I greatly admire those with the patience to draw something that isn’t static. I think the reason I draw fruit is it doesn’t wiggle or blow around in a breeze. In today’s drawing, I have let go of my pear obsession in favor of apples.
I spent more time than I care to admit arranging these apples. Finally I was satisfied, and I drew them lightly with Prismacolor pencils. Next I intend to use a watercolor wash. I have wanted to try this for a while, and am curious how it will turn out!
This mockingbird has been playing hard to get for several weeks. It likes to perch on the heavily pruned mulberry in front of our living room window, that has not yet leafed out. It flies away when I open the front door.
Finally I snapped a picture through the living room window. It twitched when I opened the blinds wider, and after a couple of shots it flew away. I remember a mockingbird singing outside my bedroom window, at the crack of dawn, when I was a kid…Here’s another mockingbird that is dear to my heart!
When I showed my husband the face that I found in my abstract watercolor from yesterday’s post, he didn’t see what I saw. Instead of looking in the lower left corner at the blue-green face with a purple eye and mouth and yellow cheek above, he recognized a blue duck with a blue-green wing and brown eye, and another duck in purple behind it on the left side of this image. With eyes wide open, I was determined to find other creatures in my abstract painting.
I tipped it this way and that, and cropped what looked like it was looking back at me. Try it! Then look below at what I found:
This purple ducky looks like it could float in a bathtub. It was hiding in a corner. If you tip your head to the right, it looks like a man with a monocle.
This frowning guy was hiding in plain sight! If you tip your head to the right, you may see a flying fowl or turquoise fish!
Creepy-looking eyes!
This looks like an elf with a duck bill to me!
Did you find something that I missed?
While I was thinking about how to create shadows for the fruit in my last watercolor collage, I decided to play around a little bit. I took a piece of my very special watercolor paper, taped it to a smooth drawing board, and wet it thoroughly with a brush. Then I mixed Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow, and Cobalt Blue separately with water, filled my brush to the dripping point, and dripped each one onto the wet paper. I added more water with a spray bottle when the page began to dry. Then I tipped my drawing board this way and that, and left it on its side to dry.
Oops. Most of the pigment drained off the page. The next day, I started again with my pastel creation, using the same red and yellow, but switching to Ultramarine. I dripped and drew squiggles. I sprayed more water. I sprinkled salt all over the page.
Then, I mixed Phthalo Blue, Alizarin Crimson, and Cadmium Yellow Pale in different amounts, and drew dark swirling lines all over the page for contrast. I got a little carried away, and thought it might be too dark, so I sprayed more water, dripped, and sprinkled more salt. This time I left it to dry flat. Sometimes I learn from my mistakes!
This morning, I photographed my artwork, and decided to flip it around in Photoshop. I usually do this with something abstract, trying to find an image that speaks to me. Ta da! I found a face. I decided to call this piece “Friday Afternoon.” Anyone who has taught middle school will appreciate the source of my inspiration!
I applied Gloss Medium & Varnish (clear acrylic paint) to adhere my fruit figures to my watercolor background. The fruit, some of you may recall, came from printmaking scraps with leftover ink. The applications listed on the g m & v container include collage adhesive, but it warns that over brushing can lead to fogging (cloudiness) after drying.
After positioning my fruit, painting the undersides, and smoothing them down, I applied a couple of coats over the entire page. Not sure how I want to handle the shadows yet. Now that I have applied the waterproof coating, I’m done with watercolor! I could use more printmaking scraps, or regular acrylic paint, for the shadows. I will need to test this out first, though. For now my fruit is still “floating.”
After contemplating the graded watercolor wash in blue that I did a few days ago, I am finally ready to take the next step! Some of you may remember a collage that I began in January. You can see it here. Now that I have refreshed my memory of what I did before, I realize that I left something out of today’s step.
I found another pear on the bottom of my closet! Don’t you just hate when that happens? So what you see here is not the final product. It’s a work in progress. Some clear acrylic will put this still life in its place.
