A Field Trip With Crayons

I haven't posted here for a while, since I've taken a slight detour from watercolor to play around with sketchbooking, which led to the WetCanvas Weekend Drawing Event. I'm working my way through Suzette Morrow's "Make Sketchbook a Habit" and today is Day 12 - "be a kid again". I decided to combine both events, doing my WDE sketch in good old Crayolas.

"Sheep in Field" 7 x 7 approx., Crayona Crayons

Photo by Yorky, provided by WDE host Signchick

Tulip Magnolia

My next door neighbor has this beautiful tulip magnolia tree that sits right at the property line, so to many people it looks like it belongs to me. I take advantage of it's closeness to photograph it and to paint it every spring. This year the blossoms were more prolific than usual. "Tulip Magnolia" is 11x15

Lavender's Blue

I found these Clematis hiding among many much larger plants at the NJ Botanical Gardens at Skylands. The sun was peeking through the shade at just the right angle to light up these blue/purple beauties.

15x11

Miniature Orchid Sketch

I bought this miniature orchid at the flower show. A leap of faith for me, as I somehow manage to kill live flowers/plants almost immediately. I did the sketch from life, as opposed to working from a photo like I usually do. It was nice being able to see how everything worked, and to turn the plant if I needed to see better. And so far I've kept it alive for two weeks. LOL

Small Orchid Painting for SWAP

This is a small 5 x 7 that I did for our SWAP group. It went to Brenda in Texas. I did it from a photo I took at the Phila. Flower Show recently. I have lots of good reference photos from this show, so it should keep me busy for a while.

Monochromatic Snow Scene

I painted this snow scene with just Paynes gray for a project on one of my watercolor forums. It's from a photo I took a week and a half ago when we had almost 2 feet of snow.

Snow Scenes From a Solo Sketchcrawl

Yesterday was the 26th "Worldwide Sketchcrawl" . I usually do the sketchcrawls with my sister Joan, but yesterday I did a solo crawl from the warmth and comfort of my home. I only managed two sketches, one from my front window looking at the house across the street, and one from my back window looking at my backyard and some of the houses behind me. I did these as I would have on location, with my Cotman kit and a waterbrush.

Pa-Rum-Pa-Pum-Pum! Merry Christmas!

My grandson, Brandon, posed for my Christmas card this year. With 10 grandchildren, I always have lots of models to choose from.

And Now the 7 "Things About Me"

1. I am old enough to remember when my siblings and I paid 50 cents for general admission seats at Yankee Stadium on "Ladies Day".
2. I was an "athlete wannabe" when I was a child, and this syndrome has recently reared it's head again. I am now playing over 60 basketball, and participated in this event at the 2009 New Jersey Senior Olympics.
3. I started learning to play piano a year ago. Although my grown children flee to another room when I play, I'm enjoying myself immensely, and my grandchildren don't seem to mind hearing me play.
4. My two favorite places are the coast of Maine, and Hawaii.
5. I taught sunday school (or CCD to us Catholics) for 13 years.
6. I received an award at the very first art show that I participated in - and it was the Grumbacher Silver Medal.
7. I love to paint flowers - possibly because I can't seem to grow them without killing them.

I was recently "tagged" with the "Kreativ Blogger" award by Teresa Palomar Lois, http://www.lostinwonder.blogspot.com/. Thank you Teresa! The purpose of these blogger awards is introduce our favorite artist-bloggers to others. The rules for this one are to tell 7 things about yourself, and to pass the award on to 7 other artists. I have been tagged several times, and have pretty much run out of people to pass the award on to - with one exception, and that would be my sister Joan. So I'm going to cheat a little and just list some of my favorite artists and give you their websites in the hopes that they will become your favorites too.

1. Gerald Brommer - http://www.newmastersgallery.com/ArtistsB/brommer.htm

2. Jean Grastorf - http://www.jeangrastorf.com/

3. Susie Short - http://www.susieshort.com/

4. Ann Pember - http://www.annpember.com/

5. Nicholas Simmons - http://nicholassimmons.com/

6. Karen Knutson - http://karenknutson.com/

and last but not least - and the one I WILL pass this award on to:

7. Joan Tavolott - http://www.watercolorsbyjoan.blogspot.com/ - Joan recently returned from a trip to Paris. You will love her small Paris paintings!

