Plugging away happily!!

I have "finished" my Apple Blossoms- but for a few touchups after I stare at it for a while. I have been playing about with it for a couple of  weeks off and on.

As always- very happy with some bits. NOT so happy about others! 

This still needs a bit of work and to me, it is CRYING OUT for a gently washy bit of background- just to make it jump off the page a bit. Trouble is--- I am a devout CHICKEN! Stay tuned. I HOPE it will come.

And I have been playing- DRAWING in my big new watercolour Journal , prepping for some more new pieces. (I hesitate to call them "pieces at this stage as it sounds a tad pretentious, but what else can I call them?) Here are some samples. I have been drawing a LOT!!!

This is another apple blossom one with some studies of the spent blossoms underneath. I SHOULD be seeing some of the BILLIONS of wee apples developing for the fall by now. Better pick a bit and work on that too.

And this is a twig of the deep pink crabapple blossom at peak. I REALLY want to do this one. MAY use some graphite paper to transfer my drawing to WC paper. I have never used it before. Worth a try!Does anyone have any experience of using Graphite paper???

And at the bottom of the same page- a straight down macro of one of my succulents which I HOPE will be a great exercise in GREYS!! How many Shades? Stay tooned! 

And a pageful of allsorts. The little "watercolour " at the top is a copy from an exercise in separating foreground from background petals. It is kind of wonky as I could not see the drawing well enough to make a decent copy. Never mind. I learned a lot. I THINK it is by an artist called Jane Freeman. She does GORGEOUS work! SOO much detail!

And last, but not least, I JUST started work on a little dwarf Red Iris. They are long gone from the garden now with this awful, early heat. Here is my reference photo, taken a week or so ago.

I edited it as a high key photo because, as glorious as the original colour is, as a wee watercolour, it would lose its delicate details. I hope I can capture it.

Here is my drawing and the start of the colour- waiting to dry!

It will get there but there is a L O N G way to go. Oh, what fun though!!!

OK, Dear Friends, stay tuned but don't hold your collective breath. DH is NOT in shape to do a lot of heavy lifting just at the moment, so I am being the jobbing gardener, Chief cook and bottle washer. Painting gets squeezed between! My idea of ABSOLUTE Luxury- would be a WHOLE day to paint, uninterrupted! Guess I'd need Staff for that to happen ;-)

I hope you and yours are all well and thriving and enjoying the heat! Please take care and keep on Creating! HUGS!

Sorry!!

I am sorry I have been so slack posting lately but here I go again, if a tad late!

I TRIED to psyche myself up to put a background in but decided to take the "chicken's way" out and just leave it white!

I SHALL still fool around with the magnolia branches themselves, just to sharpen them up a bit but basically, this is IT for this little pic!

I forget if I showed you this one?? I don't mind the bloom - mostly- but I do NOT like the background!!!( so you are apt NEVER to see it!)

And here is the most recent "finished" one!! It is a pink hellebore from our garden. Still needing a bit of touchup but I am calling it pretty much fini!

Parts of this hellebore make me fairly happy . I started with the background and kind of lost it in a few spots- you can see the blurp of Rich Green Gold in the lower two petals but I am not too worried about that. I DID try some negative painting but only semi successfully. I DO like the stamens and nectaries but they need a bit of work in a couple of spots. I am also quite pleased with the "translucency" of the back lit bloom. Some of the shadows are fairly successful too.

I have been drawing a lot- some, almost every day and things are finally looking up. No examples here but I'll maybe shoot a few pics so you can see. DH is NOT able to garden or to help me much out there just now so our garden work falls to ME! I have worked VERY hard all week- raking, weeding, seeding, pruning and generally tidying up. BIG JOB for one little old woman! I LOVE it , but I really missed my paints. We are expecting rain tomorrow so I HOPE to get back at it!

Just a quick catchup from our house and garden. I hope you all enjoy a safe, happy Victoria Day weekend. I'll spend a BIT of time digging out my sandals and thinking of getting some new WHITE trousers for the summer! The ones I HAVE been wearing are so thin from over wear that they border on indecent! Mighty cool on a hot day though!!!! Cheerio for now!!

Magnolia blooms

As far as I got before supper

 Heart's DELIGHT!!! I got a WHOLE afternoon of painting! It felt soooo good to concentrate. I started off with a photo I took at least ONE year ago- maybe two.

I have drawn in the three main blooms and have begun the painting . I'll decide later how many more I want and what to do with the background. I like the deep soft grey green AND the yellow! That's our neighbour's Forsythia. Stay "tooned"!

I began with a single bloom , got it to a place where I felt reasonably happy and then started the middle one.

First bloom- the far left end. Stopped and then moved on to the middle one...

I see now a small error I made in my drawing. I'll correct it - I HOPE and will say my prayers that it will be repairable because, to THIS point, I am fairly pleased.

Painting on every other petal- non adjacent ones so the paint doesn't run when neighbouring petals are both wet together. 

I kept working and am trying to decide how many more blooms I'll do, what I should do with the background and whether I could add two more blooms but loosely, allowing their colour to bleed out into the surrounding paper??? Here is where I am to date...

Guess I will try at least to correct my goof tonight. I am pretty weary so I MAY not do anything else tonight. I'll post this much for now and hope you enjoy this so far.

Cheerio for now!