Blog

After a rather long time of not touching my oil paints, I finally made it to the store and bought a smaller canvas. I realized having only a 3 ‘x 3 ‘  canvas at home was causing a bit of mental block because I  didn’t feel like I  had time to finish that big of painting! This is 2’x2’ which doesn’t sound that much smaller but when your staring at it with a paint brush it is  a lot less intimidating!

The flower is a hedgehog cactus from our front yard this spring ^_^

This was a fun doodle while I was waiting for my computer to charge this morning. Sometimes it is fun to just leave realism behind as opposed to working from a photo which is my normal method. I was trying to go for a more graphic almost 2-D quality to it, with mixed results.

Iris from the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

Its been weeks since picking up a paint brush and I felt rusty yesterday painting these.  However I am happy the overall result ^_^.

A very loose depiction of our pet cherry shrimp. Had a lot of fun being a little messy ^_^

So far I think we can call my results a vibrant mess ^_^. Seriously they do have beautiful color, but it is so different from traditional watercolors.  I am still working on my order of color application! Dry color then wet it? wet on wet? both?

For the little betta below I cheated and just broke out my Koi water colors to finish it off.

Seriously, look how many pens you end up using to try to get the color right.  I really respect anyone who has mastered these, it takes so much patience!

 

After some new meds and physical therapy for my hands, I am happy to report I am starting to feel more like myself! The poppies are from the Tucson Botanical Gardens. The top one I was trying out the Arteza pens my sister in law gave me. I still really struggle with the color first,, mix second.  The bottom koi watercolours.

The orchids are from the other week, using good old Prang student set. Based of the orchid blooming in my kitchen right now.

 

Still keeping it simple for the moment ^_^

This is the pair of clown fish that I we got for our salt water tank last summer.  It took a while for them to bond to each other but now they are buddies ^_^.

I haven’t been painting as much due to having some issues with my hands again >.<.  This painting doesn’t look to bad zoomed out, but if you compare it to the cardinal fish from last fall (which is a smaller painting) you can see if I was struggling with my lines. Luckily watercolour is a forgiving medium and clown fish are forgiving subjects  🙂 Hoping I will be up for some larger paintings soon!

 

 

Not perfect, but improving as I got warmed up again! Painting pets has some cross over with my day job  (vet school required some pretty detailed anatomy study) that being said it said it almost makes it worse when something is a little off >.<

 

This is a silk floss tree flower from our local zoo here in Tucson. It’s a little rough ( I didn’t sketch in pencil first, just free handed the watercolour), but it felt good getting some paint on paper!

 

The photo this was based off was taken visiting the Denver Botanical Gardens. I had a lot of trouble with the lily, and it is a little overdone, but generally I think it turned out fun ^_^