Tropical Smoothie

"You need both a bit of mind and a bit of mindlessness to make a painting. It's a play between control and surrender."

- Paul deMarrais

Watercolor WIP - 14.5" x 18.5" on 140 lb. paper.

During a winter storm this weekend, I attended a wonderful watercolor workshop given by Linda Aman. The workshop topic was on painting large format flowers and as the snow blew around outside, inside the art center it was looking like a tropical paradise with everyone's colorful flower paintings. During the critique sessions, I honestly started to get thirsty and crave the type of drinks that have crushed ice and little paper umbrellas in them.

I wasn't familiar with her before the workshop but I can now confirm that Linda Aman is a wonderful teacher. She regularly gives workshops in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, and then occasionally in Hawaii. Her passion for painting and teaching really came through loud and clear. We had a lot of information to absorb and a lot of new techniques to try to master in just two days but she still made it fun. Although I'm not thrilled with my painting, I enjoyed using colors I don't usually work with and really enjoyed working so large. And anyway, the point was to learn, not to create a beautiful finished piece. I'm looking forward to giving the new techniques I learned a try on some large format avian subjects.

Spring Flowers in Autumn

Nearly all the leaves are off the trees now, and I have to scrape the frost off the car windshield every morning. Fall is well on its way to winter. I have summer stored in my computer though, in all the photos I am still slowly processing from our trip. The sunshine, warmth, and potential subject matter will sustain me through the long winter.

Pencil sketch of trillium

I believe this is Pacific trillium, Trillium ovatum. It was blooming in profusion at the DeVoto Cedar Grove along the Lochsa river in Idaho. Such a peaceful place. The only sound was the river, extra high this year because of all the snow in the Rockies. The smell was of rich, damp earth. And the ground under the silent, towering cedars was strewn with trillium.

The DeVoto Cedar Grove always makes me think of my father. He grew up in Idaho and loved the Lochsa river. He fished, hunted and camped along the river as a young man and then as a father he brought our family here on vacations. In many ways he was not well-suited to be a parent, but he did pass on to me a love of nature and art and I will always be grateful for that.

Waterlily Painting

Value sketch

The leaf of this waterlily was a problem child, as far as this painting goes. It is flat. Very flat. Maybe a slight upturn along the edge in a few places, but not a lot of different textures, values, or interest to be had on the leaf. It wasn't even considerate enough to sit a tiny bit above the water so as to cast a shadow or reflection. It made a lovely photo at the time, and if you are Monet, it probably would have made for a lovely painting, but as a painting reference I found this specimen decidedly dull.

Dull waterlily painting

So after much grousing and grumbling, I decided to throw caution to the wind and invent a reflection and some more shadows on the damn thing. I don't like doing this. I am comfortably co-dependent with my reference photos and straying from their photographic reality gives me gray hairs. In fact, in the sketching stage of this painting I had an argument with myself; half of me wanted it to look exactly like the lily in the photo, down to the last petal and the other half said "So I missed one or two petals - no one will know." (...except now all of you do. Keep it to yourselves, please). And since the number of petals ended up not being exactly the number my specimen had, a little made-up reflection in the painting could hardly hurt at this stage. Right?

Watercolor of waterlily. Now with more lilypad bling.

Painting 20 - Daylily

Whew - twenty paintings under my belt! No wonder I needed a two hour nap today. Now I have to complete 5 more paintings by August 20th to keep on track for my 100 paintings in a year challenge.

I've been admiring and studying the watercolor floral paintings of Laure Ferlita at Painted Thoughts and Jacqueline Gnott at Contemporary Realism and have wanted to give it a go myself. So this morning I took my camera and walked to our local natural food store to photograph some of the beautiful flowers they have growing in their water-wise landscaping. This lily particularly caught my eye. I think this type is a Stella D'Oro daylily. Unfortunately the photo I took included a dead bloom in front of the right hand side of the flower. When I started the drawing, I chose not to include the dead bloom. It would've just looked like a blob and not added anything to the painting. But then I had to invent what the right hand side of the flower looked like! The stamens were the most challenging part of the painting, though - they got quite confusing to paint and in the end the angle that they went back into tube of the flower is not accurate. However, I am very pleased with how this came out overall.

As I mentioned with Painting 19, I am feeling very comfortable with the watercolors now. I think that since I'm no longer fighting with the paint, this will free me up a bit to concentrate on improving my backgrounds and compositions.