watercolor painting Archives - Page 11 of 19

Hot Day at the Easel

The weather in New York has been really hot. It’s not that unusual, in fact if it’s going to be hot here it better be hot in July. I don’t want to hear anything from the people who like the cold weather. If anyone complains about the heat I remind them that if they wait we will have snow soon enough. And it would be too soon for me. Guaranteed.

With my babysitting over, and the heat outside reaching the real feel temperature of 110F, I planned on staying in with the air conditioning on and painting. Since I’ve been pushing myself to work from photographs lately, I looked through some of the latest and decided to keep going with the sunflowers.

Twenty minutes at a time was my plan. I thought I would work on this for the allotted time and stop. I sketched in the composition and went in with paint as you can see here.

Another twenty minutes later and I’m at this not quite done stage. I tried to walk away from painting rather than look at it with a critical eye. I see way too much in photos so this is hard work for me.

Sunflowers on the Table (c)2011 Dora Sislian Themelis
12×16 Watercolor on Lanaquarelle paper

This is the finished painting. I have thoughts on this that I will not air out loud. I will leave the critique to you readers. Sometimes I think I should stop painting all together at the first twenty minutes, but that’s just my opinion.

Quick Watercolor While Busy

Lone Shell (c)2011 Dora Sislian Themelis
7×11 Watercolor Canson paper

Busy will be my buzz word for this coming week. I am babysitting my little mushy while Son#1 and Gorgeous are away on vacation. Yay for us, we get to see our grand baby morning, noon and night. I’m not sure if any painting will be happening while we entertain our charge.

I have plenty to do to prepare like fill the refrigerator with food and do laundry. I want to be as free as possible. Somehow in my busy frenzy yesterday afternoon I had the thought to do a quick watercolor painting of a piece of shell I threw in my bag from the beach last weekend. Twenty minutes and done.

You know how it is when you get an itch you just gotta scratch! If my paints were not readily available maybe this would not have worked out, but they were and I did it. Lucky me!

Big Yellow Umbrella at the Beach

Today was an amazing beach day at Pt. Lookout, N.Y. At home it seemed as if the weather would not cooperate, cloudy and overcast with a hint of a sprinkle. There was no way I wasn’t going to the beach. No way. I packed myself up and left. Total drive time to the beach was fifteen minutes without traffic. I arrived at just past noon.

Other people must have thought it wouldn’t be a good day, but it turned out beautiful. Like I always say: Heaven is an empty beach. After relaxing in my chair for a while and having lunch, I got out my trusty travel watercolor set and pad and set to work painting the big yellow umbrella right in front of me.

Big Yellow Umbrella (c)2011 Dora Sislian Themelis
7×11 Watercolor on Canson paper

Twenty minutes and I was finished with this painting. I don’t know if it’s the paper that dries so quickly or the beach weather. It was a pleasure to sketch with the paint and forgo the pencil for most of this work. I did draw just a little to get some proportions correct, but overall I just went with paint. And it was good.

Off on Tangents, but Painting Happened Nontheless

My day began with a bang. Not really a bang, but maybe there’s another word for it. I was minding my own business pouring my second cup of coffee on a nice, quiet morning. I reached for the half and half, yes I like half and half, and started to squeeze the carton. Let me explain, I get a carton and open the folded and sealed top to form a spout and then I close it up. If I squeeze the carton a nice small stream of milk comes out. Nice and neat.

Well SOMEBODY opened the carton for the spout, and I, unknowingly (not paying attention), pour it out all over my lap, my tablecloth, and my coffee. I started to think to myself that this may not be my day, and it was only 8A.M.

I went along my day. Farmer’s market, supermarket, bank, etc. Errands. I thought I might not get to paint, but I knew I had been losing my fight with Mr. Resistance and, bad day or not this was going to be it.
What do you know? I had run out of the large size watercolor paper I had been using.

Now what? I really didn’t want to use the travel pad and my subject was going to be too big for the small Arches block. Great. I opened up the small block and now I see I need a spatula to get the protective paper off. I trudge to my basement studio, where the light still doesn’t work, and fetch the tool.

Now what? Phone call from The Mr. about some computer problem. I trudge back to the basement and the computer, flip it on and we discuss. Ok. I passed the kitchen and remembered I wanted to roast some peppers I had. So I go at that, almost forgetting my painting outside.

Then I think I should have painted these peppers, but now they’re all cut up. Bright idea: take photos, and add a shiny platter for contrast. That’ll show that book deal guy I can paint Greek themed stuff. Right.

I’m all finished with the peppers, put them in the oven after their photo shoot and remember I was supposed to be painting. I go back to the basement to get another watercolor block. While I’m running around my house I am thinking that I must be some crazy kind of idiot, going off on tangents, not getting anything done.

Finally, I get myself to my painting set-up and sketch out my idea. I wanted to paint from the photos of the sunflowers from the farm. I sketched out the subjects and started getting into it when I remember I had peppers roasting in the oven. Shades of my turkey debacle from a couple of weeks ago.

I run to my kitchen, remove the peppers that were not burned and returned to painting. Now can I get down to business? Yes, I did and I am happy to say it felt good.

