Tuesday 30 September 2014

I have been back to the watercolours in the past weeks.  I love the discipline of the medium as well as the way the paper receives the pigments. Wet washes sink in while drier applications hover on the surface.  It always seems to me that that paper resonates more like a soft skin as opposed to canvas behaving like an exterior fabric.

I don't generally use masking fluid or draw out the subject before painting, but prefer to work directly with brush and pigment.  I also work from a 'live model', not a photograph. I feel that this leads to a less static interpretation of the flower.

Dahlia Trio
5" x 7" watercolour on acid free paper


Our weather patterns are behaving like a yo-yo right now.  For two days we receive glorious fall weather that begs you, loudly, "Come outside!" Then the skies open to deluge us with torrential rains.  The flower beds are all caught up in the drama, reaching blooms and buds to the sun only to be beaten down and tangled up by the rain.  Feel free to use any of these images to paint from!

                                                               

Thursday 11 September 2014

Whew! That was a busy summer! Hope yours was great!

As the morning air becomes cool and crisp and the light turns golden, it is time to be enjoying the last days in the garden.  Dahlia's are definitely the colour champions at this time of year and the garden is packed with white, pink, orange and yellow blooms. 

I set up in the kitchen of the house to paint in the full spectrum of south light instead of the studio's north light. It  looks like a mess, but it was fun to paint in a different space.  I'll  include a photo of the bouquet as well, in case someone else wants to take a crack at painting it.  

Thanks for looking.




 















The kitchen table remodeled!


  On top is the 6"x6" oil  painting while the photo below is the still life. You can see that I added another petal to the red and yellow dahlia in the final composition to better  balance the pink one.