The pears are finished!

And if two posts aren't enough after such a drought, here's another!

The grisaille pears are finished.  I finished the front stem and the reflection area of the pears.  I like how it turned out and am really happy with it.  The last poppy painting is going to be in this style. 

It's also on a 1/4 sheet of Arches 300 lb cold pressed paper.  And it's all in traditional watercolour paint.  I love how it looks like an oil painting, though.  :-)  I'm also pretty proud of that black background!  It's several washes of WN blue black and was done without any masking around the pears at all. 

Four Poppy Paintings. Same drawing - different ways.

 The plan was to quickly draw out four paintings, all the same and do them four different ways.  All are on 1/4 sheet 300 lb arches cp.  The plan was put into effect to get me back into drawing fast 'cause I was starting to get so panicky over not painting for so long that I was thinking maybe I'd forgotten how to paint.

The first was to be a taped painting a la Sandy Maudlin, to look like her totally awesome batiques.  Didn't work.  I'm not even posting what I did on it here because it is so totally awful!  Taping isn't as easy as it sounds.

The second was drawn out in charcoal, then painted over with watercolour.  I like the extra shading you get.  The first one posted here (should be to the left if blogger lays it out properly) is it.  Nothing fancy - just fast paintings meant to get me back into it.

This one, the third, was started out in Nick Simmons' acrylic-watercolour style a while back and set aside unfinished.  It's the drawing I used as a base for the four of them.  I love how the background turned out and I love the colours in the flowers.  Very unrealistic but fun to paint.  The shading on the flowers was done in regular watercolour.  The nice thing about using acrylics underneath is that they never shift or lift later on when painting over them. 


The fourth one is going to be a grisaille.  Same poppies but a more traditional look.  It's coming .......

Spin and the re-vamped studio

It's been a while!  Again.  I'm hanging my head, totally disappointed in myself.  Now that I've "stepped" back in here, I've taken the hardest step.  I've been painting and it feels great.  I didn't post step by steps for these but instead will post the finished pieces. 

Nothing great, just having fun and getting back into it. 

But first, I have to explain that my kitten died.  By the time Scottie was about 2 1/2 months old, his health went downhill very fast.  The vet said he was born with a heart defect - that his body was growing bigger but his heart was staying the same size as a tiny kitten heart and it couldn't keep up.  He also said there was an extremely loud heart murmur and that such heart murmurs were rare in cats and even rarer in kittens.  Scottie was SUCH a sweetheart, always wanting to be cuddled.  I like to think that we made his last days easier and comfortable.  The tough part was that I lost two cats within three months, both to heart problems. 

Spin, on the other hand, is doing wonderful.  She's just been spayed (three weeks ago) and is now back to her crazy-playful self.  She is the most curious cat I've ever seen!  Here she is sitting on a shelf in my painting room / studio. 

One of the things that got me back in here was that I revamped my studio.  Put in lots of those plastic drawers for storage, got rid of a lot of unused things and plan on putting a LOT of paintings up all over the walls.   I took the shelving unit out of the closet and instead, put in a shelf and those drawers.  I like it much better.  BUT, I couldn't throw out that shelving unit so I put it to the back of my painting table which gives me lots more space there, too.  All in all, I have much more space to work and enjoy it a lot more.  Sometimes, I put one of Spin's beds up on the painting table and she loves sleeping there.  That's only if I'm working at a different table or the computer because I've found she cannot sit on the table with me as I paint.  That creates major problems!  More pics to follow ......