The Russian River of northern California has an interesting history, which I won’t go into here. I recommend looking it up on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and while you’re there, make a donation. It is an amazing resource! You can also, if you have some expertise in a particular subject, contribute to the growing collection of free knowledge that it provides. But let’s get back to that river, shall we?
This post is about my experience with the Russian River, namely, admiring it from the sidelines. Its headwaters are only a few miles east of where I live in Mendocino county, but it finds the ocean many miles southwest, in Sonoma county just north of San Francisco. When I see the Russian River, I am usually driving along Highway 101 in southern Mendocino county, enjoying the view of rolling oak woodlands and vineyards, punctuated by the riparian vegetation that cleverly disguises the river until it pops out to see what’s going on around it.
There is a particularly scenic stretch south of Hopland and north of Cloverdale. The river is looking drained these days, after a brief, dry winter, but the oak woodland through which it flows is lovely. There are years when it floods its banks and wreaks havoc in the low-lying areas of southern Mendocino and western Sonoma counties. Hard to imagine from this photo!
Okay, it’s official: I have become infected with Spring Fever. The annual ailment has stricken me early this year, but the weather is warm and humid, and while I perch at my computer and type, I hear a bird. I decide to ignore the bird, but I keep hearing it. I have to know what it is. So I grab my camera, and out I go!
Before I get a chance to investigate the area of my yard I think the sound came from, I see a tiny feathered creature hopping around on the severely pruned mulberry in front of me that has not yet leafed out. A mockingbird has been using it as a perch, but has so far eluded my attempts to photograph it.
This little guy or gal, however, doesn’t seem to care about me, so I fire off a few shots without stopping to properly identify it. I am far from a bird expert, but occasionally the correct name pops into my head. Nuthatch or chickadee, I think, noticing the black cap and dark neck but failing to discern much else.
This is no nuthatch, look at that tail! As you can see from the 360 degree photos I took, it is pretty obviously a somewhat scruffy Chestnut-backed chickadee. I have been hearing them around my house lately, but this one wasn’t making any noise . Mystery solved, I should go back to work…
Much of California is about oak trees. There are so many different trees in this state, I could probably write a post every day for a year (next year’s topic?) and never repeat myself. But this post is about oak trees in general.
There are live oaks and deciduous oaks. There are large oaks and small oaks. This time of the year, before the deciduous oaks have burst forth with their annual foliage, they provide an interesting contrast to the conifers they frequently accompany.
When I am on the coast, I enjoy the many evergreen trees, but when I return inland, I greet my lifelong companions once more, those sturdy acorn-bearers that dot the hills and provide shade for the cattle.
For many years I have claimed the Sugar pine as my all-time favorite tree. But lately I’ve been leaning toward the oak, the one with whom I have shared most of my life. Below is one of my favorite spots in northern Mendocino county.
Blue has always been my favorite color. Ever since I was a child, whenever I had a color choice, I always picked blue. I drifted away for a while toward teal and rose. I considered amethyst. But I remain a steadfast admirer, when push comes to shove, of my original choice.
Perhaps my fondness springs from my fascination with the ocean, or my tendency to gaze at the sky. It’s hard to say which came first, admiration for the color or the things of that color…
So, true to form, I began my watercolor painting with the color blue. Cobalt blue, to be precise. First I soaked the page with my water-filled brush, in even strokes, back and forth and up and down.
Next I filled my brush with paint, trying to remove any globs, and starting at the bottom (or top, depending on your point of view), I painted back and forth from one side of the page to the other. As you can see, I created a Graded Wash as my brush ran out of pigment and the water on the page diluted it.
I haven’t done that in a while. It’s simple but fun! I had taped my paper onto a piece of cardboard with ridges, so I ended up with some interesting texture as well.
Then I tipped the page on its side (notice there is no apostrophe in its; refer to my poem for some insights on apostrophes: http://sunflowerandmoth.wordpress.com/my-poetry/). I let the page drip. I tipped it on the opposite side, and let it drip some more. Here are my results. I wonder what’s next? The possibilities are neverending…it’s (note the apostrophe this time) hard to choose just one!
When You're Bored 