Heather's Wedding Flowers

My last painting has been of Heathers bridle bouquet.  The day after the wedding Heather had placed the flowers in a vase on her window sill.  I happened to take several photo's of the flowers.  So for the last couple of months I have been painting those flowers.

Beginning of the painting

Some of my practice paintings

Final painting but the colors are actually not true to the painting.

Paintings I have done this past year.

My first classes I used WN artist paint and Arches 140lb cold press paper.  When I started painting with Cathy Hillegas I started painting on Arches 300lb cold press paper and I really like it much better.   You can see some of Cathy's paintings.  http://cathyhillegas.com/works

THE PUT THE LINE ACROSS THE PAINTINGS FOR ANOTHER WEBSITE SO THE PAINTINGS COULDN'T BE COPIED.

ONE OF THE FIRST PAINTINGS I DID AFTER NOT PAINTING FOR 15 YEARS

Painting from photo...Irish countryside 

Painting from photo my Mary Lee Cerillo
It is my favorite.  I did the flower by glazing and my last glase with WN Opera really made the flower stand out.  I  had never studied a Monarch butterfly like I did when I painted this one

SUNFLOWER painted in Cathy Hillegas's watercolor class

My last painting in class from a photo of a building in a little town on the Amalfi coast.  I was just finished and getting ready to frame it and I discovered I dropped some water on the little lamp.  Just about ruined it.

My first painting I did in Cathy Hillegas's class.  She is a fantastic teacher.

Painting from photo of Galway Ireland

Painting from photo of Irish countryside

Watercolor Italy

March 2012

This is my last class painting.  It is from a photo and the scene is from the Amalfi Coast in Italy.  Right before taking the painting to be framed I was tweaking it and dripped a drop of water on the lamp.....the top ran into a black splot.  So I touched it up and had it framed...I worked too hard on this painting for it to be ruined.  I still love it.  

This is the final painting.  I am going to take it to my next watercolor class and get the opinion of my teacher to see what I might do to tweek it.  It isn't the best composition or drawing.  But the Yupo paper was the major point of the painting.  Could I actually paint a picture on it.  I did not give up and learned so much.  But I won't ever give up my Arches 300lb cold pressed paper.  I thought I was out of control painting on that paper....after YUPO it is looking very controllable. 

This is what developed of the vase from experimenting.  I decided to try saran wrap  to give the the vase texture and interest.  This was done several times and each time I added little bits of different colors especially a little purple.

I added more texture to the center of the sunflower with plastic backing for needlepoint.

Fro the center of this sunflower I used a finer needlepoint backing for the center.

Beginning of the final painting.  The calla lilly is what is left of the previous painting after washing off the whole painting.

After I put the first Yupo painting under the faucet, wiped it off with water and a little soap I started painting again.  As I explored how to use my paint on Yupo I let it lead me to the vase design and the background.  The flowers did not was off completely and I used the faded drawings to paint the new flowers.

First Watercolor on Yupo Paper

AFTER MY FIRST TRY I TOOK QTIPS AND ERASED THE ORANGE SUNFLOWER BECAUSE IT WAS COMPETING WITH THE CALLA LILY

I FIRST PAINTED THE SUNFLOWER BLUE AND LATER MADE IT PURPLE ANT THICKENED THE PETALS.  THIS IS

RIGHT BEFORE I TRIED TO DO THE BACKGROUND AND ENDED UP PUTTING IT UNDER THE SINK AND WIPING IT ALL OFF.  

I am trying to figure out if I want to change my blog to this "blogger.com".  Right now I am using Word Press but I want to see if there are any advantages in this blog.  So this is my experiment while I am painting my first Yupo watercolor.  First I am going to show the first paintings I did on this one sheet of Yupo 10 x 14 inches.  The idea was to experiment with it and try to paint looser. The reason I put this painting under the faucet was that my cerrulean blue HWC paint was to grainy and it looked like specks of lint all over the background.  The only part I really loved was the calla lily and I managed to splatter water all over it while trying to keep wiping off the background.  AHHHHH!