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

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.

Portrait of a pug

I recently went to a demonstration by Steve Walters and one of his tips to keep energy, passion, and spirit in a painting is to put bold colors down first as a kind of abstract under painting.  I thought I would give it a try with a photo of a pug that a fellow artist, Michael Salmon, shared. I think that the colors help keep the painting whimsical and it helped break up some of the black.

Lady in pool, watercolor

 I've always been fascinated by the way light and water react with each other. A reflection in the water is one thing, but when it is just the surface of the water bouncing the light around...that's a challenge I  had never attempted...before now. Thanks to fellow artist, Kelly Murphy, for the photo reference.
The first pic is after my first couple of washes, trying to save my whites ( I really need to invest in some masking fluid), and trying to get a gradation to represent the steps in the pool, while using the right side as an experimental area.  The next step is to add in the color of the lady, the shadow around the hat, and a few more tweaks with the water. I thought I might stop here, but then I decided to lift some of the color to create some highlights in the water. The larger areas I used a Mr. Clean sponge, but in order to lift the finer lines, I used a stiff wet brush. And lastly, to crop off the right side.
I'm ready to go for a swim. Anyone got a pool?