Hangin' at the Y

This month, my friends and I, who call ourselves "Les Belles Artistes" have an exhibit at one of our local YMCA's, in Wyckoff, NJ. We have all been painting together at art classes and workshops on and off for many years. They are all talented artists, and I am proud to be among them. Here is our group, and me in front of "my wall".

Bouquet

I received this bouquet for my birthday this past March. I thought it would make a great painting, so I painted it twice - once as a birthday card for my granddaughter, and just recently as a 5x7 for my SWAP partner (Sharing With Artist Partners). It went all the way to Ursula in Brazil. The mail was a little slow, so I was on pins and needles hoping that it hadn't gone astray. The SWAP is a secret, but now that my partner has received it I can post it here.

"Birthday Bouquet" 5x7

Rhododendrons

This spring, I bought several new rhododendron plants for my front and back yards. I took a lot of photos of them when they were in bloom, and painted this one recently.

"Rhododendrons" 11x15

Natalie's Sunflowers

Yes, I've been painting, but I haven't posted any new ones in a while. This one is from July, when my painting buddy, Natalie, brought her sunflower plant in for us to paint.

"Natalie's Sunflowers" 11x15

Plein air at Skylands

This was painted outdoors at Skylands Botanical Gardens on a 7x10 Arches watercolor block, with my Cotman kit and a water brush. It was painted the same day that I took the reference photo for the tree peony below.

Pink and White Tree Peony

This is a quarter sheet of a pink tree peony from my photo taken at Skylands Botanical Gardens in New Jersey. As usual with peonies, it was drooping and I had to hold it up to photograph it.

Love and Peace

It's SWAP group time again, and this is the painting I did for the swap. This time it didn't go far, as my partner Christine is from New York. I grow these "Love and Peace" roses in my backyard. The painting is 5x7.

Sketchcrawl 22

Saturday morning was another rainy, miserable day to have a sketchcrawl. I love doing the sketchcrawls, but so far we have not had the greatest weather for outdoor sketching. So my sister Joan and I decided to do something that we had wanted to do for a while, that is, to sketch at one of the NYC museums. We drove into Manhattan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and found an unoccupied bench in the Greek and Roman room. This is my sketch of a Marble Statue of a Muse. Did you know that they only allow pencil sketching in the museum?

I did several other sketches which you can see on the sketchcrawl forum (http://www.sketchcrawl.com/) and then we went to see the AWS show. What a great show! I wish I could have spent longer there, soaking up the great art and hoping that some of it would rub off on my own watercolors.

A Bunch of Daffodils

As planned, we painted daffodils today. There were a few different kinds, which made it more interesting. They were in some sort of a square-ish glass container with beads hanging from it - I wasn't really crazy about it so I just did the flowers. This one was also a quick one, as my friend usually leaves early and she took her flowers with her again. Oh, both this one and the tulips from yesterday are quarter sheets.

Yellow Tulips

One of my painting buddies brought a pot of yellow tulips to our group on Thursday and I got to paint these from life. I had to be quick, since she was leaving early and the tulips were leaving with her. Tomorrow she says she is bringing daffolils. I'm getting quite a workout in painting yellows this month.

A Cyber Award

My sister Joan http://www.watercolorsbyjoan.blogspot.com/ presented me with this cyber award (do you think she might be a little biased?). Here's what she said about me in her blog:

" Michelle Himes (my sister) who's wonderful watercolors inspired me to begin watercolor painting, She is a good art partner, plein air partner, and workshop partner whenever I want one, and a great sister too." Right back at you, Joan!

There are a few of these awards going around, and I've been "awarded" by a few of them before, and embarrassed to admit that I did not always respond to them. I've decided to respond to this one. The "rules" are to name seven things that I love (easy), and to name 7 other artists that I think deserve this award (a little harder). Not that I can't think of many artists that deserve an award for their passion for painting, but since Joan and I know a lot of the same people, it's difficult to come up with someone new.

Here are my choices for the "A Passion for Painting" award:

Cecilia Price - http://www.artmaker-cecilia-price2.blogspot.com/ Cia paints beautiful flowers, and has made some great instructional CD's for her students, and sells her work on eBay. I've known her through several art forums for many years.

