Abstract flowers and family obligations

We just got back from a short trip to see a relative for her 86th birthday so I haven’t had a great deal of studio time lately. And with my parents moving closer to us over the next month, art time is still going to be at a premium.  And to top it off, my old Dell laptop decided to aggravate me today.  Although I always have it plugged in, today the internal battery finally died and for some reason it decided that the wall plug-in was inadequate.  No editing program for the pictures so you get to see my unadjusted photos.  I’ll have to figure out something pretty quickly so I can at least crop and reduce the jpeg size to post.  I am quite frustrated right now.

Flowers

Today I painted an abstract background on a small watercolor board and after it was dry, I picked out some floral shapes with the nib and the technical pen.  Then I went back and added more watercolors to define them better.  I washed the background with yellow ocher to unify it a bit and put on some dabs of white to brighten the flower centers.  I am not quite sure how I feel about it yet.  I actually painted it rotated 90 deg clockwise, but I liked it better hanging this way.  Tomorrow will tell the tail.

So it seems that I will be concentrating on squeezing in some smaller pieces for the time being and no large, elaborate architecturals.  Maybe studio life will be a bit more organized by the 4th of July.

Okay, so I was able to update the photo.  Here is a better picture.

Happy Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all out there in cyberspace. I had a houseful today, as a mother and a daughter. The day was clear, but on the cool side. And, yikes, another chance of patchy frost tonight.  I worry most for my Japanese maples. Between the late frost last year and the 3 years of drought or semi drought, they have taken quite a beating.  They look better this year than they have for a while, but another frost might be deadly.  Then the temperatures are supposed to be in the 80′s by midweek.  Weather whiplash.

Spring at last

The cool spring has delayed the trees so greatly that some haven’t haven’t fully leafed out even yet.  The leaves are still quite minimal on more than I would have expected mid May. Unfortunately, I don’t think that is the reason our lakeside poplars look so bad.  As you cans see, some are completely dead, while a few are putting out a very reduced amount of leaves.  They have taken the recent drought years and the massive scale infestation quite hard.  We will probably cut down the dead ones in a few weeks.  Some of the ones that are bad looking we may cut off and hope some shoots come up off of the remainder of the trunk.  They would grow quite fast with an intact root structure.  I think we will have to wait and see what develops over the summer but the prognosis is probably not good.  In any case, I will miss having those trees there.  I thought they enhanced the view of the lake.

Ending on a good note, I want to say thank you to all of my followers.  I crossed the 100 mark this week.  Two and a half years ago when I started, I could never imagined how much fun it would be and how many wonderful people I have met writing this.  I hope you have enjoyed my wandering art journey, the wildlife updates and the landscaping adventures.  Here’s to the next years of blogging and new friends.

Touching up the backyard bridge watercolor

I let the backyard bridge watercolor sit for a day and it became apparent to me that it needed something else.  While I was pleased with the inking, the colors were too similar in value and the inking got lost.

I decided to add depth to the foliage with greens and browns and I defined the branches more strongly.  I added shadows under the bridge and by the pond stones as well as in the background shrubs.  The flowers are a bit redder.  I am hesitant to add too much more definition at this stage because it is so easy to overdue the adjustments.  You can compare the changes I made by looking at the last post.

I think I’ll try one more and throw caution to the winds in terms of adding more defining colors.

A Florida abstract architectural using positive and negative space

Before….

This has been a weekend of cool, rainy weather, perfect for spending time in the studio.  It is pouring again for the umpteenth time, even as I write this.

Before I started, I decided I wanted to take advantage of the beautifully colored landscaping in my pictures from Florida.  I created a colorful background to use as the basis for the abstract architectural.  This time I used a 10″x10″ piece of watercolor board to shorten the prep time necessary and also so I could work on a smaller scale. Here you can see the background I prepared earlier today. Again, because I had a photo in mind, I placed the colors with a little bit of purpose.  I let it dry and then actually remembered to take a photo before I began the inking.

