Tag: flowers

Les Fleurs Sont Belles

Yesterday was one of those days where everything else got in the way of painting. Today is one of those, too. However, painting shall prevail!

I have a lot of different paper and sketchbooks, but I have decided that I do want to have a sketchbook going all the time and to use it when nothing else seems to be do-able. This book is a book more for ink and pencil as the paper is very smooth and has a creamy color. For watercolor, I want more texture, and a different type of paper altogether, but it is a sketchbook, and that means it is a playground. So, I played.

Until you try something, you don’t know what will happen. Same with this sketch book. I sat on the concrete of the patio and looked around at the potted plants. Here, rosemary and milkweed mixed together.

Behind the rosemary and milkweed is the beginning of a giant sunflower plant, one which I expect to grow about 10 feet tall!

Felicias are always fun to find in pots as they droop over the edge and provide a lovely accent to anything they are planted with. The ones above were done with a pencil outline and the ones below just rather free-form with the brush.

I like these felicias a bit more as they are less constrained and stiff.

Finally, one of the last daffodils of the spring. I focused on the leaves and flower shape, trying to keep the flower simple but expressive. The dappled light and shadow on the leaves, and their shadows, especially caught my eye.

Besides just being a study of flowers, I decided to be minimalist with art supplies out on the patio and use this as an opportunity to see just what few things might make for a nice plein air kit. Sitting on the concrete was rather chilly and hard on my old bones. I brought out my camp stool, and that helped, but then I didn’t know where to put my water or pan paints as nothing nearby was convenient. What to do? Well, I did stick things on the ground, but my u.go pochade box will be the next addition to the adventure.

What a fun way to pass some time in the sun! We are hitting some nice weather – in the upper 60s to mid 70s F – before it plummets to 55 F or so later on. And, time to work a bit on plein air – the less I have to lug around the happier I am, as long as I like what I do where I am – and that means liking doing, not just making pictures I like!

Morning Sketch 10 – More Roses

More roses – more C strokes – and then other kinds of strokes to make leaves. For the leaves, brush point on paper, squish down and move, bring brush up to another point. Just as in sumi-e! Then, while the paper and paint are still wet, take the tip of the brush and create little points around the outer edge of each leaf. Some roses have pointy leaf edges, others do not. I don’t think the Rose Police will come knocking on my door, though, so I am safe.

Roses in these kinds of sketches are easy enough to do. However, creating a successful painting of more than one sketchy rose is another story. Light, shadow, shape all begin to play together, and sometimes not very nicely.

Here, a rose with a simpler petal style than the classical tea rose. As a kid in the midwest there were deep red wild roses throughout the countryside, and here in California there is a bush as above along a local trail. There are about 5 petals around a yellow center, and the wild roses are messy things that are such a pleasure and delight to encounter.

Painting a white rose is not easy because white is influenced by light and shadow and shade. Instead, you have to look at the colors in the white – light? dark? cool? warm?

The above little painting was a success, but it is only a sketch. A bouquet of roses will be far more challenging and I really doubt my ability to succeed there.

Morning Sketch 4 – Negative Painting & Flowers

Negative painting is painting around an object, usually using darker paint around a more lightly painted object. Anyone who paints finds this quite often to be a bit of a mind tweak, so it is always worthwhile practicing. For me, negative painting is best done with the subject matter, if a photograph, done upside down. Then it – and everything else – just becomes a shape. Shapes are easy to relate to, more so than a flower or a whatever.

I really cannot paint flowers easily. I don’t want to create realistic paintings of flowers, but impressions of flowers. Being able to express a flower and to know what it is appeals to me far more to me than a scientific flower illustration. Don’t get me wrong – botanical illustration is stunning and something I love to see and admire them – but I want a looser style.

One way to express a flower is to create it in its environment. A field of flowers can dance in the wind. A bouquet of either one type of flower or many has its own beauty – the shape of petals and leaves and stems creating their own designs. Stems and leaves seen through clear glass are distorted fascinating to see.

For now, though, I just wanted to practice negative painting. I drew my flowers, and went to work, laying down basic colors and then coming in with darker colors to create shapes, such as leaves and stems. I did the daisies first, and they are rather crude. The poppies were next, and while the colors are muddy in places, it was more successful as far as what I was trying to accomplish.

Heartfelt

Flowers in the shape of hearts – why not? I thought of this as I was drawing some cards for my SIL as a Christmas present – something she always likes. It’s a chance to play with ink and colors, too. Some are more successful than others. Strathmore makes boxes of blank cards which are perfect for this – and it includes envelopes, too. For some reason I always have more envelopes than cards . . .

Dr. Ph. Martin’s Black Star ink and watercolors.

A Few Flower Studies

When you find an artist whose work you like, and who is also a good teacher, an online class can teach you a lot! The nice thing with videos is that you can watch them over and over, catching little things with each viewing.

Shari Blaukopf is a painter that I admire. Her watercolors are clean and fresh. She also has a really nice online personality, whether it is on her blog or in her recorded classes. I’ve made comments on her blog and she replies; I have uploaded a painting or two, and she is always gracious. One day it would be nice to take a class with her in person.

Anyway, I have / am taking two of her courses on flowers. One is painting wet-in-wet flowers, and the other is painting fresh cut flowers.

The above one is from the wet-in-wet flowers class. The paper is wet on both sides after the initial pencil sketch is done. The paper is then blotted. And from there, you go to town! It was really fun to see how the paper and paints all worked together. Not a great rendition, but the experience is the most important part as that is how you learn. My contrast issues are not too bad.

The hydrangeas are from Blaukopf’s course on fresh flowers. She does three different flowers – a blue salvia, then echinacea and black-eyed Susans, and finally the hydrangeas. I’ve done the salvia, but have yet to do the second one. I wanted to do the hydrangeas especially because of the delicacy of colors involved, as well as work on the contrast and negative painting, the latter which is just as much as a challenge for me as good contrast! Having been very frustrated with my colors always being too intense, this was also a good challenge for me with pigment and water control.

The past few days have been spent practicing free-motion quilting for a class this morning, so it was really a treat to wade back into painting. I love flowers, so painting them is the challenge, especially as I prefer a looser rather than more precise rendering of them. I think precision can be a lot easier than abstraction.