Memorial Day Celebration

AMERICAN STILL LIFE

This is a day set aside to remember. Raised in a very patriotic family, and living in other lands, when I hear complaints about here, I can give it a quick thought and realize, nope, here is BETTER. I know first hand. Why do you think people are still streaming in?
The above tiny watercolor (4"X10") contains the Colors and a few objects hoping to symbolize how we all come from somewhere, and we all came here to participate in BETTER.
Now I need to finish the painting above, the scanner showed me some problems!

Exploring Facebook

Here is a little still life set up on a table. Next I would like to experiment with specific lighting.             


This weekend I've been seeing what I can do on Facebook. Mostly it seems to just lie there. However this weekend a lot of people turned up that I had lost track of, but now there is contact!

It sure takes a lot of time, but it was good to be in touch. Maybe it can stay that way.


Is anyone else having problems with Blogger today? I've lost the bar along the top where you can get to the Dashboard or search for other blogs, etc. To log in I had to go a really round about route, it was looking like I wasn't going to be able to ever post again. And the followers widget disappeared.

Challenges are are a bit like taking a class,

Pyramids, Sepia Watercolor 5X7

This week's challenge at Daily Paintworks is to do a value study. I needed that. This is the first attempt, a little watercolor (5X7). It's from a color photo clipped from a magazine or catalog rec'd a while back. In the color version (which was about 3X3) the sky at the top was quite a deep blue, then faded to beige/blue about half way down. The farthest pyramid was essentially the same light blue as the sky, then they were progressively more sand colored, warmer and warmer as they got closer. Have to do that again. My geometry was off, not theirs, that was not the focus.

 To be serious a value study should be done from a still life or plein air to really train the eye. Well, my eye. It's true the best way to learn the values is to paint them in stripes or bars until I get them right. Wonderful exercise. Do I haffta? (a distinct whine there.)

Pink Tulips, watercolor, 4X10, from photo by L.A. Brown

This is my reward for trying the monochromatic value study. This is from a photograph in a recent email from A Day not Wasted, L.A. Brown, a great photographer. Hence this one is not for sale without permission from him.

OK, time to go over to Rengstorff House for their special celebrations today, have to put the bustle in the car then change in their parking lot. It rides quite well in the back seat, there is certainly no room for it in the front seat with me.

Inside the church

The image for this was a photo supplied by A Day Not Wasted, an Artists Challenge site with wonderful photos. He is also a painter.
It was interesting to do something architectural, and with watercolor. In looking at the cast shadow as well as shading in the photo, it seemed the best medium to use to get the transparent washes for the cast shadows especially. In reality it was much darker, but in using pan watercolor it didn't go as dark as the original. It was also 140lb paper, and it was getting pretty wet, doing a lot of wet into wet painting.
This is using the new 4X10 inch Arches block. Interesting dimensions, sort of a "slice" view of things. I like it and the new 8X8, which fits in my watercolor bag that lives in the car.
In this picture the perspective got a little off in the farthest corridor, I kept losing track of the bottoms of the columns and the reflections! It was a highly polished floor.
All those rectangles helped with keeping the perspective in hand, the arched vaults and lintels were a different kind of challenge. (I think I need to buy some tracing paper.)