Summer hydrangeas

It's summer and the hydrangeas are lovely.


These ones came from my mother in law's garden which had to be reached through a very well locked door from her cellar. I know I will never get more than an impression of their beauty - so here it is.
On Christmas Day, mum in law came for lunch, saw this painting and loved it.  So she took it home for a Christmas present.  I seem to give away more paintings over time, it saves me the trouble of exhibiting and selling...

More still life

This week we attempted to increase the contrast and let the watercolour 'do its thing'. The iris actually was an excellent subject for this.


I also attempted these magnolias.


And finally a still life of onions and garlic to challenge us. They have lovely shapes. Much easier of course to paint brown and red onions than anything white.

Flowers again

Today we tackle flowers again but this time experimenting with wet on wet. Some lovely effects are possibly with the colours running into one another.


This ink drawing was super-imposed on a background of colours. I used acrylic ink as it does not run once dry and I can come into it with more watercolour.

Flowers

This week we painted Susie's favourite subject - flowers. The idea is to let the watercolour be beautiful- spraying it and letting the colours run into each other. Then outlining the shapes before the paints could dry.



The gold pen looks remarkable in these paintings. The mantra is to 'not care'. As it happens I'm very good at not caring!

Discovering watercolour

The gregarious Susie Murphie was a delight in this one day workshop I attended this week at Art Est. Susie is a 5 colour is enough watercolourist and all shades mixed with these limited colours will 'go' which makes sense. Previous workshop focussed on drawing with watercolour lending an interest. Now I want to learn how to paint watercolour without the pen as a guide.

The first thing we learnt was that the more dilute the watercolour, the less intense on paper. It all makes sense of course but there are 5 grades of consistency and ways of telling which by how runny they are on the palette.

We did still life as it's the easier subject. But here is the reminder of what I have been taught time and again, shadows look most vibrant when the complementary colour is used. Put purple with yellow, green with orange and blue with red.

More Still Life Paintings

Inspired by Paul McCarthy, I went on a frenzy of still life painting recently.  Still life is most suitable for this time of the year as it is frequently too cold and wet to set up outside.  The subjects can be arranged as you please, and they do not move!  Furthermore, painting from life looks so much better than from photos or sketches.  There is virtually no downside with regards to the logistics of still life painting, although I do prefer to look at a lovely view than a lovely fruit. 

I did despair when I saw Margaret Olley's bush lemons after I had painted mine.  Of course she was a very famous and talented painter and I'm only starting out.  The point of the exercise is to try and paint a white tablecloth in the light, that actually had blue and bits of yellow in it.  Did you know that a white tablecloth isn't all white??

I'm quite fond of this painting of my gorgeous silver jug.  It has the most lovely reflections, and here I posed a pink camellia from my garden next to it.  The camellias in my garden are only just started to get going, whilst I know other people's gardens have finished with them.

Still life with poppies

Apologies for the photo but it was proving difficult to get the right exposure. In a bid to get the poppies on paper before they faded, I had to forego a shopping excursion with my 2 shopping buddies. Well it was probably worth it as this painting is really vibrant with those shades of yellow and orange against pthalo blue. Over the years I have finally made a friend of pthalo blue which used to take over all my paintings with the least encouragement.


Paul has unleashed something creative in me as I've completed 4 paintings in 2 weeks!

Still life with wattles

Wattles are in season and I was very taken by their yellow powdery beauty. For weeks I drove around with secuteurs in the car looking for an opportunity to snip some off, preferably from public property. Finally succeeded in sneaking these on a dark rainy night (location best not disclosed!).


Taking advice from Paul and Sarah, I plonked the lot on the studio floor for a more interesting composition. And attempted to follow Paul's colorful style by placing the mandarins in a teal blue bowl to make the colours sing.

Orchids

My mother in law grows these wonderful orchids that are in bloom now and lasts for weeks as cut flowers. She cuts some for me every year and I thought I'd paint them expressively as practice. So that the brush strokes are clear, I magnified the orchids and cropped the composition.

I textured the background ala Vincent and indicated the leaves. Resisted as best as I could the impulse to smoothen and blend colours on the petals. It's rather therapeutic to paint still life. They don't move and if you put an artificial light source on, it doesn't suffer the problems of landscape either.