Mt. Tallac from Fallen Leaf, Plein air watercolor

After climbing it, I had to paint it! While soaking my sore feet in Fallen Leaf Lake, I plein air painted Mt. Tallac.  Although I had painted Mt. Tallac from Kiva Beach last year, just a little bit of a change in location makes a whole different perspective on the mountain.

Santa Cruz seascapes in watercolor

So here is the watercolor of my lighthouse sketch. I added the sailboat to add some interest to the right side of the painting.  I really like the effect I got with the marine layer (payne's grey) and the blue sky. I simplified the waves, and darken the lighthouse...maybe a little too dark.  

Some watercolor painters it's tell me they work on more than one plaiting at a time. So while waiting for one to dry, they work on the next. As I worked on my second Santa Cruz inspired painting, I realized that in order for painting more than one painting at a time to be effective, they need to have similar palettes. I kept having to completely rinse off each brush.

 This second seascape was done from a photo I had taken. I needed to crop more of the foreground out.  On this painting I tried to put more focus on the waves.

Santa Cruz lighthouse in pencil

It's been a while since I have painted due to crazy schedules, so with some free time, I find myself at the beach.  The only time I painted a seascape was a couple of years ages with a Watercolor of Sea and Sky and that was from a photo. As I am sitting on the beach, I decide that a pencil sketch is going to work better than a watercolor due to the sand getting all over everything.
 The morning sun was shining from behind the lighthouse, just starting to burn through the marine layer. The waves are a particular challenge, and how can I differentiate between blue sky and grey clouds when I just have a pencil? I will need to redo this in watercolor...

Self Portrait Time!

What artist can resist doing a self portrait at some point? I have done self portraits in pencil: one back in college which is lost somewhere in my mom's garage, and then another that I did a few years ago when I started up doing art again. (My first self portrait blog) At that time, I had also made an attempt at a watercolor portrait, which showed that I definitly needed more practice with watercolor portraits.
I decided to put out a challenge to the Group Watercolor Painting  community to do a self portrait, including myself. Shortly after that, while procrastinating by cleaning out my garage, I found yet another pencil self portrait that I don't even remember doing, folded and stuck into a book. The words "who are you?" on the bottom makes me think this was after college and before I had a job or knew what I was going to do with my life.
So here is my first watercolor self portrait that I am actually proud of doing. It was from a selfie took of myself as opposed to working with a mirror as I had done with my pencil drawings. My jaw looks huge because of the angle of the photo I took. I took the picture with a side light source to get some shadowing. ..and that was before I found my other self portrait. I do look much happier now!

Great Scott road biking watercolor

How is it that my posts sometimes just disappear? Anyways, here it is again...

I got an invitation to the Great Scott Road Bike and Walk event in celebration of May being Bike Month. The event closed down Scott Road as well as several other roads so that bikes could enjoy the  beautiful scenic oak-covered grassland that these roads go through without worrying about cars. I was invited to come out and plein air paint along the route. I got a late start though and didn't get out until it was too hot to sit for a couple of hours painting, so I did the next best thing and took pics with my phone so I could paint back at my studio. Once I got home, I combined a couple of my photos to make the composition for my painting, then traced it onto my paper and started to paint. I was not sure if I should include the barb wire, but I think it works. The spokes of the wheels, on the other hand, I decided to leave in pencil.

Full moon inspiration

Inspired by my Artist Way group, as well as the full moon last night, I created this piece around a quote that I had found on social media by Diana Cooper.

Today's full moon opens you up to your true soul energy.

I am not thrilled with my lettering skills (done with a sharpie), but I have been wanting to have an excuse to try splatter painting with a toothbrush for a long time.

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