art

Watercolor Portraits: Man Reading

I did several watercolor paintings of this exercise: ” “Use a graphite pencil to draw a few lines … do notice the lighting hitting the face… Take your watercolor and add a few large shapes. Let dry; add other colors on top…play with different color and texture combinations.” I posted three of them in reverse order of when I did them (I did the bottom one first). Watercolor exercise is from the book One Watercolor a Day.

All of the remaining three portraits on this page are different depictions of my husband. The top one is not – he was a visiting friend. Our friend liked his portrait so much that he asked if he could keep it. So I scanned it into the computer and then presented the watercolor to him. Wonder if he will hang it in his office?

This is the first one I did – it has the least amount of color. Plus, I realized the exercise was really a portrait, and I had done the whole figure. What I really want to focus on here, in this bottom watercolor, is the book. Do you see the splatters of red paint along the spine? This book is a chumash (one of the five books of the Torah). It happens to be part of an edition of volumes that was presented to my father z”l as part of being honored by the Highland Park Kollel. That gives it special meaning, and I am happy to see my husband using that volume as part of his weekly learning.

I think I will do more watercolor portraits. By the way, if you come visit on a Sunday or weekday and start to read a book or your laptop, I might take out my paints, pencils and watercolor paper and start to paint you. You have been warned.

Textiles Pattern Watercolor Exercise

A continuation of my posts of watercolor exercises from One Watercolor a Day, here is a watercolor inspired by American Arts and Crafts patterns. Quick summary of the textiles pattern watercolor exercise (the book has more details and suggestions): “Choose a few elements of a textile print. Create small thumbnails, mixing up elements to come up with something new. ”

I enjoyed this exercise, though it did take a fair amount of thinking and time. Copying great art works is always a valuable exercise in general: one sees more carefully when one has to draw, paint or design a copy or similar image. I went to the library and took out some books. The first batch had Tiffany glass, but the exercise said textiles, so I went to the library again. This time I actually did find a book called American Arts and Crafts Textiles (other suggestions were Japanese or Peruvian textile inspirations, for example).

Here is the one of the six above that I liked best, mostly because it made best use of the medium of watercolor (note the background):

The design is part of a 1911 Richardson Silk Company pillow kit.

When you think of textiles and patterns, what comes to mind? Have you ever seen Arts and Crafts designs and found them inspiring?

Chanukah Pattern Watercolor

Finally, I have a little more time for watercolor painting. This is exercise 24 in One Watercolor a Day: Playing with Patterns – “Paint an element in one color and its different values…Create a square, then tile it…do a simple repeat.”

I created the initial illustration in Illustrator. Then I flipped the pattern both vertically and horizontally, so you have four versions of the tile. Next I printed the graphic on watercolor paper. I mixed various shades and tints of purple watercolor on my palette. I painted using thin watercolor brushes. Once the painting was dry, I scanned it back into my computer and cropped it with Photoshop.

For fun, using Photoshop, I decided to add a little more color (changed a bit of the purple to pale blue). I also added something that looks like a watercolor effect. It might be fun to reprint my Chanukah Pattern Watercolor in black and white and then paint it in multitude of colors. Or perhaps just a palette of blue, red and yellow. Both look a little messy to me, but they are just exercises.

What do you see in the pattern?

Flat Design: Armchair

What do you see in the above illustration? Does this look like a flat design armchair? (I looked up armchair – it is truly one word). Does it remind you of any particular profession? What does it evoke?

I have been redoing my website, the main part of my site in which I sell my web services such as WordPress training and small business web development. I decided a little illustration would be nice for my new Services page. Of course, the illustration itself is the hard part … I already fussed a lot over the illustration for the home page.

So one idea is to have little balloons or circles with flat design illustrations that represent some of the businesses or organizations for which I do websites. Maybe one might look like this:

Or like this:

I may just toss the circles all together. Meanwhile, I need to come up with a few more flat icons / illustrations to put together in one illustration. Ideas: pen and ink, camera, piles of books, light source from a lamp …

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been fussing over today (in between helping various clients with various issues). The main question for you is: Does the arm chair illustration remind you of any particular profession? Or can you think of any professions I might illustrate with a simple flat design of some sort?

