An Artful Exchange

I just love Sharon Mann’s sunny art, don’t you?

I was delighted to receive her postcard art recently in an artful exchange through the mail!

We each created six postcards, 4×6 inch size in any art medium.  (I forgot to take a photo of mine so you will have to look at Sharon’s blog). 😉

Perhaps you remember our other artful exchange?  If not you can find it here:  The Speedball Bird

I enjoy making art in this “postcard” size so I’m sure you will see more of it!

Thank you Sharon for brightening my day with your cheerful art!

Cheers! 🙂

 

Painting Tulips

I am in LOVE with the flower photos and gardens of my sweet, blogging friend, Ali at The Mindful Garden!

She grows the most gorgeous flowers in her yard!!  And takes stunning photos of them too!

With her permission, I tried to paint some of her tulips yesterday in watercolor.

Here are my process photos:

Watercolor is a difficult art medium for me.  Perhaps I struggle too hard to make my flowers look “real.”  And yet, I always feel like I learn to “see” my subjects a little clearer when I try to draw or paint them.

I do hope you check out Ali’s blog!  Her gardens are always a delight to my senses!

Cheers! 🙂

Coloring Eggs

I splashed some watercolor paint around on hot press paper the other day…

It reminded me of coloring eggs as a child.

I cut some egg shapes out of my painted paper and decided to add them to my table for Easter brunch.  They will make good name plates as you can see in the right photo:

My grandma placed a few candies in paper muffin cups at each person’s table setting… it was such a fun idea that I use it too!

I had a few minutes yesterday to make an Easter sign for my table and color a few more eggs!  😉

Coloring eggs with watercolor on paper is so fun!  I encourage you to give it a try!

Cheers! 🙂

A Spiny Family

I enjoy giving myself little challenges when drawing… and learning more about my subjects.

Painting different colors of watercolor in my art journal helped add color to a blank page…

I then challenged myself to use mostly black pens – each pen a different variety – to draw Cactus; from the book I showed you in this post: Drawing Cactus and Succulents

According to Dictionary.com; Cactus (noun) and plural can be cacti, cactuses and cactus!  

As a definition:  Any numerous succulent plants of the family Cactaceae, of warm, arid regions, having fleshy, leafless, usually spiny stems and typically having solitary, showy flowers.

I never really thought about a “cactus” being a succulent plant!

I challenged myself to create these “succulents” with a variety of green pens:

Succulent (noun):  A succulent plant as a sedum or cactus… and as (adjective):  Of a plant – having fleshy or juicy tissues.

What I learned from this challenge for myself:

• Calligraphy pens are great to draw with…
• Going outside the color “square” is OK!
• I really do have eight green pens.
• Creating challenges makes drawing fun!
• I enjoyed learning the names of plants… must be a weird bird idea in there somewhere!

Do you give yourself challenges when you are creating?  I’d love to hear what you do!

Cheers! 🙂

Outside A Window

I love the view of this crabapple tree outside my kitchen window:

This photo was taken in May when the tree was showing its spectacular pink blossoms!

I decided to add a photo of it to my mixed media sketchbook as the tree inspires me all four seasons!  I colored the photo with color pencils so the flowers stood out.

And below is the Robin that I painted and showed you in my last post:

Inspiration of place can sometimes come from what we see outside a window in our home… Below is a photo of both pages together in my art journal.

What view inspires YOU, outside a window?  I hope you share it with me!

Cheers! 🙂

The American Robin

I haven’t drawn a REAL bird in awhile so I decided to try the American Robin.  

I have been observing them outside my kitchen window snacking on dried red berries from my crabapple tree.

I started with a light pencil sketch on 140 lb cold press watercolor paper before I added a wash of color:

The robins have been fluffing up their feathers to keep themselves warm since we still have winter with more snow on the way! ;-(  Apparently, the robin’s body temperatures are 104 degrees Fahrenheit so by fluffing up their feathers they keep their bodies warm.

I finished my painting by adding details with watercolor pencils:

I will be adding this American Robin to my mixed media sketchbook.  I will show you my completed page next Monday.

When I see a Robin in winter, I will picture them a little differently now.  A sauna comes to mind… perhaps there is a future weird bird here! 🙂

Happy Friday!

Cheers! 🙂

P.S.  If you’d like to see a previous post I did on a Robin, you can find it here:  An American Robin   It is wonderful to look back and see how I am making progress in my drawing and watercolor skills!

Expressionist Scribble

Yesterday, I tried my hand at asemic writing.  According to Wikipedia, “It is a wordless open semantic form of writing…”

Watercolor 

“It may flow as an abstract expressionist scribble which resembles writing but avoids words.”

Watercolor, Purple India Ink, Acrylic Bronze Paint

”The key to asemic writing is that even though it is traditionally “unreadable” it still maintains a strong attractive appeal to the reader’s eye.”

Watercolor And Elegant Writer Pen

”It seeks to make the reader hover between reading and looking.  All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract work of art.”

I didn’t actually write words with meaning until this last one:

Watercolor And Elegant Writer Pen

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Cheers! 🙂

Eyes And Noses

I recently started an online class that is completely out of my comfort zone.

I love the colorful art of the teacher, Ardith Goodwin so I decided to give the class, “Distortion of Eyes and Noses” a try!

I thought you might enjoy seeing how I created a whimsical eye yesterday from one of the assignments.

I started with a watercolor background to give me inspiration.  I drew a quick sketch in pencil.

I used the pencil sketch to get my creative juices flowing.  I added details with a black permanent pen and additional color with Tombow markers.

I finished by softening the watercolor around the eye with gesso and a quote:

I encourage you to change the way you look at things!

Cheers! 🙂

Landscape Vignettes

Perhaps you recall the online landscape art class I told you about from Anita Lehmann?  If not, you can learn more about it here:  Exploring Landscape

I enjoyed painting these 1.5 x 1.5 inch landscape vignettes in watercolor; the first 2 rows were from my imagination and the last 3 rows were free photo images of lake and wheat field images from unsplash.com

I discovered a limited color palette and subject matter made the exercise more cohesive and less busy in my last 3 rows:

New materials I used for this project were removable tape – 1/8 inch and 1/4 inch in diameter that I purchased locally at Michaels and Art Graf watercolor graphite that I purchased online from Dick Blick:

I encourage you to give this exercise a try…

I learned to see landscape shapes and elements of design instead of focusing on small details.  It also helped me to work quickly and get a feel of the landscape instead of focusing on minute details.

Cheers! 🙂

Inspired By Autumn Colors

We had a sunny, blue-sky Autumn day in the Pacific Northwest yesterday.  It inspired me to take these photos of trees in my yard and then splash some watercolor paint around!

Nature is full of colorful inspiration! The name of each tree is under the photo.

River Birch Tree – has interesting bark texture and greenish-gold leaves.

Sunset Maple – Fall colors of a sunset!

Crabapple Tree – the birds love to feed on the tiny crabapples in the winter. This tree is color-filled all 4 seasons.

Larch Tree – needles turn gold in Autumn and fall off.

And my watercolor experiments:

How does nature’s colors inspire you?

Cheers! 🙂