Working larger

Hydrangea
After spending most of my time on minis, I'm working my way up. This is quarter sheet and now I hope to move on to something larger.

Playing Catch up...

alstroemeria
I ran out of time so I painted this little ACEO as a substitute. I didn't like the layout so I moved the book and replaced the glasses with an apple. I have a 9x12 in progress (just flowers and part of the vase) but will not be able to finish by tomorrow.







Talk about late...

koi

another ACEO that came out of Subject to Inspiration 1 photo. This one survived, several others have suffered an encounter with the shredder.

Another learning experience

Last months challenge in my watercolor group was a still life. How hard can it be? Smack a pear and some flowers on a table, drape a tablecloth behind and paint away.

Several artists posted photos of still life set ups and I truly loved the clean look of the photo. It was pretty much white and red with a clear little vase. With watercolor, the white is the paper. How Sweet it that? Sign me up!

So I did a little outline drawing of the vase and flowers on my watercolor paper. It's my usual routine. Just outline the shape and confirm placement, then paint.
Not so much.

I started mapping the whites, marking subtle color changes in the vase and then marking the highlights and reflections in the shadows.

Then I took my dip pen and frisket out and spent a great deal of time applying little blobs and lines to preserve the whites.

For a mostly "white" watercolor, there were tons of pencil marks. Painting didn't take too long but then I felt the need to remove the pencil marks. I used my trusty plastic eraser and was successful getting the annoying marks removed. Some of the color changed/lightened so I did a little more painting.

This is where I ended up.

I want to Thank Lori Andrews for sharing the photo that helped me to create White Shine