Dean and Kipper on the porch

I removed some paint (negative spaces) between the background leaves which gives a feeling of a sunny day. After reworking Kipper's face, I think she came out ok. I've left Dean and the swing in simple shapes which makes the eyes go to the detail in the dog as the focal point. I'll live with the painting for awhile and see if I need to add or subtract anything. Time to move on to the next painting.

Photo of Dean and Kipper on our porch.

Watercolor on Yupo paper. I covered the whole sheet with mostly greens. When that was dry, I lifted off the paint in the shape of the porch post first. As I traveled across the paper, I lifted off the color in the shapes of the dog, then the flower box, relating each shape to the last one, trying to get the correct sizes. I like the shapes of the newspaper and legs. I like the look of untouched painted areas, so I left the porch swing as the original colors. Next, I need to lift off the paint where the bright siding shines through the plants. I think the shapes relate well with each other considering: I did no drawing on the paper before or during the process. 

This is the journal that Lauren gave me for Christmas. I think that I finally understand it. It has lots of ways to get past your creative blocks and inhibitions, because every ounce of reason tells you NOT to tear the page out and chew it and NOT to take the book in the shower with you. (just two examples) Therefore, it helps you get past that reasoning voice when you go to paint/create.

One of the pages I did recently

learning to paint watercolor on Yupo (plastic paper) I painted the whole chair, lifted out the chair's light areas and put in brighter colors just to see how I can manipulate the paint: to see if the colors would stay separate or run together. It all depends how wet the paint is.

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.

small painting of Rebecca Mast's son

When I first saw this photo, I thought the lighting and composition were great: the way the eye travels up the folded legs, follows the top edge of the shirt to the face then travels down the arm to the toy in his hand and then around again. I had to smile when I read how he fell asleep listening to Johnny Cash. I grew up listening to my mom's Johnny Cash records.

Shadow

Sarasota Bay picnic

These are some more post cards to my daughter Lauren in YWAM. I enjoyed sending "Shadow" and "Sarasota Bay picnic" in the mail to Sarasota. Now that Lauren's on her outreach I'll post them on Facebook - which is what I did with the "Tiger Swallowtail". All that's missing is the rambling on the back and the fun of knowing it was traveling through people's hands.

Tiger Swallowtail