White Iris on TerraSkin

I'm playing on TerraSkin again.  The more I paint on it, the more I love it!  I think the textures that are created from the mixtures of water and paint are very interesting.  This painting is very small but I'm getting ready to do another large poured painting on TerraSkin using acrylics.  Also, I think I want to try using oils on this surface.  I'll probably thin them down a lot to take advantage of the properties of the surface and to get a sense of transparency.  I tend to want to make everything look like a watercolor because I love that look.

Irises are such delicate looking flowers and for this painting, I chose to paint a very dark background to make the white flower really pop.  I enjoyed mixing my variety of greens.  It's always a challenge to mix greens without them looking too intense and unnatural.  I'm not sure why the paint manufacturers make such fake looking greens but it is easy enough to tone them down I guess.

White Iris on TerraSkin
Image size 7" x 4"
Watercolor

Delicate Ruffles - Watercolor

Back to my beloved watercolor.  This painting started out as a full sheet of watercolor paper (30" x 22") but has continued to shrink throughout the painting process.  After I painted the background, my starting point, I decided that there was too much background on the sides.  Hollyhocks are such a vertical flower, I really should have started with a longer, skinnier piece of paper.  I took a few inches off of one side, then a couple off of the other, then more off of the first side.  After that, I decided that there was too much stem on the bottom so off went more inches.  And finally, I took some off of the top to change the focal point of the painting.  I'm very happy with the final result even though the painting shrunk to 20.5" x 15.5".  Thank goodness that painting on paper gives the ability to change the composition after the fact.  Of course, if I were more careful with my initial composing, I wouldn't need to crop it later.

Hollyhocks seem to be one of my favorite flowers to paint.  With this painting, I feel like I've finally captured their delicate beauty.

Delicate Ruffles
Image Size 20.5" x 15.5"
Watercolor
Unframed

Fun Art Week

This was a fun week for art.  On Monday, Peggy, Donna and Cheryl, three of my watercolor artist friends came over to paint.  The painting below is what I painted.  It is watercolor and gouache on a canvas panel that has been coated with fiber paste, an acrylic medium made by Golden.  I'd never worked on it before and one minute I was enjoying it and the next I was cursing at it.  Most of the colors were liftable but some were not;  I would probably use it again.  I like the texture that it created and it is fun to experiment with different supports.

Ruffles

7" x 5"

Watercolor and Gouache

On Wednesday, I went to see the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach.  If you've never seen it, it's pretty incredible.  It's a theatrical production recreating works of art using real people and once it is shown in the correct lighting, it becomes very 2 dimensional and really does look like a painting.  

Yesterday, some friends and I went to the Irvine Museum, one of my favorite museums.  The Irvine family owns about 2000 paintings and they are shown in the museum in different exhibits.  The exhibits change several times a year and they have traveling exhibitions also.  I believe that most, if not all, of the paintings are done by California artists from the California impressionist period which was from the late 1800's through mid-1900's.  I love impressionism and a lot of these paintings were painted en plein air in the Southern California area so they show the pristine beauty before all of the building took place.  The colors and style are exquisite. 

I finished the week out today by painting with another dear friend.  Margery was my mom's best friend and is the mother of one of my wonderful friends from high school.  Margery and I try to get together to paint every week.  Of course, sometimes we do more talking and eating than actually painting but that may be why it's so much fun.  I have been planning to try doing a 20 minute sketch to submit to the 20 minute challenge for quite a while.  I'm not much of a drawing fan and I tend to be a very slow painter so this was something new for me.  I rose to the challenge and cut some plumeria (again) from Margery's yard and set the timer.  I was going to post it here but can't bring myself to do it because, well.... because it looks like it was done in 20 minutes.  If you would like to see it, please visit the 20 minute challenge blog.