Enrico Casarosa - http://www.sketchcrawl.blog/ - Enrico is the "inventor" of the Worldwide Sketchcrawl. I discovered this phenomena a while ago, and have participated in several of the crawls. Enrico and his sketchcrawl have inspired me to start drawing again.

Marilyn Fuerstenberg - http://www.marilynfuerstenberg.blogspot.com/ - You will love Marilyn's beautiful watercolors.

Jane James - http://www.janefranart.blogspot.com/ - Jane is equally proficient in watercolor and pastel, is very versatile and does wonderful realistic and abstract work, landscapes, figures, and animals.

Susie Short - http://www.susieshort.com/ - I "met" Susie when I stumbled into her Yahoo group for watercolors about 10 years ago. Susie is an awesome watercolorist, and teacher, and has helped me out with my paintings many times.

And the last is a group of friends that I have painted with for many years - http://www.lesbellesartistes.blogspot.com/ - I love these girls

And the 7 things I love:

1.Family

2.Friends

3. Art, especially watercolor

4. the beach

5. summertime

6. Maine

7. ice cream

Eric Wiegardt Workshop Day 3

After my disappointing painting of boats, Eric's next demo was a street scene. Hmmm....I didn't have any street photos. I watched his demo of a street in Italy with some people walking. The lesson was on combining shapes. When I looked through my photos, I found one that I thought I could use for the lesson. It is a photo of a couple of people walking down to "Fish Beach" on Monhegan Island, Maine. One of the people was my sister Joan. We had gone there to paint, so I just turned the other person into myself to make it more personal.

This time we worked on wet paper, and I had a little bit of trouble making my buildings hold an edge, which made them look a little wonky, but that's part of doing a "loose" painting. Here is my version of a "street scene" (done in a place that doesn't even have streets).

On Day 4, Eric did his demo of a market with a flower stand and several people. It was loose and colorful. I started a painting of some people walking down a garden path. I haven't finished it yet, but Eric liked it enough to have me put it up for "gallery night" on Day 5, even though it was clearly not completed. I will post it here on my blog when I finish it. The last day, Friday, was only a partial day, so I watched the demo Eric did of a snow scene, and then worked some more on my garden painting. It was a great workshop - wonderful demos, lots of painting time, hanging out with other artists for a week, a few walks on the beach, and a party at the end while we admired each other's paintings.

Eric Wiegardt Workshop Day 1

Two weeks ago my sister Joan and I took a workshop in Myrtle Beach with Eric Wiegardt. We painted several full sheet landscapes using big brushes. It was a little outside the box for me, as I usually paint flowers, and I am definitely not known to be a loose painter.

The first day concentrated on values, and we were required to do a value study before each painting. Value studies are not new for me, I've been taught to do them before, but I rarely do them. This time I did, and they really do help. Eric demonstrated value ranges with a monochromatic version and a full color version of a barn with some outbuildings. Since I had a similar photo in my stash, I decided to paint my own barn. I used burnt umber as my color. Following his demo, I did a graded wash for an underpainting, and then tried to stick to my 3-value study. This is the result.

Day two was a boat demo, and then I did a boat painting. The demo was about not overmixing your colors. I'm pretty good about my colors, but I am horrendous at drawing boats, so I am not going to post my boat painting here. So on to day 3.

White Rose

Here's a small white rose that I painted for the latest SWAP. I like painting white flowers - they always pop against a dark background, and it's a challenge to paint the shadows, keep them colorful and yet still make them look "white".

Rings Around the Roses

I painted this abstract with a little help from Kay Smith http://www.kaysmithbrushworks.us/. Kay had recently taken a workshop with Karlyn Holman, and had posted one of her workshop paintings on WetCanvas. I liked it and asked a lot of questions, and Kay sort of guided me through the process that she used. I had a lot of fun and will definitely try this again.

Those sideways "daisies" are actually Chrysanthemums, but they sure look like daisies to me. (I just spent about an hour trying to get blogger to put the image in horizontally - does anyone know why it insists on showing it sideways?). My friend Natalie brought them to our painting group today, and I painted them on wet hot pressed paper with watercolor and Karan d'ache watercolor crayons. I usually work from photos, but I couldn't resist these colorful, cheerful cut flowers on a cold, gray, icy day. 11x15

Marigolds

These marigolds were painted sometime in December, but I hadn't gotten around to posting them during all the Christmas festivities. I love their bright yellow faces!

