Category: Chatter

In the Garden: Daffodils

With clear blue skies and temperatures in the 70s, spring has arrived!  I packed up a watercolor book, pens, a couple of cameras, and myself – off to the local botanical garden to finally get a look after weeks of rains and closure.  I was not disappointed.  Flowers in bloom, hordes of butterflies as I haven’t seen in years (lots of flowers = lots of butterflies), people.  The air was fragrant from the new growth everywhere, but in particular was a clump of daffodils beneath an old olive tree.

I sat down on a rock, and did this sketch, saving the colors until I got home.  I also took a lot of pictures – digital and film – for reference.  People stopped by and made conversation, a dog or two came to sniff.  Nature, while beautiful, is also capable of irritation – the baby flies were a bit annoying and I wonder if I should put on some DEET to keep them away.

For months I have been thinking about drawing in the garden.  It changes daily, and with the seasons.  This is the first drawing of this project, which will be ongoing.  I’ll be adding it to the page My Other Lives page above.  (For now – WordPress seems to be having issues adding pages!)

Happy Spring everyone!

Coastal Grassland

Another landscape, another limited palette.  For this painting I used ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, burnt umber, sap and cobalt greens, a splash of raw sienna.  9×12 Fabirano Artistico.

I wanted to see if I could convey a good sense of depth, moving from the foreground with warmer colors to the distance with more neutral and greyish colors.  Contrast, too, was considered for eye appeal, leading lines, depth.

If you look at the grasses in the foreground, you can see grass blades.  I used a very dry flat brush to accomplish this, sometimes using a lighter green and brushing upward, or darker green to brush into the lighter green.  Negative painting!

Negative Painting Practice

Negative painting is easy in concept – paint dark paint around a lighter object – but hard (for me at least) to put into practice.  You can see what I mean above – the light trunks are depicted by darker colors painted on either side of them.

The one above is the simplest, and nicest.  In the upper flowers, I found myself shaping the orange of the Peruvian Lily into the yellow above it to create the shape of the flower.  The same with the darker colors against lighter ones.

Below, a gallery of what I did the other morning – most are rubbish, but the concept is what I was working on, not producing a beautiful painting for all to enjoy!

Painting requires practice, as does anything you wish to master.  It can be rewarding and frustrating as hell.  The key is to be aware that progress is made with each step, even if you don’t see it or feel it.  It oozes into your brain and muscle memory.

Ooze, ooze, ooze.

 

Spring in the California Foothills

We have had a lot of rain this year in California, and throughout both ends of the state.  North and south.  As a result, the hills are a brilliant lime green, and when the sun hits just right, it’s hard to believe our once beige state has blossomed into such beauty.  The wildflower bloom is beginning, from the desert to the high Sierra.  Cacti, poppies, lupines, and so many other flowers await our eager eyes.

Dirty Snow

Well, it is winter, so snow shows up for some reason.  New snow is so nice – but old snow is dreary, especially as winter begins to lose the charm it had at Christmas!  Slushy, mushy, grey, dirty, muddy.

I decided to make up a scene – with buildings both wooden and brick, with telephone poles, and the grey mist of a city beyond.  As a painting by itself, it’s a failure, but adding a few lines helped it out a bit.  People will appear when the weather clears . . .