Sunday Sketches and Creative Tuesdays - Four Seasons Tree

Sundays seem so busy lately and I have been missing Sunday Sketches with Sophia of Blue Chair Diary! So this week I wanted to get back on track. I was thinking about the seasons recently and how we may have skipped one! Spring never seemed to come here or if it did it was so rainy that it was hard to notice. And yesterday felt like full on summer. (Yay!) Any decent day - the garden (and the weeds) call and I need to be outside working instead of inside on my computer. I did however make some time one rainy day and played with Creative Tuesday's (which I have also been missing lately) theme of "tree". I thought it might be fun to try my own variation of the Four Seasons Tree:

I have also been working on my pointillism tree painting (which if you're joining in at Paint Party Friday you've already seen).

WIP - Pointillist Tree

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's effort at Sunday Sketches and Creative Tuesdays but it may take me until the evening or when the forecasted rain arrives (sigh) to visit!

Paint Party Friday - Finishing something finally!

Do you ever start things and not finish them? It seems like I have a lot of unfinished projects in the works at the moment! I have made progress with my "dots" but it is not finished. Nor are my other painting WIPs but I did finally finish painting my Mexican Sketchbook. Yay!!

I took a Strathmore Windpower drawing sketchbook (with 80lb paper) to Mexico with me on vacation and tried to capture all the highlights of what I saw in this book. Some pages I painted there while others have been sitting since March with unfinished pencil sketches. This week I finally decided I was going to finish it,  and I did.

Here they are for Paint Party Friday. (Warning (and apologies) - there are a lot of pages so I will show most recently finished (and previously unshown) pages first.)

Sea Fan found beachcombimg

Statue of Balam

Beach Map

Sand Writing

Sergeant Majors and Brain Coral

Angelfish?

Variegated Foliage

Painted Cover

View from Balcony

Beach in late afternoon

Champion Fisher-Bird

Start of the Day

Sea Tang or Doctorfish?

Friendly Iguana

Mexican Flowers 1

Mexican Flowers - Hibiscus

Mexican Flower 2

Mexican Flowers - Bougainvillea

Mexican Flowers 3

Mexican Foliage - Banana Palm

Mexican Foliage - Purples

Mexican Foliage - Sun Palm?

Mexican Foliage - Elephant Ears

Pina Colada (help your self to one at the party!)

Eagle Ray

Sea Turtle

Sting Ray

Sketchbook pre-vacation

Travelling Paint Set

Travelling Pen Set

Do you ever paint on vacation? I found it to be very relaxing and a nice little break from reading, plus now I have a fabulous and unique souvenir of the trip. (And I fell in love with those waterbrushes!) I keep looking at the pages, trying to decide if I have a favourite painting or not but am so far undecided. When you finish a journal, do you usually have a favourite page? 

(Update - LOL!! My PPF partner and friend Kristin and I must be on the same wavelength today as she has tropical sketchbooks on her post as well! And she has just reminder me of Illustration Avenue's theme this week of "Tropical" and this sketchbook definitely suits that theme! P.S. Kristin, I LOVE the Thank You painting!! Thank you!)

Have a great time at PPF!

Paint Party Friday - Week 9 - More dots but not yet enough dots

Happy late Paint Party Friday! This week I continued work on my pointillism piece when I could. It will take a lot of dots to finish this piece! It's still a work-in-progress but looking back at last week's photo, I can see that I am making (slow) progress.

Photo 13May2011

 Scan 13May2011

Where I left off last week...

As you can see, I have lots more dots to go but I have made progress! And thanks to Theresa's encouragement, I kept searching Google to figure out the name of the painting I thought was so spectacular. it is Bonaventure Pine by Paul Signac. And while mine will be very different, here is my inspiration below:

Gorgeous, isn't it!

I expect the party will continue over the weekend with all the challenges everyone has had (it will for me) so I have fun and I will visit soon!!

Sunday Sketching - Ideas Flying at Me

When I was on a plane last week, I was reading Stephen Pressfield's new book Do the Work (free on Kindle! Pressfield is great at helping with all the "resistance" that inhibits artists of any kind from producing well) and at one point I just felt compelled to stop and take out a pencil and start sketching. 

All kinds of ideas flying my way. (As always double-clicking shows off pencil work better.)

I'm not sure what more I'm going to do with this but I suspect I will redo it in my journal and paint it. (I drew it in my travelling moleskine journal and I really don't like the paper quality.) And then I will likely write thoughts on it too.

Hope you all had a great few weeks of Sunday Sketches while I was away! Happy Mother's Day!!

