Mountain landscape - pencil sketch

This sketch was inspired by a demonstration put on by WASH (Watercolor Art of Sacramento Horizons) at Sacramento Fine Arts Center.  The demo was done by Dale Laitinen.  I really enjoyed his style of watercolor, and even though he was painting a scene from memory, he really captured the essence of the Sierras.  
So here is my interpretation of his painting, but in pencil.

Untitled, by Dale Laitinen

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pencil sketch

I always slip into my comfort zone when I am feeling artistically blocked...and that would be pencil sketching. It's very forgiving.
Since I had the day off in honor of Martin Luther King, I decided to go online and find one of his many stock photos. Not having a printer readily accessible, I  traced a few simple lines right off the computer screen to get started.

 I know that there are all of these amazing ultra-realistic drawings out there, but some how it just doesn't do it for me...I want to see some brush strokes, pencil marks...some remnant of the artist. It also allows me to leave the "perfectionism" out of my work.

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.

Hand painted coasters

I feel homemade gifts are always the best. They carry a certain charm and, in my opinion, are better than the gift cards that people always resort to. Here is a great last-minute gift idea...monogrammed coasters! These "coasters" were purchased at a local hardware store in the tile department. Then with black acrylic paint, I monogrammed each tile. I always have trouble making lettering look exactly the same, so I did a little font research and created "B" in four different ways! I'm not sure if I need to put a clear coat on top to extend the life of the paint...I like the matte, rustic look so I skipped it.

Painting coquito bottles

Every year around Christmas, we make a batch or two of coquito, a Puerto Rican version of spiked egg nog. The Puerto Rican tradition is to gift hand-painted bottles full of coquito, then the following year they return the empty painted bottle for a refill.  I painted a bunch back in 2012, but never got all of them filled. My wife was too attached to a few of them and didn't want to give them away!

Painting on a glass bottle is an interesting challenge. We invited some friends over this year to paint their own bottles. The problem is that we kept drinking the coquito! The skull is the one I created this year for my daughter...not necessarily for coquito. The other ones are bottles I painted two years ago.

This year's bottle painting

Christmas cards (or Holiday cards!)

I got together with my Artist Way group to make Christmas cards. They really go all out with materials and supplies, because they love to experiment with different processes and multimedia. I'm more of a purist myself but it's good to get out of my comfort zone once in a while. Here are some Christmas cards that I created. I actually started with a sheet of watercolor paper that someone else had started with a blue and green wash. She said it didn't turn out like she wanted, but I thought it would be perfect for a background (and I hated for it to go to waste). Then I added more paint and stamped them. The first two are my favorite...

  For this last set of cards I really went out of my comfort zone with stamps and glitter! (It doesn't show up well in my photos though)

Although I call them Christmas cards, only this second to last one says Christmas, so I suppose "holiday cards" is a more appropriate title...good for EVERY occasion!

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...