Penstemons are simple flowers – tall, elegant, plain – with an incredibly beautiful red-orange flower. They are another one I photographed last weekend at the botanical garden. Maybe today I’ll venture out to the cactus garden to see what blossoms may be up there!
Here, I decided simply on using a brush, a stiffer one than a red sable, to focus on how the brush responds to pressure, paint, and amount of water.
The bathrooms are nearly done. All that remains to do is hang the mirrors, towel racks, toilet paper holder, and place the drawer pulls. The baseboards can wait! At noon, we will officially be able to use the sinks, the faucets, and the second toilet. Who thought that could be so exciting?
And in between the chaos of repairs and work, I have tried to do some painting. I pulled out my watercolor pencils and started a picture that will be mixed media in the end. It’s complicated. I have been scanning every step.
To kick back, I have been looking at the flower pictures I took last weekend at the botanical garden – so many! I have painted a few of them, with ink and pen, with watercolor pencil and pen, with watercolor. I really like flowers and wish I had a better yard for a garden . . . that will come, though; meanwhile, I wander in one I don’t have to maintain.
I went out to lunch, so that is why interrupted the first part of this post. And, there were a lot of pictures to look at. Now, back from lunch, and awake from a 2-hour nap, here I am.
The next step was to put in the grasses on the lower and the left of the picture, and the trees in the background. Shape and contrast were the goal. The grasses, again, were straight lines with a bit of curve. In the background, I used 3 different colored pencils, and drew small, tight circles to convey the thick foliage of the trees in the distance; this was repeated in front of the shack. Longitudinal lines were used to create the direction of the fields.
Once the grasses, field, and foliage were put in, I used water. Short straight strokes for the grass were done vertically, some blending into other grasses, too. The trees in the distance on the left and right were next, being careful to work around the straight lines of the building. The sloping fields to the left and right were worked with short brush strokes, to keep the colors isolated in some areas, and blended in another. If you look on the right, you will see the fields are yellow, blends of yellow and browns, and finally, below the trees, varying shades of green. Lastly, I worked the grasses in the foreground, top to bottom left to right.
Next? The sky!
Another flower from my ramblings in the botanical garden last weekend. I may go back tomorrow.
The Bush Anemone – carpenteria californica – is a rather pretty little flower. Not gaudy, just soft, subtle, and short-bloomed. I penciled this in first, then used a brush to dab paint off of the tips of my Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils to see how that worked. Not bad for a small touch here and there! I then used a light touch with a very fine pointed pen.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 