Wild Poppies

It's been awhile since I posted anything here for the simple reason that I have not finished a drawing or a painting for a very long time.  Or, at least not one that I felt was worthy of inclusion in this blog.  Below is the painting that has changed all that.  Wild Poppies is acrylic on canvas, with silverleaf accents. The original is 11 X 14 inches.  I had fun painting this one.  As usual, you should be able to click the small version to see the full-sized photo of this painting.

The Village

The outline to this painting came from Terry Madden's Watercolor Workshop 1100 series Volume 1... but instead of following instructions given in the book, I decided to pretty much do my own thing... playing with colors.  My original version of this painting hangs in my living room.

13 x 9.5 inches watercolor on Blick Studio Fabriano watercolor paper.

Poppy

There's a number of things wrong with this, the shape of the flower being just one of them... but there's something else, too. The longer I look, the more I like this poppy.  The original sketch was done based on a photo of a flower, but done in the style of Georgia O'keef - where the flower was enlarged to occupy nearly the entire paper.

Watercolor on Strathmore Cold Press Watercolor paper. 7 x 11 inches

The River

Once again, the trees here look nothing like the photo reference used to create them.  This one was fun, though I probably should have tried putting a boat on the water.

Abandoned

I love old barns.  I used a photo reference for the basic shape of the barn, but I didn't try to replicate much other detail in that photo... Watercolor again...

Bottle Blues

Called Bottle Blues for obvious reasons, this watercolor painting was a class assignment that, I think, turned out well. This picture was painted from a still life setup; only four of the bottles were in the setup, I added the others...

Beach Scene

The use of photos to get shapes right is one thing, making a direct copy is another. My chair in this painting doesn't look much like the chair in the photo I used as a reference... but it does look like a chair.

The Path

I've now been working with watercolors for about three months... these next pictures are my attempts at getting something artistic onto the paper... 

Stuff You Can Learn From Kids' Paints

I'm painting now, with watercolors... but one of the first experiments was with Tempra paints.

Sharpie markers - like you can buy at most office supply stores in the US, and Tempra paints - some of you might remember those from school. Three primary colors, three secondary colors, plus black and white... or essentially the colors you'd get in a box of 8 crayons. Some of what you see below is mixed colors, and some colors straight from the factory-mixed bottles. I learned that small amounts of a darker color added to a lighter color change the hue much more than you might think.

Signing your name with a paint brush is an acquired skill that has not much to do with how well you can write with a pen or pencil... My signature was cloned out of the graphic below both for asthetic purposes (it's horribly sloppy)... and because I don't like posting my real name online.

Finished Wren

Here's the finished bird... I think I enjoy the drawing more than painting... not sure yet though.  The painting was finished in February, 2009. It was shown in March for one week, and in a different location in April for less than one week... during it's showing in April, this painting sold for $65.00 framed, less than two months after it was finished.