Davi's Mama - WIP 2

Believe it or not, I am not trying to freak you out with this, but this is where I have stopped for now. I see that some of the edges I thought I had softened are still pretty sharp so will have a go at that when I return to the painting. Lots more to do before I get detailed here, like I said earlier, most of her face is in shadow and she has very sharp features to I have to get the shadows right before I start defining the features that are in the shadows.

PS...Please note my handy hint above. Whenever you think you have finished a step just take a photo of it and post it on your blog for all the world to see, because then you will see what is wrong with it. I hate it when that happens!

Davi's Mama

My good buddy, Roch, has once again inspired me to paint from one of his wonderful photos. He and his family recently took a cruise on the Amazon! Rather than go with the ship-guided tours, he and his family chose to explore on their own and found many friendly villagers to guide them to see their ways of life.

When working on portraits, I like minimal lines since I don't like them to show through, but on this wonderfully wrinkled face I felt the need to establish some of the main wrinkles in the drawing. This was a difficult one to get on paper as so much of the face was in shadow so I had to suggest important elements in some places instead of having all the eyes, all the ears, etc. I found this to be more difficult than trying to get them portrayed accurately.  I normally will trace from the photo for portraits since it is so important to get the expression and features correct, but in this case the features did not show through the deep shadows well enough and I ended up drawing most of the facial features, just using tracing to do a few contour lines.


I know that this is difficult to see in this photo, but I will post WIP photos as I dive in and start defining the shadow areas.

This portrait will be done in sepia, monochromatically. I just love that face!

Analogous Oval

To go along with the Watercolor Workshop analogous projects this month, Kathy Nesseth graciously provided one of her paintings to use as a reference. I instantly loved the peacefulness of this scene and managed to paint it during the watercolor session this afternoon at the Art Club. It was fun to do with such a limited palette. I wish I had cut the oval mask a bit more evenly, but ovals are not my specialty!

Thanks to Kathy for providing this inspiring photo to paint from, it is not often that I manage to paint both of the monthly project paintings with this group, I feel like I accomplished something this month.

Latest works

 The January projects for the Watercolor Workshop are all about analogous paintings. Instead of choosing the normal blue as the primary and blue green and blue violet as being the only combination I could think of, I decided to go with warmer colors and do something different.

I checked out what Zoltan Szabo had so say about analogous colors and chose a demo project from one of his books for the mountain scene below, and a simple cherries painting for the other one. I think it is fun to challenge our thinking once in awhile and it

keeps our paintings from being stale by questioning our color choices. I brought two 5x7 boards with w/c paper attached to them and did both of these during the watercolor session at the art club last Thursday. It was fun do finish them in one sitting. I think I need to get back into painting more and doing small studies like these seems to be the way to go.

The social committee at the art club here have a "mini" show coming up where we all will paint little 3x3-inch canvases and have a show. I think I will venture into the world of acrylics for this one. Wish me luck!

Good news!

I think this is the perfect venue to submit this post, above the photo of Aubrey and I painting. Last night we received a call from our youngest son, Ms. Aubrey's father, informing us that we will be grandparents once again! So, I am officially starting the baby prayers again; this time asking for a redheaded little boy since God blessed me so favorably last time with the very redheaded little girl that I asked for!

Be very aware, this will mean a new input of non-watercolor photos once July gets here! Hooray.....

PS...Rhonda, I know you have vowed to stop using exclamation marks on your blog so much, but allow me this one time to jump for joy with those marks?!

Oops - Missed One!

In my earlier post, I stated that no photos were taken of Aubrey and I painting. Well, my son corrected that by sending one today that he had taken with his iPhone. Aubrey was deciding which of the colors to choose for her next strokes. She seems, at this point, to make decisions based on what she wants to paint rather than just playing with the paints. Some of her grandma's paintings look as if she should quit playing and make better decisions! LOL.

At any rate, we sure had fun....

Coyote!

I heard a noise yesterday outside our breakfast nook window and this coyote was searching for rabbit nests under this window. I ran to get my camera and he had moved out to the oleander bushes. He looked to be a very well-fed coyote! Right after I snapped this photo, two larger coyotes jumped out of the oleanders and each of them had one rabbit between the two of their mouths, clamped down. They moved to this guy's left and I couldn't get a shot of them as they left, hooked together by this one poor rabbit. I thought that was such an unusual site to see two coyotes walking, connected by a shared rabbit. I say poor rabbit, but if it had to be their breakfast I certainly hope it was the same rabbit who has been eating my flowers! As you can see by the frost-damaged flowers in the pot, I am not having great luck with plants at this time. I got one photo of my canna's first bloom and then it, too, got frost burned. Such is life in the desert, complete with coyotes feasting in one's back yard!

Mesa de me Padre WIP 4

Well, after sitting untouched for three weeks over the holidays I finally got back to work on this painting. Now that I have taken a photo of it I can see the goofs better. As usual, I had a bad case of ellipse-itis on the pots. I doubt I can do much about that now, at this point, but will ponder it. I really want to do this one well, so maybe I will start over and pay more attention to the drawing this time.

I hesitate over posting this, but as before, I am trying to run an honest blog here and feel I must show the goofs as well as the triumphs, so here it is. I do like some parts of it but when and if I redo it will try to control my pencil while doing the drawing. Grrrrr