Two Pear Study

"Two Pear Study"

Image size 4" x 6"

Watercolor

This is another study for my watercolor class.  I'm still using only three colors: Alizarin Crimson, Prussian Blue and Aureolin.  My shadows got too muddy and the colors look a little dead to me, but I'm learning and that's what's important, right?

I painted this a bit looser than the previous pear painting, allowing my brushstrokes to show rather than blending everything.  

New Heights

"New Heights"

Image size 15" x 8"

Watercolor and Acrylic

This is painted on a piece of 140# hot press Arches paper.  As soon as I began wetting the paper, I could see that it had problems with the sizing.  That seems to be an ongoing problem with the paper that I have.  I have purchased some new Arches paper for projects that involved a lot of drawing where I don't want any surprises with how the paper will react, but I've come to expect most of the paper that I have stored will have problems with the sizing so I'm keeping a lot of matte medium on hand so I can seal the paper when I have this problem.

I'm sure that I've had this paper for at least 10 years because I don't typically buy hot press paper.  I find it hard to work on since I like to paint with many glazing layers.  The previous layers tend to lift on hot press, which is really frustrating.

Of course, when I seal the paper with matte medium, the paint layers lift even easier.  In this painting, I painted the background and initial base colors of the pear with watercolor.  Since I wasn't doing additional layers on the sky, the watercolor was fine.  For the pear, the watercolor was lifting way too much so I carefully painted a layer of matte medium over the watercolor and painted the rest of the layers in acrylic.  There's always a way to make things work, which is a fun challenge.

Pear Family

Pear Family

Image Size 12" x 6"

Watercolor

I painted this on a saturated piece of paper.  It's fun to try to control the combination of water to paint when painting this way.  It's important to add less water and more paint as the paper begins to dry.  I put the paper on a piece of plexiglass while I was painting so the paper stayed super wet for a long time.  It's a challenge to keep adding paint without getting blooms from having too much water in the brush.  I've got a long way to go before I'll feel like I'm in control when painting this way.

When I wet this paper, I could tell that the sizing was gone.  The paper becomes translucent when wet if there is no sizing.  I didn't care about the lack of sizing because when the paper is saturated, it doesn't seem to matter if it's gone.  I like the fuzzy, ethereal look that this painting has because of the combination of wet paper and lack of sizing.

Pear Study

Pear Study

Image Size 6" x 6"

Oil

I had fun with this palette knife painting.  The colors are much more subdued than my usual paintings.  I almost don't recognize it as one of mine.

It was nice to paint with oils again.  I also worked on a couple of oil paintings this week that have been in the works for a long time (3 years for one, 4 for the other).  I hope to finish one of them for next week.     

The other one is quite large and I plan to continue working on it but it will probably take weeks to finish, even if I stick with it.  At least my motivation to paint both of them has returned.

TerraSkin Pear, 30 in 30 - Day 26

Here's another pear.  I'm really reaching for subject matter now.  I'm looking forward to the finish line of this challenge.  I usually paint every day but I don't usually have to finish a painting each day.  I don't know how artists do this "painting a day" for years.  I now appreciate the dedication that they possess and know that I don't have it.

I haven't worked on TerraSkin for awhile.  I love how the colors glow on this surface and it was fun to paint this little pear.  If you haven't tried TerraSkin, it has characteristics similar to Yupo but I like it much better.

TerraSkin Pear
Image Size 5" x 5"
Watercolor

Anjou Pear, 30 in 30 - Day 25

Pears have such a fun shape and I loved the color of this one.  I used the red/green complimentary color scheme again, this time reversed with the subject red and the background green.  It is another palette knife painting.

Anjou Pear
Image Size 5" x 7"
Oil

A Pair of Pear Paintings

Say that three times fast.  This week I bought some pears to paint and decided to paint them in oils as well as pastels.
Here is the one in oils.  I tried to paint loosely like I did while I was in Leslie and Dreama's workshop but it ended up being tighter than I wanted, but looser than my usual paintings, so maybe I'm getting there.

Lean on Me

Lean On Me

Image Size 6" x 6"

Oil

I planned to do the one in pastels in a more photorealistic way but I didn't like the way it was looking so I added more gestural strokes and I'm happier with it now.  Here it is:

Two Against One

Two Against One

Image Size 9" x 13"

Pastels