A Refresher Course on Roses

 Hi There!

You don't need me to teach you this. There are lots of rose tutorals out there. Either in  books or on the internet with your computer or TV.

I chose watching a variety of different videos on You Tube. There were so  many teachers, styles, and techniques to choose from. I found that to be very helpful.

As I mentioned before. I am still working with a limited selection of paint's and making them work as well as I can.

This was the canvas panel that I chose to paint the roses on. It had been a collage and the start of a couple other paintings but nothing  had really worked.

The round elements gave me a good base to place the roses on.

After that it was simply a matter of deciding where to  put the light and dark areas for shading and shaping.

I'm pretty satisfied with the roses at this point and continue to work on the background and the leaves now.

It won't be long until I finish the painting and use the design on my products on Zazzle or submit it to other companies for a fabric. Wish me luck!

Sunflowers

 I Love Sunflowers. Growing them, cutting and arranging them as well as drawing and painting them.

 

These have been a real challenge because of the limited array of colors to work with.

Aside from the limited colors there were also poor quality and very thin so each color needed many coats of paint to make them cover properly.

At this point I'm sure you're wondering why I even bothered using them but the short answer was that  I was out of everything else.

Before buying other paints I wanted to use up everything else I had on hand and see just what I could do with "junk". I'm not thrilled with the results but I give myself  credit for trying.

I loved the loose and wild strokes on the panels as the idea started to take hold.

Sometimes I wish I would have stopped while there was still some of this raw energy to the painting. 

My Favorite Projects Lately

 I'm still really enjoying trying different ways to combine water media of all sorts. I'm listing them here in the order of how much I like them or tend to use them. The fist choice for me is always acrylic paints, I use them most often. Next would be watercolor paints in tubes or trays and water color pencils. It wasn't until the last few years that I discovered gouache which I think is best at all for control and beautiful, crisp edges.

Each is wonderful in it's own way but my interest now is seeing what they can do when used together.

On this one the background was done in loose washes of watercolor applied wet into wet. The colors weren't very strong so I repeated that step a second time and let it dry before adding my lines in gouache with a water brush (the type that has a hollow handle and can be filled with water). I was quite pleased with the results and am looking forward to trying that again.

Making Progress

Most progress is slow but I am trying to sort out projects and set my work area up so that I will be ready  to move some of my art  and craft projects to the yard or take them down the road to the park. If I time things right I may get a chance to enjoy some of the live music as well.

There were times over the winter that it seemed like it would end.

In the meantime I just kept working on these:

This was a small piece of watercolor paper that I had been using as a palette for some other paintings. the paint was starting to get a bit thick so I decided to make a painting out of it by adding neurographic lines and soft corners. I like the way it turned out so I dropped it into a letter to a friend

 This is an acrylic on a small stretched canvas that I hope will make a nice background for a small floral this summer. I'm still not quite happy with the colors so I plan to continue working on it until i fially feel like it's ready to go.

After that I returned to an old favorite subject and began painting sunflowers. I m just not sure how far I want to develop it. Any ideas? Its so easy to overwork a piece so I want to be careful not to go too far. What are your thoughts on the subject?

I got the idea for this from a video that I saw on you tube and wanted to try out because I had some old metallic paints that I didn't know what  to use them for.

Now that I see it a number of ideas have started to float to the surface, most of them being designs for kitchen items and anything else that has shiny elements too it. Wish me Luck!

Taking my imagination for a walk...

...and yes, it's unleashed but paper trained. The first map project I did was pleasant enough but I thought I'd kick it up a notch and really make it fun.

I am amazed at how many different  note cards and Mixed Media Art pieces that I got out of just one old map and a couple of pages from a travel brochure.

Here are a few more photos taken as the projects moved on.

I started out in soft colors like those on the map and found that to be boring so I began to burnish the colors and make them more lively.

I found it to be a huge improvement that I can go back to working on whenever I have the time or inclination to do so. It will be a great little project to take along with me whenever I know I'll have time to kill.

I never actually go anywhere so it amused me to make a travel brochure trippy. I just kept drawing around and over this one and really enjoyed it.

I've never seen anything quite like this before and I really enjoyed my non travel trip. It's fun to see things in another way.

 I kind of like the dreamy and vintage turn that this painting seems to be taking. It reminds me of the roses we brought from Doug's parents farm 30 or so years ago so I looked up my favorite photo to keep the inspiration going and am happy with the results so far, what do you think?

Making a Mess

 

I was getting a bit frustrated with where the canvas panels were going so I pulled out some mixed media paper, watercolor paints, gel medium and paper bits and threw this together. there's something that I Like about it but I'm not quite sure what. At least for now, It's a keeper.

I'm not quite sure where this is going. I started with some "mark making" on colored pencil which of course is just arts speak for I began to scribble on the paper in search of some sort of idea or inspiration. 

I didn't find any so I grabbed the watercolor paints to see if I could match the surrounding paper to the collage bits already on the page.

It was interesting to note which of the pencil lines did or didn't show through depending on the sorts of pencils that they were. Perhaps I should choose my colors more carefully.

After that I went back to the canvas panels again which still proved to be uncooperative.

I had done some collage over this small panel with the dots and since there were already some round areas I decided to try to teach myself to paint mandalas over them. That seemed to work rather well.

I've really enjoyed my little map project. It's a lot like the neurographics except that a lot of the lines are already in place and you can choose which of the ones you want to use. This was the most relaxing project of them all so far and I highly recommend it if you want to unwind.                                                                                                                   

I'm really getting tired of the snow. It's just too hard to get through it with the wheelchair and I'm sooo bored being home. That's why I keep trying to run away into my.

I'm hoping to get there soon. Come and join me!