Juliet

My outdoor cat is having trouble acclimating to outside. She's become such a wuss. That's what I tell her anyway. She sits by the back door and if I open it she might poke her nose out but she's become wary of my foot right behind her. :) So while she was sitting there longingly the other day, I took advantage of the pose.

Watercolor Portrait Sketch

This is a watercolor sketch of my friend and fellow artist,  Peter Yesis. Several of us got together a few weeks ago to paint and after lunch I started this quick portrait of Peter while he was working on his painting. I only got about half way with a sketch and a wash so I snapped a picture with my camera so I could finish this at home. My photo was really blurry which is good and bad. You can't be real fussy about the details because you can't SEE them but at the same time...you know what I mean. ;) Go check out Peter's blog "Daily Painting Practice". He's a fantastic oil painter and in his blog, he chronicles all of his ups, downs and in betweens as he pursues his craft.

Watercolor Crocus

This is wishful thinking...

I love painting crocuses and daffodils and I'm looking forward to my flowers blooming. I started out trying to paint this with only 3 colors - quinacridone magenta, new gamboge and cobalt blue. While they are lovely transparent colors and perfect for flowers, they just weren't dark enough for the background and a few crevices in the flower so I also used alizarin crimson, ultramarine, winsor blue, cad yellow, raw sienna and burnt sienna.
7 x 5 inches

Watercolor Portrait - John

After a couple not quite successfulpaintings, I finally hit it right this weekend with this portrait of my friend John. I'm calling this "Winner" (I think he'll be finding that out here) because I took this after he won first place for one of his beautiful 3-D wood pieces at our art club's annual art show and also because I think he's pretty special and a winner in my eyes.

Illustration Friday "Adrift"

This week's theme for Illustration Friday, "Adrift" and Valentine's Day packaged into one illustration. ;)

Wishing you lots of love this weekend.

Illustration Friday "Focused"

I painted this around the holidays from a sketch I made of my cat starring into the fireplace and it fits this week's  theme of "Focused" quite nicely.

A Little Dog - Charcoal drawing

Here's a recent commission. NOT a watercolor. My client requested charcoal. I started out by blocking in the dark using 2B charcoal pencil and worked my way through 4B and 6B to get even darker. I also worked all over alternating between the dark and highlights and then I'd squint and go even darker or lighter.This little doggie also had some bits of brownish/red in his fur so I pulled out my flesh colored conte sticks that I use for figure drawing. Those added a little bit of spark.