Kitchen Window.

Kitchen Window.  Mixed Media.
Approximately 9.5 x 7 inches.

This devolved into an everything but the kitchen sink painting.  My inspiration was the dwarf oak leaf hydrangeas, which are looking quire lovely outside my kitchen window (below), but I totally lost the shape when I tried to translate my memory into a painting.  You can see some of the hints of leaf shapes in the quin burt orange above.

I think, that in this case, I might have to look at the photo to get the shapes I want.

The final product, is watercolor, opaque watercolor, caran d'ache crayon, and pencil.  Whew.

So, This Is Grapefruit

So, This Is Grapefruit.  Watercolor.
5 x 8.5 inches.

Last week at the fruit market (Country Fresh--if you live in Cincinnati and haven't visited, you should go!)  I found the most gorgeous Texas Grapefruit parked next to a deep purple red apple.  Aha.  I thought.  This would make a most excellent still life, so I bought some.

Well.  I also decided that I should try and clean the paint out of the mixing portion of my palette.....and that was my downfall.  Goodbye grapefruit, and hello landscape.  Grumble, grumble, grumble.  Worse, someone ate the grapefruit and the apple.

Phthalo green, phthalo blue gs, permanent orange deep, hansa yellow medium and a jumble of junk from my palette.....on Kilamanjaro 300 lb cold press paper,

House & Tree

House & Tree.  Watercolor.
6.25 x 8 inches.

It's been a beautiful fall in Cincinnati.  The skies are almost too blue.  The trees did end up putting on a show, and at the beginning of the last week, they got just beautiful.  Especially the gingkos.  For some reason, I always thought ginkgo trees were tall and skinny.  I've painted some before--you can see one HERE.    It turns out, they come more widespread like oaks.

This is a totally made up landscape.  It's almost the same palette as the last gingko I painted--in this case three warms:  quin burnt orange, quin gold, and nickel azo yellow and one cool--phthalo blue rs.  The paper is Kilamanjaro from Cheap Joes. 300 lb cold press.

Red Roof

Red Roof.  Watercolor on Yupo.
8 x 10 inches.

My second crack at Yupo.  In a promising turn of events, the painting started as a landscape and finished as a landscape. More disappointing, it was supposed to involve trees....

I really like the intensity of the color that stays on top of the paper, and love the texture you can bring out.

In this case, I have a whole conglomeration of colors involved, so I can't describe my palette.

I'm looking forward to trying to prepare these to hang--I think I can spray them with krylon and then mount them to a board/cradle which is promising if you've ever had to frame art....!  However, I do not own either krylon, the boards, or the paint to finish the sides of the cradle.  This may take me a minute.....

Evolution of a Painting

Sycamore and Storm Front.  Watercolor and Crayon.
12 x 11 inches.

A while back, I started a tree, that was a combination of watercolor and crayon. You can read about it here.  I didn't throw it away, but didn't think it was even a remotely successful painting. I snapped a picture with my phone yesterday, so you can see where I was when I left it to sit on a pile of art in my basement (below).