Red Admiral Butterfly Watercolor

This watercolor is inspired by an exercise in the book One Watercolor a Day by Veronica Lawlor in which you are supposed to paint a design, such as a butterfly, using masking fluid. After drawing your design in pencil on watercolor paper, you paint the masking fluid on the white paper first, then let it draw. Once it is draw (takes about fifteen minutes), you can paint on top of it and around it. When your paint dries, you can then carefully peel off the masking fluid (I used an eraser). You will now see the bright white of the paper. That’s the best way to get white in a watercolor painting: let the paper show through. I used masking fluid where you see veins of the leaves, white dots on the butterfly, and also for the orange areas. I painted in the orange after I peeled off the masking fluid.

I may try this exercise again with a different sort of design. Maybe I’ll look one up in a book – a castle might kind of interesting for example, or a dragon. Someone did a simple paintbrush with a variety of colors and got beautiful results. I originally thought of painting a bird, but it didn’t seem to lend itself well to a masking fluid project. I want something with different parts and pieces that can be separated with the white lines I create with the masking fluid.

Thank you to Michelle of Rambling Woods who helped me identify those red admiral butterflies last May. If you want to see what else I’ve been inspired to paint from nature, here is a red cardinal watercolor painting.

On a completely different note than a red admiral butterfly watercolor painting, here is a photograph of my daughter and my husband at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (I’m posting this so she can use it for a project in school, where the teacher said they can only use photos from Google Images (?!x!?)):

My favorite part of the Metropolitan Museum is the American Wing. If you have been there, what is your favorite part? Do you have a favorite in another art museum?

Blog Assessment and Watercolor Flowers

Sometimes you have been elsewhere than the blogosphere, and you want to convey some of what you have learned and seen, but you don’t always have a set tale or a method or a how-to or some other funky way of setting up the oh, so awesome post. So some of the places I have been: 1) skiing in Pennsylvania with my sons 2) strolling through Central Park in the cold snow with my husband and daughter 3) viewing the Chagall exhibit at the Jewish Museum 4) creating watercolor exercises like the wet on dry Gerber daisy flower above for the FB group One Watercolor a Day and 5) working away for various clients, including one project for anthropologists that started last June and may finally be close to becoming two new websites. I’m not going to say more about 5), because there is still more to be done, but maybe I can talk a bit about the other “subjects.”

On the topic of blogs, what is this blog about? I want to continue to share artwork; this blog can help propel me forward with creative ideas both for my traditional fine art and for illustration work that might be for client work. I would like to continue to share in Nature Notes, though I only participate when I have been photographing nature, and that has been slim pickings lately. Sometimes I talk about Highland Park – I’ve done Hurricane Sandy and some recent power outages (there were more tonight; friends on the South Side are not having fun). I used to do more recipes – my thinking in the future is maybe I will focus on teaching creative cooking. For example, how does one create a good soup? a tasty salad? Years ago I wanted to blog about how to get one’s children to eat healthy food. I still struggle with that, but my children probably do eat more vegetables than the average American, although only if placed directly in front of them in a manner that is appealing. I will sometimes post book reviews, but those take a lot of my energy and time, so expect those sparingly. There are Jewish topics, often of a creative nature like a piyut (liturgy poem), that I love to explore. In the past, I’ve interviewed artists and writers – maybe I’ll have the opportunity to more interviews. And with all of these topics, I love getting your feedback. If you share my enthusiasm for any of these topics, would love to hear so in a comment.

Getting back to my recent adventures, here is a favorite ski slope scene:

I wasn’t allowed to photograph the Tsfat synagogue painted by Chagall that I saw at the Jewish Museum, but I do want to say that my daughter was excited that she had been in that very synagogue. The painting had a more uplifting tone than the one of the Vilna synagogue right next to it – that synagogue, the one in Vilna, was destroyed by the Nazis in World War II.

So who else is assessing their blogs? Susan showed the Little Engine Train that Could as her blog in a podcast, and Jeri decided to put up a survey to assess her blog. Creative approaches!

For this blog post, I’ve said enough. Will have to save more conveying in a future post! To finish off, here is the wet-on-wet version of the Gerber daisy flower I painted:

Watercolors and Blackouts

I joined a wonderful online Facebook group related to the book One Watercolor a Day by Veronica Lawlor. You share the exercises you do from the book in a closed group. At the right is the first exercise, sometimes known as Day 1. You were supposed to experiment with different colors and marks on a page, keeping a set palette with each watercolor. I did a lot of what is called wet on wet – you apply water, then a color, then another color – it’s not easy to control, but one sometimes gets lovely results.

So I was wondering when am I going to fit in doing a watercolor a day? Or even one watercolor a week? This past Sunday I learned if you have sunlight but no power, you can paint and paint and paint. At about noon on Saturday we (and thousands of other Edison and Highland Park residents) lost power (there was a damaging fire at a substation in Edison, New Jersey). We did not get out power back until 4 pm on Sunday (others got power back at varying times). It was a totally unexpected blackout. Those who had bought generators after miserable Hurricane Sandy were happy(satisfied?) to use them.

I learned (again) how much we depend on technology and power. Indeed, I had a pile of work I needed to do, but it all had to wait. Happy to have a little space and time to paint with watercolors.

There is also a Facebook group for the book One Drawing a Day (see my review called One Drawing Per Week). I’ll try that one later – one can only do so much.

What would you do if you had no power?

Umbrellas Watercolor

You can see the original sketch for this painting and a previous watercolor of Raritan Avenue here. I actually rephotographed that painting and posted a new version.

The brighter less opaque colors in the watercolor on this page are done in gouache. I posted a detail of this painting last week on Google+. Go ahead and Plus One my watercolor Google+ posting, if you like.

Review with Female Cardinal

This female cardinal in my backyard was the first photograph I took in 2014. Note she is duller than her brightly colored male mate – she has one streak of red feathers to display. What was your first 2014 photograph?

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

• Lorri has a book review of The King of Schnorrers by Israel Zangwill.
• I can’t even begin to imagine the pain of losing a child. Phyllis continues to write after her son Sam has died; in this post, she talks about “the terrible vacuum of grief.“