Almost spring?

Until then, more flowers.

I wanted to make the background warm to feel more cheerful and, well, warm.  This is watercolor and colored pencil.

When I paint people, I often take a photo of the pencil sketch so I feel free to screw it up.  Not that I'm aiming to wreck a painting, but I normally like my sketches and it's sort of a mental trick to know that I have a nice sketch somewhere no matter what happens.  Here are my flowers again.

The first piece of art I sold was a contour drawing of a lily.  It was on show at the Institute Library last fall.  This isn't a blind contour drawing, but line drawings are so much fun.

Still life

I bought flowers so I'd be inspired to paint tonight.

I drew them with a pen (without a pencil sketch underneath).  This can be intimidating, but not as much as drawing with a brush straight onto paper.  I drew a landscape with many buildings and complicated perspective with a brush in a workshop once.  I'm not sure what possessed me.  The perspective was off, but people like that painting.

Back to flowers, I learned a lot about painting flowers from Charles Reid.

The Argentine Tango

According to one of my tango teachers, the Argentine Tango was invented so people could hug and dance in tight spaces.  I think she is on to something!

Today I bought my first pair of tango shoes.  This means I can no longer blame any strange dance moves on my previous shoes, which were from Sears and meant to be disposable (bought for a halloween party).  Here they are.

I used Pearlex in bronze for the iridescent brown/dark gold shoes.  Photo doesn't quite do it justice, but the shoes are more subtle than some tango shoes.  Thanks to Sue and Hugh for buying them for me!

Still life

Just a quick study, with a discernible part that is still drying, tonight.  I wanted to paint something fast since I'm not feeling the best, and I saw a bowl I picked up in Toledo, Spain with some oranges and limes. 

I'm a big fan of Cathy Johnson's Artist's Journal Workshop.  She also has a blog here, which is wonderful, and there is a Facebook group where everyone posts pages from their journals.  There is a great variety among the artists - some people fill the page, some use borders, and others paint very simply. 

Art calendar

Since I'm under the weather and the weather will soon be all around us, just a short post for tonight. 

Here's a page from a desk calendar I bought which has a painting every few days.  Someone else did the sketch, and you paint it, so if you dislike the result you can blame the sketch.  Handy.  It has an interesting mix of representational and more abstract pieces, including some figure paintings. The calendar paper is bit thicker than what you normally find in these types of calendars so you can actually paint on it.  Just be sure to chuck the cheap paints that come with the set.  Good luck in the snow tomorrow!

Quick Study

I caught sight of this silhouette during the afternoon.  The light only lasted for a moment, but I thought the shadow of my old coffeepot was beautiful.  I use it in still life paintings, normally not just in shadow.  Thankfully I had a sketchbook handy.  I used walnut ink for the medium.

The sketchbook is not big - only 6 x 6 inches, but I wanted to capture something neat I saw on my wall today.