Sore Feet...Great Memories

I did this painting for the Watercolor Passion website ...the quarterly project is now "shoes!" This painting was done on a 1/4 sheet of Arches cold-pressed watercolor paper with an assortment of different watercolors.

Eggplant Still Life in Oil

This painting is the latest oil painting - a still life painted in plein air style - sort of:) The painting is 8" x 10" and is actually still very wet. I enjoy the oil paintings, but plan to start an oil painting blog, so I can keep this blog purely for watercolor, MY PASSION!

Beautiful Colors

I just had to share the view we have from our front porch - this beautiful maple tree in our neighbors yard across the street! This is the most astounding the colors have every been. The colors are so intense they take your breath away!

Some Plein Air Oil Paintings

I have recently been doing some plein air oil painting with my Thursday Muses - our Thursday painting group. These are small paintings - all three are 8"x10" and are done on canvas panels. The first one was painted at the Sidney, Ohio, Tawawa Park, a beautiful community park of many acres. This particular subject is the Ross Covered Bridge, which is built over Tawawa Creek. We painted this a couple of weeks ago on a brisk fall afternoon as the leaves were just beginning to turn. The second painting is the Jackson Center Pond on a warm afternoon. As we painted we were entertained by the songs of many birds and a very vocal bull frog in the pond. Due to a generous spray of bug repellent we were not bothered too badly by the insects. The third painting is a scene from the backyard of my friend Patty. Patty also has the most beautiful flowers which I have painted many times in watercolor. As you can see, this one was painted earlier in the summer before the wheat was combined...there is little more beautiful than a field of golden wheat contrasted again the intense greens of summer. I love doing the oil painting, but still prefer the wonderful spontaneous effects of watercolor.

Riverside Art Center Watercolor Class

On September 21st we began the fall session of watercolor painting at the arts center in Wapakoneta, Ohio. We have 6 students (and 1 part time). They range in age from 13 to 71 (the teacher,) and are a wonderful, fun group of people. This project was of a vintage truck in a wet-in-wet background using a lot of negative painting in the background. As you can see, they are doing very well. The other two pictures show the students with their beach scene (from a Susie Short tutorial on the internet) and an abstract tree scene which incorporates calligraphic line accents and the wash techniques of Gary Lipscomb. Zoey, our youngest student has done very well - she didn't have two of her paintings with her, but I thought it would be nice to have her in all 3 pictures. Great Work, painters!

October Project painting for Watercolor Workshop

This is the painting for the Watercolor Workshop October project where everyone paints from the same picture. I took liberties with this one - there is no bird in the original photograph and this one has more intense color than the original. It is 1/8 sheet of Arches cold-pressed watercolor paper. This is a stylized, dreamy version of the original, also. I don't handle fall tree colors well, so naturally I am not too happy with this one. I guess I have said THAT before, haven't I? :)

Secluded Cove

This painting was done in response to the October project for Watercolor Workshop - Rocks, Rivers and Lakes. It is 8" x 9" and is painted on Arches cold-pressed watercolor paper. Painting rocks, for me, is a hit or miss endeavor - sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I feel that rocks are very difficult to paint under the best circumstances. I actually created te front rock area by laying a pool of watercolor and then blowing on it through a straw to direct the flow to form the lines between the rocks. You get a very spontaneous effect through this technique. The downside is that you can't always control where the flow will go and end up.

Landscape in the Style of Gary Lipscomb

I created this painting for the intermediate watercolor class I am teaching for Riverside Art Center in Wapakoneta, Ohio. It was painted in the style of Gary Lipscomb which he describes in his book "Watercolor: Go With The Flow." It is painted on 1/8 sheet of Canson cold-pressed watercolor paper with several different brands of watercolors. I posted some paintings earlier on this blog which describe this technique, if you are interested. (May, 2009) The students pretty much finished them this week and we plan to critique then and take a group photograph next Monday evening.