…and after

I based this sketch on an interesting photo of a backyard pond and bridge.  I used the nib pen for a change and unfortunately it managed to leak a large drop of ink (twice!) while I was working on the bridge, so this also became an exercise in positive and negative space.  After it happened the second time, I figured there was something wrong with the nib itself so I discarded it and used a spare.  I will look at this tomorrow and see if the black still looks balanced enough and if I need to add a bit more color. I think I will add something for shadowing, just as I did with the porch on the last one. I was so mad over the ink blots that I forgot to do that, which may be why it doesn’t look quite right yet.  That will only take a short period of time to do, but should vastly improve the watercolor.

Is this abstract enough?

Architectural abstract

This picture has been somewhat of a process.   After I stretched the paper Sunday and  let it fully dry overnight, I rewet it and then threw on the watercolor washes, reminiscent of the method for gift tag blanks. I must admit it was not totally random as I put the reds for the flowers on the bottom and some blues on top.  I didn’t know what orientation I would end up using so I spread the red and blue around.  My main concern was that there was enough color saturation at this point.

It took another day to dry and for the ripples to flatten out.  You can see where those were by the more flowed areas.  In the meantime I flipped through my Key West photos because of the vibrancy of the foliage and home colors there and combined the look of two houses.  After the basic freehand ink lineout, I added colors to further define the elements of the architecture and then touched up the inking for the positive/negative balance.   I am not yet convinced that I shouldn’t do more, but I don’t want it to muddy up, so I am a bit hesitant.  What do you think?

I was inspired by Leslie and Cindy to make this painting.  Cindy has suggested making something with wilder colors for the buildings and Leslie has been showing some paintings based on abstract backgrounds on her blog.  Check their blogs out for a wonderful treat.

Goldilocks’ dragon revisited

Multicolored dragon print

I studied the failed dragon prints for a few days and decided to see if I could watercolor the light print into acceptability. I went for a modified red background to help him stand out more and colored his scales with a yellow ocher. I am pleased enough with the red pattern behind him that I may use a variation of it in future prints.  I had to overlay the ocher several times to get the depth I wanted, but I think it looks much better now.  He still seemed too washed out so I added my mossy green to his flanks and upper forelegs and his face.  I used a little bit of ink to sharpen around his eyes.  Evaluating him now, I am much happier than I was when I pulled him.

Dragon bookmark set

Ultimately, I didn’t think I could salvage these darker prints for sale as they were.  One had the red background added to see if that would provide enough help and the other was left all black.  Still not what I wanted.  It had occurred to me that if I cut them up as bookmarks, I could sell them all together as a funky set.  I ended up rather liking the way this idea turned out.  Fortunately, the dimensions of the original linocut made the sizing easy

What do you think of my choices?  Do you like the watercolored print  as it now stands?  I know it’s vastly improved, but is it enough?  And what do you think of the bookmark set idea?  They need to be laminated because I don’t think the printing ink would stand up to use.  I haven’t laminated anything up in quite a while so maybe it’s time to take a bunch of them in.

I have started prep for the next work.  I stretched a piece of watercolor paper yesterday and am going to throw watercolor washes on it today since it has fully dried. Tomorrow I would like to do an abstract architectural in ink over the washes.  And if it doesn’t work out – more bookmarks.

Say hello to my little friend

The dastardly Mr. Squirrel

OR NOT! I was working on the dragon print from the last post and heard a scratching on my studio window. When I looked up, I saw this dastardly squirrel. He was actually stretching himself up, belly pressed against the glass peering in, but before I could get the camera to take a picture, he had settled down to rest on the sill.  He didn’t move as I neared to take the photo from inside, but allowed me to take two shots before he dropped back down to the patio.

One destroyed truck

This is pretty nervy of him, I think, given the species bad reputation around here.  It may be all out war again.  And lest you think I am exaggerating or over-reacting, just take a look at this.  I am not kidding.  This was John’s truck a couple of years ago after the attention of an overzealous red squirrel. Evidently the soy based insulation around the gas line tasted pretty good.  Need I say more on the situation?