Paint Party Friday - Week 8 - Inspired in Houston

I'm back from my busy 10 days of travels and while I am still not caught up, life will soon be back to normal, (I hope). No painting has been done on my WIPs as I haven't had time or energy (yucky cold/throat thing) to do much. What they need would take more than the time I had available, so instead - to ensure I painted - I started something new.

My flight back was later in the day last Friday, so I had a little extra time on my hands in Houston and decided to put it to suitable Paint Party Friday use. I went to see the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston! With limited time before my flight, I focused on the Impressionists special and regular exhibits. There were many fabulous pieces but this time what fascinated me the most was Seurat's work and that of several other pointillist artists (whose names unfortunately I did not write down  - which leads to one of my biggest pet peeves with galleries/museums.*)

I decided to start a pointillist piece this week. I have done ink versions but never before in paint. I was a bit surprised by the size of the Seurat's dots, they were larger than I'd imagined.

Camera 2 View

First I decided to gesso the canvas adding a little background colour to the gesso:

Then I started with dots and got this far:

Camera 1 View

I think I may be halfway there....  Hopefully by next PPF I will have finished one of these WIPs!!

I'm looking forward to seeing all of your painting efforts AND in a much more timely fashion than the past two weeks! My daughter wants me to thank you all for your lovely comments on her portrait of my father as a young man. My Dad was also very flattered and appreciative. Thank you!!

* Museum/Gallery Pet Peeve - No more photos in galleries, it seems.  :(   So I think to myself, okay I will buy postcards of the pieces I like when I leave. But while they have some, they are only for what someone else perceives to be the most interesting pieces.   :(   None for the pieces I like.  :(   So I think to myself next, I will look online when I get home. The National Gallery in Ottawa has almost everything online (though remembering the name of the artist helps.) The Museum of Fine Arts however has their 100 "most popular" (or famous) and so the creator of the beautiful pointillist tree that inspired me remains unknown.  :( 

Why do Galleries/Museums not have postcards for ALL pieces? Or show ALL pieces on their websites?? Sigh. Okay, my rant is over. What do you think? Do you share my pet peeve?

Have a great Paint Party Friday!

Paint Party Friday - Week 7 - Not Mine, but...

I haven't been around much this week. Last weekend I was on Vancouver Island for my Dad's 90th Birthday Party (and Family Reunion). Most of this week, I have been on a business trip to Texas returning late Friday, so I haven't painted all week. (Pout.)

But I love PPF and wanted to participate in the party, so I thought I would (cheat and) show you what my youngest daughter did for her grandfather for his birthday. (Proud Mom.) A portrait of him as a young man. 

Grandpa by Ruth

And here he is, after blowing out 90 candles! (Proud daughter.)

Many of you wished him Happy Birthday last week and he passes on his thanks for your best wishes. 

Birthday cake anyone?

Paint Party Friday - Week 6 - Something New

Happy Easter and Paint Party Friday everyone! I am in B.C., on Vancouver Island, for Easter weekend for my Dad's 90th birthday, a family reunion and to bring my daughter home from her first year at University of Victoria. Busy! I can't promise I will visit you in a timely fashion but visit you, I eventually will!

Last week's poll on inspiration oddly inspired me and I have started a new piece because of it. Potentially a new series, if it works out. You'll see more what I am talking about when it's done but for now I am just hinting at what it will be (if my execution comes anywhere close to my vision, that is).

(WIP - except for a few brush slips, I actually think it looks pretty like this even though this is far from finished!))

(WIP - stage 1 Pencil Outline)

 (WIP - stage 2 adding texture)

Since I have "advance knowledge" of this week's PPF poll and questions, I wanted to mention two recent posts which I found to be very helpful for my own largely self-taught learning. The first is a video by Alisa Burke about her sketchbook. I have often admired her sketchbook when she shows glimpses of it but until I watched this video tutorial, I had everything backwards! I figured one did the ink outline first and then added watercolour  - not vice versa! Her explanation has made a real difference to my Mexican Sketchbook which I started shortly after viewing that post.

(Ink and watercolour influenced by Alisa)

Earlier this week I was trying to figure out the blue in my painting and knew I didn't really have a good handle on the shades in my paint kit so I created this "legend" to see which was the  just right shade of blue. 

(I ended up mixing it myself as no blue was close to what I had in mind.)

Then yesterday I saw this idea at Elvie Studio (someone else whose journaling I love). Fun and practical! I will at some point try that for both my acrylics and watercolours.

So much to learn and so many incredible ideas out there in the blogosphere!

Help yourself to an Easter egg while you're here and have a super long weekend!

xox

EVA