Imagination Landscape Watercolor

I am quite pleased with this watercolor. It reminds me a bit of a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of a copse of birches. And that drawing I remembered in my subconscious mind from years ago from a book called The Art of Drawing by Bernard Chaet. The influence is the composition – note the placement of the birch copse. There is plenty of so-called “white space” on the drawing. One doesn’t have to stick the subject front and center with little room on the edges.

Do you have any artists, drawings or paintings, authors or books who enter your subconscious while you are creating?

Flowers Watercolor Exercise – Nasturtium

Note that the idea is not to get a botanical depiction of a nasturtium – for that, I probably would have done several pencil sketches first and concentrating on one flower. For me, it was to get lose and easy with watercolor yet still display the subject with some amount of realism and observation.

I am hoping I can continue doing watercolors and watercolor exercises – maybe if I aim for at least once a month, I’ll be successful at production!

Have a G’mar Chatimah Tova to all of those who observe Yom Kippur (Friday night to Saturday), and have a great weekend to everyone. The following week is the holiday of Sukkot, so I will be putting my creativity into decorating our Sukkah (and maybe some creativity into cooking as well).

Raspberry Watercolor, Raspberry Photo

I did the watercolor as a response to an exercise to paint something you observe in nature in the One Watercolor a Day book. The last time I posted a watercolor was my Sage Watercolor way back in April. I guess I’ve gotten distracted by both spring and summer gardening! More attractive to dig in the dirt than take out the paints, observe and record? Seems to be gardening won out this year.

The raspberries are not as sweet as the strawberries we get in the spring. But their season is longer. We get a few ones on the old cane in July; in August we start getting the bunches of raspberries on the new cane. Have you ever eaten raspberries fresh from the garden?

If you live in Highland Park or Edison, I can dig up a plant or two to give to you.

Blue House with Illustrated Bushes

Today I worked on some bushes. Not bushes outside my house (although those can certainly use trimming). No, I added two illustrated bushes to the front of the blue illustrated house I started last week.

Next step will probably be working on clouds. My plan is to add text to the inside of the clouds, so the illustration will “talk to you.”

I only found one tutorial on how to make the illustrated bushes. Maybe I will write my own? Unfortunately, I found the technique I used rather cumbersome, so I can’t say I would recommend it. So, no, probably no post on how to create illustrated bushes. But I would happy to read one written by someone else.

Blue House Illustration

This is third house illustration I have created. You can see one house illustration here and another house illustration here. I left out many details from this one. Is there a door? Do you see one in your head? In front of the “real” house, there are many bushes. I might add a few when I make the composite illustration. This house also has black outlines – the others do not. Oh, decisions, decisions.

And now comes the hard part – putting all three houses together in one mural. Will it work? I don’t know. Wish me luck. Maybe the tree illustrations, clouds and illustrative text will help.

Updated illustration:

I toned down all that black outline by adding some dark blue trim. I like the illustration a little better. Still not convinced all those lines work … ah, the problem with too many choices. I’m sure I’ll be fussing with this more.

Here is a third version:

Let’s play a game: How is this third house different than the other two?

Three Yellow Ribbons Round Tree Illustration

What! She’s making yet another tree illustration! Again? What this time …

Here’s the back story … Tony Orlando, who popularized the song Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree, visited Israel. He was encouraged to do something in support of families of the three kidnapped teens. He visited the families, and he asked the people of America to tie three yellow ribbons in support of the teens.

A friend in our area has started a little campaign selling yellow ribbons, with the money going back to Israel to support the families and soldiers searching for the teens. I confess I still haven’t gotten the ribbons, but I did write this post.

So what is the history of the yellow ribbon? There is a great article by Gerald E. Parsons on How the Yellow Ribbon Became a National Folk Symbol. It seems the yellow ribbons started getting used as a symbol in the early 1980’s in support of the hostages in Iran. Parsons writes: “Ultimately, the thing that makes the yellow ribbon a genuinely traditional symbol is neither its age nor its putative association with the American Civil War, but rather its capacity to take on new meanings, to fit new needs and, in a word, to evolve.”

On a related topic, the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurBoys was inspired by #BringBackOurGirls. There are actually, unfortunately, similarities between those kidnappings.

The names of the boys are Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Frenkel. Hashtag: #EyalGiladNaftali
The boys are close in age to my own teenage sons.