Marigolds - 11x15 on Arches

Another January Sketchcrawl

Yesterday was Sketchcrawl #21, and being January, it was COLD. There was still some isolated snow patches on the ground and they were predicting more snow later in the day. I went out early and did a sketch in my car of a path and some trees at our local park. While I was sketching it started to snow, and since I had to deliver a painting to a juried show after 12:00, I decided to go home and do that before the roads got bad. After dropping off the painting, I came home to get some lunch, intending to go out to sketch again afterwards. As I pulled into my driveway I decided to sketch the Christmas-light deer on my front lawn. By the time I finished with that, it was snowing really hard and sticking, so I cut my sketchcrawl short for the day. I am a real weenie about cold weather, and especially about driving in snow, so I'm pretty happy with getting in two actual outdoor sketches.

If anyone would like to know more about Sketchcrawl, and to see the sketches from around the world, you can find them here: http://www.sketchcrawl.com/

Christmas 2008

May you find the gifts of peace, love and joy this Christmas.

This was the image for my Christmas card this year. Thank you to grandsons Andrew, Matthew and Brandon for being my models.

Experimenting with Acrylics

My friend Natalie has been taking a class where she uses liquid acrylics, stamping, scraping, and layering, and all manner of interesting stuff. She gave us a mini "workshop" at our usual Thursday painting group to show us what she learned. Most of what she did was too complicated for a first timer, so I tried to simplify. Here is one of my finished pieces. (I have another one that I like much better using red, black and gold, but it too closely resembles something that I used for inspiration, so I am afraid to post it here).

This one would be my second best out of four tries. I started with a quarter sheet of Arches coated with gloss medium. I brushed on a thin layer of raw sienna (quin gold would have been better but I didn't have it), floated a bit of turquoise, scratched and stamped and let it dry. I stamped an interesting border (borrowed the stamps) on top, and sectioned off a vertical band and painted some narrow borders. I used a "writing" stamp in the vertical border. Lastly, I painted the orchid with gesso mixed with gloss medium, and mixed some shadow colors and painted the leaves. What I liked about this is the underneath layers showing through. The samples my friend brought were a lot more sophisticated in this technique. And I liked designing the different borders. I occasionally make use of borders in my watercolors, so this wasn't entirely new.What I didn't like was the shine from the gloss medium that we mixed with the paint, and the fact that the paint dried too fast. I would love to incorporate what I learned into a straight watercolor painting, or possibly one using liquid acrylics but without the gloss medium.

It's Worldwide Sketchcrawl Time Again

Saturday was the 20th "Worldwide Sketchcrawl", but it was not the greatest day for outdoor sketching. My sister Joan and I started out at a local park where I knew we could sketch from a gazebo and from an indoor observatory. Unfortunately, the building was closed, but we did manage a sketch of the pond from the gazebo. It was only drizzling at this point. Since we couldn't get into the building, we drove off to the site of a historic building called the Hermitage in HoHoKus. It's an old "gingerbread" type house with lots of additions - all sorts of roofs, chimneys, and windows - perfect for someone like me who has trouble with perspective. :-) We found a parking spot with a good view of the side of the building - no parking at the front. It was raining harder by now, but we were all warm and cozy in the car. I actually enjoyed sketching all the nooks and crannies of the building. Then we moved on to a local plant nursery where they had pumpkins on display. By now it was POURING! We were right in front of several pumpkin displays but could only see them for a few minutes at a time, before the windshield was so covered with rain that the pumpkins were a big blur. Whenever Joan saw me squinting, she would put the wipers on for a few seconds to clear things up. After that, we attempted to sketch at Barnes and Noble, but it was very crowded - all the tables at the cafe and all the seats in the reading area were taken, and the occupants didn't look like they were leaving any time this century, so we decided to call it a day and went home with only three sketches. All in all, I think we did pretty well considering.

