Street in Croatia ( 5 x 7 )

Gladiolas  ( 5 x 7 )

 These are some small paintings. I try to do little ones to keep my hand doing art. Making them small keeps me from fussing too much over making them perfect. I sketch the subject with black pen, and then add watercolors.

Counting painting days at year end 

To motivate myself to paint more,  I've tried tabulating painting hours in the past and have gotten overwhelmed. I came up with the idea of putting an X on the days that I paint. I tally up the "X's"at the end of the year, noticing which months I paint the most. This works well to motivate me to cover the calendar with more "X's"

Chickens in the meadow

I'm reading a book, "Show Your Work" by Austin Kleon. And in the book, he encourages artists to share the process of creating, trying new things, and even failures. So these are some things I've done today.

Hollyhocks

Spring sheep

The Hollyhocks and Chickens are drawn with white gesso from a squirt bottle on black mat board. After the white outline dries, I added pastel. I like the vivid colors and texture, so I was just 'playing'.

Goldfinch with sunflowers

The Sheep were done on watercolor paper with a white gesso outline. Then I painted watercolor on the paper. The white gesso isn't the easiest thing to draw with. It's hard to get detail when you have to keep the bottle moving in order not to get a blob of white anywhere.





The Goldfinch painting was drawn with black pen on Yupo (white plastic paper) and then I painted it. The color stays vivid  because the paint lays on top of the plastic.