I'm FREE

I'm FREE

Monday, July 29, 2019

IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME - a step-by-step watercolour and some odds and sods

I thought, at the time, a botanical would be nice to do ...

... so I started working on a hydrangea.

Little did I appreciate what a stinker it would be to draw and paint! Mostly done wet-in-wet with some wet-on-dry with softening. Petals are quin. pink, cobalt blue, leaf green and phthalo. green. Leaves are leaf green, phthalo. green, quin. gold, quin. burnt orange and indanthrone.

Had fun doing the leaves though.

The blossoms just seem to be overwhelmed by the foliage. I thought of putting a loose greenish wash around the flowers, but I reached the point where I just wanted it done. No more nit-picking!


DONE
8.5 x 10.5 in.

Hmmm ... didn't realize this was sideways till it was on the page here, and I can't change it. However, it is just some fooling around, trying out techniques to create some credible-looking fog for a future painting.

From a recent class - we were painting birds, and I demonstrated some techniques to create different impressions of texture.

More playing with texture. I wanted  a faster, easier way to give the look of feathers. These above look much too contrived.

Pardon the vignette appearance - I was playing around with modes   in the photo-edit. It turned out that the wet-in-wet technique gave me the best results. It gave me a realistic impression of feathers without looking like I'd had my nose on the board painting each and every feather. This is not finished yet.

So I've been doing a bit of painting. But mostly I have been loving being able to MOVE again! It's been just over 11 weeks since my hip replacement, and I feel good. I can walk with the dogs for about an hour [hiking will come soon]. I am taking care of Bruno again - feeding, mucking out, grooming, and started lungeing him over the past week. I try to pace myself, as my endurance is still not fully recovered, but it's hard when I see all those weeds in the field needing to be removed, the electric fence needing re-wiring, eaves troughs ... neverending. But I love it - I feel alive again!!!

I appreciate your visit!