Light on the Lily

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I love lilies in my garden. They smell so sweet, and look so elegant.
They are fun to paint, as the curling petals make for interesting shapes and shadows. The three dimension of the anthers and stamens are like little floating bits, perched on long delicate tendrils. I will post the stages of the lily flower painting in my next post for those of you who wish to see the steps in painting this watercolor..

Cymbidium_STep Three

 step Three, adding in the background flowers...

now I have to decide how much further to take the painting. Do I want a background? stems?

We will see....I might just wait on it for a while, as I have other things to paint.

Cymbidium - step two

Onto step two..more flowers added in and more details done.

Cymbidium-Step one

This is the beginning of a cymbidium orchid painting. Usually I work all over the paper at once.but in this case I wanted to establish the flower first, so I could see where they were going. I am going to add in one at a time, and will post as it progresses along. It is on a full sheet of watercolor paper, so the whole painting is pretty large.

The Heart of the Rose

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Many of my students have asked for the details on how to paint the rose and backgrounds, so I prepared the image above with the steps it took to paint The Heart of the Rose watercolor.

As you can see from the example, there are clear stages the watercolor painting goes through to layer up to the details. First the mask is applied around the edges, (I only do the edge..that way I can still work in the middle while the outside is drying. I hate to waste time, and I find that most mistakes are made when we are hasty.( i.e ..in a hurry for one thing to dry so we can proceed)  This way, I can work in both areas, and not be over anxious for the background to be totally done. I also find it helps to judge the subject next to the background, so you do not over do one or the other. I hope you enjoy this watercolor painting close up of a single rose.

Rose so Sweet

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As our early summer flower season begins, I started itching to paint some roses in watercolor. It was a toss between iris and a rose..and somehow late at night, when I usually get started painting something, I usually bite off the more complicated for some reason. But, after not have painted any roses for a long time, I was happy with the general way it came out. At least in Watercolor I can keep going and work my way around the flower, as while one petal dries, you can paint in a different part of the flower. As is usual to me, I pick up one brush, and usually use it for most of the painting. I am not sure why that is, as I certainly have plenty of brushes, and usually lay out several to use.. My students always comment on how I paint the whole painting (sometimes very large ones.) all with that darn one brush!
This one I used I really only picked up to start the background with for the first washes, but wound up using it for the entire painting. It was a fairly good sized brush -a number 10 round- and I would not have thought I could capture the details with it, but it happened to have a very  nice point, which was a surprise. I usually do not use a synthetic, that I call "carved" into shape but it was handy and my other brushes weren't.I mostly prefer nature sable brushes for anything that requites a point to paint with. But, this  Richeson Professional series 7000 really amazed me, and no  this is not an ad!  I will use it again and hopefully the fine point will maintain with additional use. Will let you know.

Rhododendron Plein Air

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I love taking advantage of the spring flowers and the opportunity to paint on location- plein air- at this time of the year. Painting plein air in watercolor is quite a challenge, as you cannot take the time to wait while your painting drys in stages, or employ glazes like you do when working in the studio. Plein air painting requires you to capture the essence as quickly as possibly and not worry about the details so much. I think painting in plein air is essential to an artist being able to understand form and the way light interplays on the objects of your subject matter. Seeing this first hand enhances your ability to interpret light, when you are back in the studio working from reference shots. . Plein air paintings have a spontaneity and freshness about them that gets lost many times in studio work.

Apple Blossom -two ways

I posted this to show the Apple Blossom we were painting in my watercolor classes, one shows the flower cluster without a background, and the other with a background added after painting the flowers.

Here is the finished painting.

As I discussed in the previous posting, the luminous dark background was achieved by painting several layers of color by glazing one over the other allowing the previous color to shine through. Little bits of more intense color were dropped in to allow for a more interesting effect than just a flat background.

Clematis

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I thought it was time to add a few flowers to my blog, since I do more of them and landscapes than I do the still lifes. I really love the look of close up flowers especially when they have a lot of contrast.  I painted this for my watercolor class , but they did not get to it as a subject to paint, as we were too busy painting apple blossoms. I will post one of those from class as well. The only way to really get the luminous darks is to glaze the color on in layers,  that way you can see various tones coming through each other like stained glass.

It's fun to paint that way, but it takes a lot of time,  and you have to be patient and wait for each layer to dry sufficiently first. 

Pottery and Wood

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This  lovely pottery jar was brought in by one of my students for a class set up. It had great texture and dimension in the glaze.  I just rediscovered this painting, and thought it went well with the recent group of still lifes I have put up on Daily Paintworks. So, rather than keep it tucked away here it is to enjoy.  It was painted on gessoed panel hardboard, and the slippery surface allowed a lot of texture to show in the strokes. It is a harder surface to paint on if you are not used to it, I think. but it has a nice feel once you get used to it..

Tea Time

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 I love the color and the design of this little cast iron tea pot, and decided it would make a nice composition with some of the other Chinese tea assortment of items I have.
The tea canister is full of a delicious green tea, and I even had some extra chop sticks that repeated the color of the apple nicely. I tried to keep the painting fairly loose and not go back in to over-do any area.
I did spend more time on the apple, as it was a very complicated macintosh with lots of mottling to the skin.
I think it must be tea time now that I am done with it.

Briefly Balanced

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This painting challenge was painting the rose, which was placed in a precarious balance position on the jar. The flower kept unfurling its petals more as the painting was going, despite this being a quick study. As light moves constantly while pleine air painting, so do flower petals in still life's sometimes move as they decide to change directions and open and close. Leaves move at their own whim when gravity takes hold, especailly on flowers out of water. One has to capture the essence of the scene and go from there, if the objects are not completely "still". Or resort to some tape sometimes. :)

Peeled and Painted

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Well, I have been avoiding making a blog for years now, but thanks to friend and fellow artist Qiang Huang I am biting the bullet and catching up with  this long overdue arena to post into.  Thank you Qiang for all your help and inspiration.
Here is a painting I did  this past weekend. I am primarily a landscape painter, ( so I say ) but it seems lately, especially with more classes than time to paint plein air, I have been doing a lot of still lifes. I find them a challenge to find a combination of objects that seem new , or not overdone.
sometimes we just have to use what we have at hand, but I think I am going to search out more interesting subject matter, and welcome suggestions on some new ideas for subject matter. For now, the object was the focus of painterly fruit, especially to capture the orange peel. I like the way the broken color pieces add vibrancy to the peel. From a little distance it all pulls together, but up close,  you can see the bits and pieces rather than having blended transitions. I want to work up more of the fruits in various modes of "undress".

shark food


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