Old Faucet with Sunflowers

11x12.5 watercolor on Kilimanjaro 140 lb cold press paper; Daniel Smith paints.  This is an imaginary country still life with the vivid sunflowers, old rusty hydrant faucet and weathered wood barn wall behind.

Pasture-ized Milk Cows

15x5.5 watercolor of a tranquil countryside of rolling hills and milk cows enjoying the sun and green grass.

White Barns

7.5 x 11 watercolor, first painted a few years ago, then the other day unframed it and reworked parts of it.  I don't do too many landscapes but this scene is one of my favorites.  Landscapes are fine as long as there are some signs of life such as animals or buildings.

Reflection Waterlily Leaf

15x11 watercolor on Fabriano 140 lb cold press rough paper and Daniel Smith paints.  This pond scene was my second demo yesterday for the class.  We studied atmospheric effects in water such as this leaf reflection.  My colors are exaggerated of course, no plain browns and greens here.

Picnic Basket still life

11x15 watercolor demo today for my workshop held at my studio.  I cropped an old photo of a store window display, changed colors around then drew and painted this on Acquerello 140 lb cold press paper by Dick Blick.

Natural Daisies

7.25 x 11 watercolor on Saunders 140 lb cold press paper, an exercise in negative painting in this imaginary nature scene.
To make the splats for flower centers I stood on a chair about 5 feet above the paper, and with loaded brush squeezed varying shades of browns and let them fall.  Where those landed then became the central portion of each daisy.  I then painted around each with mixed pale value green, then several values of greens to carve out leaves and stems.  Finally I took a rigger brush when dry and put in positive shaped dark brown twigs.

Woven Strawberry - watercolor weaving how to do it

15x11 watercolor of a very large strawberry painted twice on separate 140 lb cold press Kilimanjaro paper, then cut one into horizontal strips and the other into vertical strips to weave together.  I'll show the step progression from beginning to end so that you may get up the courage to try a weaving yourself.

 Two drawings side by side on large backing board

 Crowns in mixed greens but not totally identical - wet on dry

 Closer view of first one done and yellow green underneath

 Added a bead wash of transparent pyrrol orange + gamboge

 More paint:  Permanent red by DaVinci

 Continuing on down adding Grumbacher true red, permanent rose

 First berry finished with thalo yellow green at bottom

 Second berry at the crown with small amount quinacridone gold

 Adding pink and reds very wetly

 More permanent red, plus colors above

 Finished berry - water spritzed onto it and gamboge splatters

 Side by side views

 Background mix of UB, cobalt, permanent rose, arylide; one diagonal blue gingham square

 More squares with Prussian, cobalt teal blue, mixed purples

 Both strawberries completed! Close but not identical

Cut one into vertical strips then horizontal 3/4 to 1" in width, with slight wavy lines

 Weaving begun at top of vertical image

 Continuing on downwards


The left one is now the only one with 3 strips left over that I'll save in the collage bin!

Enjoy if you try this technique, just give it a go!  NOTE:  Update! See new post on weaving tulips for April/May 2015 here