Tag: flowers

Practice Present Presented

My sister-in-law requested hand-painted cards for a Christmas present.  She’s getting them!  Out of all of these, 6 were from exercises I did following Peter Sheeler’s YouTube painting tutorials.  What made them particularly useful, to me, was that many of them had a lot of white space in them, such as white snow or flowers.  The other thing was the simplicity of composition – a few trees, a stream, some flowers.  While they look easy, I did need to focus on the videos to follow the sequence of painting, as well as to focus on what I was seeing.  Of all of them, I think the stream was the most challenging.

From using Peter’s videos to practice with, and to create cards, I went on to do two based upon photos I have taken.  One is a prickly pear which really does sit on a heart-shaped paddle, and the California poppy fields at the State Preserve.  The latter made me think of Monet’s painting of a woman in a poppy field – the brilliant colors against a sea of green.  Our poppies in California are orange and yellow, so no reds, but mixed in with these colors are blues and whites and so many other colors it is hard to imagine that much of California once looked like that in the springtime!

Below are the different cards I did.  Click on one of them to start the slide show.

Birch Trees in Snow
Daisies
Autumn Leaf
Laundry
Old Fence and Wildflowers
Winter Stream
Prickly Pear
California Poppy Reserve

An Afternoon’s Painting Practice

I am an unabashed Charles Reid fan when it comes to instruction books and videos and style in watercolor.  I love his loose style and the way his colors flow in and out of each other without getting muddy.  Honestly, I am really a novice when it comes to watercolor painting – and mud is my usual result.  Somewhere in the past 6 months a part of me just quit worrying about what I produce, and this gave me the freedom from self-criticism (and condemnation) about what results I get.  I don’t care anymore, and this freedom is opening up doors which have been slammed shut by my unrealistic and unrelenting worrying.  It’s a great feeling!

Having a bunch of watercolors and supplies on hand, I dug out some water brushes and my traveling palette.  Out on the patio, with earphones on to listen to a spy novel, a bunch of paper towels and some water, I pulled out Reid’s book.  My watercolor pads came along with me, as did my coffee, water bottle, drawing pencils and who knows what else.  The verbal distractions of the audiobook keep me from getting too emotional about my practice pages.  I propped up Flower Painting in Watercolor and got to work, reading captions and color suggestions, drew some rough sketches from Reid’s exercises, and got to work.

I think one of the hardest things to do is to leave white paper.  I just want to paint it all up.  And I also want to just keep going on – and this creates mud – without pause for paper to dry and paint to settle.  Rush, rush!

Well, I did succeed somewhat.  The crocuses above are one of Reid’s studies, and I was pretty pleased with it.  In reality, it doesn’t look half as good as the photo, but then it is on a piece of messy paper with scribbles on it and test swatches of color.

This was a quick study, more white space being left open.  I went back after I finished this study to use my pencil to add some shape to the white flowers.  I like lines – and it is a problem I find with my own sense of a “successful” painting – I need lines to define things.  Sometimes lines work – sometimes they don’t – but I do love the Renaissance ink studies I’ve seen, and lines have always held my eye.  Lines are expressive – but so are shapes of color.

Here, simply color shapes to imply a flower or a leaf.  My experience in sumi-e brush painting makes my understanding of controlling a brush – even an inexpensive water brush with nylon bristles – much easier.

One thing Reid pulls out is shapes without definition – just implication of form.  This is great practice for my line addiction!

Another issue I find is contrast and value.  It’s hard for me to really get these right in a painting.  Reid mentions he makes his dark not super dark – not black – but installs a medium dark early on to establish value.  I struggle with this but with more practice I think I will get better at this.

And here is the last one . . . not the best, but one which does have some good areas of contrast, and black lines from an India-ink pigmented pen.  Sketchy, painterly, and totally fun to do!

Quality paper is a must-have.  I have some tablets that I bought which I absolutely hate because of the texture and sizing in the paper.  However, I used them up and ordered more of the Canson’s Montval paper, in a spiral booklet form, 9×12 with 20 pages.  It’s a good working size – and it’s good paper, with a nice texture and sizing which doesn’t blotch up and look horrible.  It’s also very reasonably priced.  The Schmincke paint box may have Schmincke paints in them – or not.  My paint supplies include Schmincke, Winsor & Newton, Daniel Smith, Holbein, and M. Graham professional-grade watercolors.

I’m glad I sat down to paint – it’s such a wonderful feeling and one which gives me satisfaction.  Did I produce anything worthy of framing?  Not at all.  But working with my hands, seeing some success, is something which cannot be described – only experienced.  You know what I mean!  It’s like love!

The Peace of Flowers

The world is a busy place, sucking you dry.  Newspapers are filled with news, from bombing Syria and worries about being bombed in return, to disgust that Congress has allowed the killing of hibernating bears and wolf cubs in their dens.  It makes me wonder what the world is coming to . . . and what people think.  Yes, I live in an isolated part of the world, one which is relatively safe, but it doesn’t keep me isolated unless I turn off the news.  This is where the walk in the woods, in the fields, and exploring the natural world outside the artifice of man beckons.  As California is now in the midst of a bloom unseen in years, I am out there nearly every day, taking in the blooms, the colors of the hillsides, and listening to the birdsong and buzz of bees.  It brings a peace.

Pale
Clover? Buckwheat?
Curly
Heart
Rose-Tipped
Weed
Allium

As someone who is getting older, I frequently think of death. People – friends, colleagues, family – have died in the recent years. All my earliest childhood friends are gone. Death is something to be considered in this day and age of every baby must be born, regardless, and everyone must be put on life support, regardless. There is something disrespectful about the quality of life all this means. Keeping people alive by artificial means reaches a point, an ethical point, where it is ridiculous. Killing wolf cubs and hibernating bears for sport is equally unethical. Our destruction of the natural world boggles the mind, and the immediacy of pleasure or self-righteousness fails to address a longer viewpoint: what are we leaving behind? Plundered resources, extinct animals, and warehouses of people on life support. Equally, we kill others with impunity. In 40 to 50 years, the earth’s population will double, and we will be in even more dire straits than we are in now. Even within our own lifetimes we see the destruction, but deny it.

And so, flowers. One part of the natural world, fragrant, beautiful, evanescent. If they disappear? What next?

More Daffodils

I felt like a tourist when I headed out to the botanical garden a few weeks ago.  I had my Olympus XA4, my Kodak Retina IIIc for its maiden voyage, and the Perkeo II loaded with Fuji Neopan 400.  I am so impressed with this film – the blacks are black, and the whites are white.  I didn’t have an orange or red filter with me, so some pictures were not what I would have liked to see; still, the detail and beauty of the film is seen here (and the Perkeo is no slouch, either).  Sadly, Neopan in this form is no longer made – the C-41 form – although Acros is available.