Sunflowers Outside (c)2011 Dora Sislian Themelis
12×16 Watercolor on Lanaquarelle paper

The Wild Goose Chase

Early this spring I signed in on a vegetable cooperative. I had been wanting to do this since last year. I liked the idea of helping to keep a local farm in business and reap the benefits of fresh produce closer to home. Thus began my wild goose chase.

I received an email that my bi-weekly share was to begin two weeks ago and I was very excited to see what kind of produce I would be getting. Thrilled to say the least. I opted for a half share of all four items available: vegetables, fruits, eggs, and flowers.

The pick up site was about a twenty minute drive from my house. Perfect! I was going to be on the north shore of Long Island anyway that day, helping Gorgeous do some things. On my way home I would get my stuff. Well, my directions were no help, pointing my in the totally opposite direction than where I was supposed to be.

That day I had also chose to be the day I roasted a whole turkey for dinner and the subsequent leftovers. Also perfect! I had timed it so that the turkey would take a few hours, more than enough time for me to help Gorgeous, get my stuff and come home. So while I’m tooling around northern Nassau County looking for this pick up site, my goose is getting cooked at home, so to speak.

I drove back south, I drove back north, sweating in the traffic, thinking the turkey is on fire along with my house. God help me come home to an intact house without firemen and trucks outside, please. Back and forth I drove to no avail. The light bulb in my head said “Forget it. Just go home.” And so I did.

Two hours into my wild goose chase, I thankfully returned home to a happily roasting turkey and a safe house. I’ll never do that again. I got on the phone to the CSA to rant about their directions. The girl on the other end of the phone asked if I was sure it was MY day to pick up. Well, I did get the email. She replied she’d check the roster and return my call. As luck would have it, it was NOT my day. Phew!

Last week I set out again. This time without a turkey in the oven and with my trusty GPS. I made it in no time flat. What I didn’t know was that I was supposed to supply my own carrying bags. They had some plastic and we made do. See some of my haul below..

Blueberries, strawberries, half a dozen brown eggs, a bunch of lavender, kale, scallions, arugula, cilantro, salad turnips, beets, two zucchinis, some other squash-like thing, and a head of red leaf lettuce. All very lovely and delicious. And almost all gone by now.

What was the next logical thing to do with all this bounty besides eat it? Begin to paint a watercolor of it, of course.

Photos for Friday

Step into my garden..

The week has flown by after an event filled weekend. I’ll tell you about it next week when I have the chance. For now just enjoy a peek into my backyard garden. Last spring I painted a watercolor of the inside of the garden gate looking the other way. Will this be the next, with the view peering in?

A Distraction for Friday

A Distraction

Oh man, I had to get away from that last painting with something that didn’t need to make any sense!
I went out into the backyard garden with the watercolors determined to get away to a far away place. Planted out under the crabapple tree are these late blooming, salmon azaleas among other flowers and potted planters.

Twenty minutes was all I wanted and I did it. Done. I really didn’t care what I came away with as far as a finished product. Back in the saddle people! A little too washy in some spots, but who cares anyway? I mixed up some pleasing colors, threw them down on the paper with no objective other than the process of painting something, anything.

A little secret: on the other half of this paper was the dance party painting. It took all I had not to paint right over it. Would have been some kind of satisfying though.

Painting Figures in Watercolor

If you asked me to draw the figure in charcoal, pastel, or pen and ink I can be pretty loose and free with my style. Posed models, stationary people, or bodies doing a repetitive motion is easy enough to get down on the paper while drawing. Even painting a figure that isn’t moving very much is easy enough.

People dancing is another story. In gesture drawing you can get enough lines on the paper to suggest the human form in motion, but more than that, I don’t think so. That’s where photographs come in handy, for some artists, maybe not me.

When I use a photograph things get dicey. I see way too many details. I can’t squint enough to blur the two dimensional scene. With live models my brain decides what to keep and what to eliminate. In the latest watercolor I did of the dancing party I took my reference from that photo and drew the scene with the least amount of detail possible. Then I went in with color. Working like that felt like a coloring book, a cartoon.

These three paintings are examples of people sitting and standing in pretty much the same position, just enough stillness for me to capture their poses in watercolor paint. I posted about this class, which was my first intro to watercolor painting. It was a horrible class, but I made the best of the situation by painting everyone in it. The instructor didn’t like me one bit. I was not going to paint his painting of someone’s painting. Enough said. Look up the post if you want to read more about that.

Playing Laouto (c)2000 Dora Sislian Themelis
Watercolor

Gregory (c)2000 Dora Sislian Themelis
Watercolor

These two pieces were done live also. The top is of Son#1 while he was practicing his instrument. The second is Son#2 as he was doing his homework. Both were worked without prior drawing except for the shape of Son#1’s head just for proportion. Basically, I sketched in paint. Do these paintings look melancholy to you?

Here we are back at the dance party painting. I can see the difference between this and the others. How could I have treated this differently without seeking out a dance party to paint at? I didn’t try to go at it with just paint and no sketching in pencil. Would that have made the difference? It’s still a photograph though, not live.