White Roses in Glass

I am so happy to do this painting after the painting challenge No.29 of Evhe’s blog A nos pinceaux  . I love the still lifes offered in her painting challenges. I am glad to paint another subject in white. I did a couple of  white floral paintings before in Merrill Magnolia and in Waterlily Series No.8. In this painting, only a very little area of the white roses is left as paper white. Almost all the petals are painted in quinacridone burnt orange, burnt sienna, raw sienna, indanthrone blue, cobalt blue, winsor violet , yellow ochre and aureolin.

Spring Bouquets

I finished this painting after the painting challenge No.28 in Evhe’s blog A nos pinceaux. I was very slow in painting and it was way past the due date to submit the painting when I finished it. I am very pleased with how this painting has turned out. I was able to use pure transparent paints with wet blending (i.e. no mixing of two paints on the palette but on the paper) to achieve the colors I wanted. In some places, I used glazes using pure colors in as much as 3-4 layers.

Surface : 9 by 12 inches on 140# Arches 

Canna Lilies Series No.7

I finished painting this canna lily a few days ago. I am really pleased with the result. I used glazing the paints and kept mixing different paint colors to the minimum. I have a long way to go to learn about glazing different colors in layers. Especially the transparent and semi-transparent watercolors. I still consider myself a beginner with regards to the knowledge on the properties of various pigments and their behavior.

Surface: On 9 by 12 inches 300-lb Kilimanjaro watercolor paper

Reference image from  Marc ‘macdragon’ of wetcanvas.com

 

Purple Tulip

I painted this tulip for the challenge No.28 of PADT. I used Ampersand Aquabord as the support to paint this in watercolor. I struggled to put more layers on the surface as it was underlying layers were moving and revealing the white surface of the clayboard. Anyhow, I managed to finish the painting.

Kingfisher

I tried to do this painting in a loose style. I had to constantly remind myself to let go of the details and free myself from the burden of tightening up. As a starting point, I think I did a fairly good job. Also, this is my first painting of a bird. Hope to paint more birds in the future.

Photo courtesy of  Gary Jones  from Paint My Photo

5 by 7 inches in Strathmore 500 Watercolor paper.

Three Birds

I painted this from my own still life – the first ever I am painting. I own these three bird curios and they sit on the mantle above the fireplace. But painting them was so darn difficult. I almost gave up because I had a hard time not to get too bogged down on the details. The temptation was too overwhelming. I did not include most of the details when I finally decided not to ditch it.

Almost 9 by 12 inches on Strathmore Bristol plate

Loire Valley,France

The painting Loire Valley is done after the March painting challenge from A Day Not Wasted blog in watercolors. I have been wanting to do street scenes in watercolors and this challenge presented a perfect opportunity for me. I am unsure of how the final outcome is. The visitors to this blog can let me know. Thanks for dropping by!

Spring Has Come

I did this painting after the challenge no. 24 of  A Nos Pinceux blog. I chose this photo  in the spirit of the arrival of spring season. I also love the vase featured in the reference photo and I just couldn’t wait to paint it. This is also the second time I am painting on yellow flowers. The first one I painted a few years back was an epic fail. I had no clue how to do the shadow in yellow flowers and after reading the watercolor forum discussion in wetcanvas that yellow flowers are difficult to paint, I lost all the motivation to paint yellow flowers. In fact I avoided painting any yellow flowers that catch my fancy. I used to drool over the yellow floral paintings of other successful water colorists. Over the years, I learned from online that you can use colors like green, burnt sienna, burnt umber, yellow ochre  and even purple in shadow areas. I used a few of these colors in the shadow areas of this painting. I am pretty much happy with the outcome.I used lampblack in this painting too.

I am not really crazy about the support I am using. It seems there is not much sizing on the Strathmore 500 Series. The water I laid down in the first wash dried up pretty fast. So I had to do wet on dry most of the time. I am not going to buy this support anymore. Usually I like to do a controlled wet on wet wash. So far Arches is still the winner for me.

Thread Spools in a Creamer

This painting is done for the Challenge # 33 of the Rookie Painter blog.  This is also the first time I am bravely using lamp black for a painting. From this challenge, I have learned that we can successfully use tube black paint in watercolor IF we know exactly what we are doing. The most important thing is never use the black paint directly onto the painting. It must always be layered over another color and then glazed to get the desired value. The slopping on the black paint directly will give you a dull, lifeless black; especially if the black pigment you are using is semi-transparent. I am not aware of any transparent black pigment and maybe this does not apply if the black pigment is opaque. Any watercolorist who have played around with black paint is welcome to comment here. Using lamp black for this painting has opened me to the possibilities of using it in my future paintings. For that I am so eager to try out and learn.

Almost 8 by 10 inches on Strathmore 500 watercolor paper

Canna Lilies Series No.6

I am not really happy with this but I decided to stop here and not do anymore correction.

Reference: Online – I am still searching for where I got it.

7 by 5 inches on 140# Arches cp watercolor paper