changed as we became adults? Many times we fall into a routine as adults and forget to make time to be creative in our busy, hectic schedules.
I cut "doors" into either side of the paper before I began, writing a word from my childhood inside on the top, something for my adult self on the bottom. Then I created this whimsical piece with watercolor pencils and colored pencils. 

If I was to do this again, I would have cut the doors after the piece was finished so it would not bleed through to the paper taped behind,  but it is harder to cut into art that has already been created.