Group Show

Last year six friends and I formed a watercolor group for the purpose of exhibiting our work in local venues. Today we "hung" our second show at the Louis Bay 2nd Library in Hawthorne, NJ. I'm really proud to be a part of this excellent group of artists.

Peony

This pale pink peony was so much fun to paint with it's ruffly petals and the soft yellows, pinks and blues.

May Bouquet

This is another of the paintings I started in the Janet Walsh workshop in May. It was started without drawing. I just started painting in the flowers as I saw them, starting from the top and letting the paint run downward, for the first wash. I did draw in a few of the azaleas after the first wash dried, so that I could paint in the deeper shadows, and I drew the bowl in after the flowers were done. I think I am going to leave the background white on this one.

11x15 on Arches cold press

Tree Peony

In May I took a workshop with Janet Walsh on painting florals as still lifes. In one of the first exercises Janet had us hold a flower in our hands and paint it. I chose this beautiful dark magenta tree peony. Later in the workshop we got to try some liquid acrylics for backgrounds, and I added a yellow green background. I thought it needed a more interesting background, so yesterday I toned down the yellow green with some greens, blues and pinks, and added more leaves.

Rhodies 1 & 2

These two Rhododendron paintings were painted simultaneously - I worked on one while the other dried. Both were started with an underpainting, and then painted negatively without drawing. I like the soft gentleness of the first one, and stopped painting earlier than usual so I wouldn't lose that. I worked on the second one a little more to get some depth into the darker flowers.

Amaryllis Collage

This collage was done for a project on WetCanvas. The object was to take an old painting and cut it up, and weave another painting, or other paper through it, adding other media, to make a new piece of art. I cut the old amaryllis painting into strips, and used matte medium to paste it onto black paper. I interspersed five strips of gold scrapbooking paper and went over the watercolored stamens with a gold pen. Now I need a name for the new piece.

Sketchcrawl 19 - Carousel Dragon

This was the last sketch I did during the "Sketchcrawl #19" on Saturday. I never got to finish it because they closed the carousel at 5:00 p.m. sharp, and started to lower the metal doors that closed it in while I was still sitting there. The rest of the dragon is a dark green with some yellow green accents. I had to pick up and move a few times since the dragon did not always stop in front of me when the ride stopped. You can see all the sketches that my sister Joan and I did, and read all about our sketchcrawl here http://www.sketchcrawl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3106

What is a "Sketchcrawl"? Several years ago an artist named Enrico Casarosa from California spent an entire day sketching in the San Francisco area. He thought it would be more fun to do it again with friends, and he made a blog about it, and the "Worldwide Sketchcrawl" was born. You can read about this fun activity at http://www.sketchcrawl.com/

Baby Louis

This is a quarter sheet painting of my 10th and newest grandchild. Isn't he a cutie! I'm not completely happy with the composition, and I may end up cropping some of the bottom off, but then I keep changing my mind. I won't cut unless I'm positive.

I love that rosy cheeked, innocent "newborn" look, and they don't stay that way long. Louis is now three months old and he has already changed a lot.

Irises

I painted these irises from life at my Thursday painting session with my friends. Anna, one of the other artists, picked these from her garden for us to use as reference. I love the purple/yellow/green combination.

"Anna's Irises" 11x15

This duo was painted from a photo I took at Grey's Iris Garden last year. I like the rich red/purples contrasted with the lighter tops.
"Twin Irises" 15x11

Tulips

Nothing says Springtime like a bunch of happy tulips!

11x15 on Arches cold press

Bouquet on Masa

I painted this one from life on a quarter sheet of Masa paper, using my favorite crinkle technique. I did something different this time, in that I usually adhere the Masa to a piece of watercolor paper first, and this time I didn't. Supposedly it is better to mount first because the paper is very delicate when wet, but it was only a quarter sheet and it was fine. I actually liked the feel of painting on it unmounted and may stick with unmounted sheets unless I am working much larger.

Trying a New Medium - Pastel

Every once in a while I get the urge to try a new medium, so when a one day pastel workshop was offered less than two miles from my home, I was there! Below is a still life that I did in the workshop by Christina Debarry http://www.debarrystudioarts.com/ , and a solo attempt at some dogwood blossoms that I did after the workshop. Both of these were done on Strathmore paper with Nupastels.