Category: painting

Posted in hand embroidery, knitting, painting

This Week’s Work – Branching out

Posted on by Laura Kate

In week three, The Artist’s Way has me focus on Recovering a Sense of Power. The words for focusing are Anger, Synchronicity and Shame. In Watercolor is for Everyone, the daily practice work seems to be mostly representational, as opposed to abstract.

I am also sharing my fiber work from this week. Let’s start with that.

Knitting: I’m a bit errant in not posting about my newest project. I’ve chosen a cowl design by Andrea Mowry. It’s super lovely.

I’ll do a full post on this project next week.

I have also returned to an art quilt that has been languishing since last year. I call it Here be Dragons. This week, I spent my evenings hand-quilting one of the panels.

Bill’s photographs provided the reference for my dragonflies. The background and dragonflies were painted onto white cotton fabric with textile paint and micron pens. Next I embroidered detail on the dragonflies. The final step is to work embroidery stitches into the background as a way to marry together the three layers of the quilt. It is slow work, but I am determined to carry on and get this piece mounted and displayed before year end.

Here are the watercolor exercises completed this week.

This little landscape was based on a photo I took of a Wisconsin farm.

My magical hummingbird is inspired by Janet Weight-Reed’s beautiful hummingbird paintings. I used a photograph from this month’s National Geographic for reference.

Thank you for reading.

Posted in drawing, Living Life Well, painting

This Week’s Work

Posted on by Laura Kate

I am following simultaneously The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron and Watercolor is for Everyone, by Kateri Ewing. Here are the exercises and practice paintings I completed since Sunday.

Twin Trees
Abstract inspired by a melody of Brahms
A Trio of Great Egrets, based on photographs by Bill Riley
Autumn Impression. Painting on rice paper that was embedded with plant materials.
Portrait of Tiny, copied from a painting by Janet Weight-Reed

https://jcrhumming.wordpress.com/

Indigo and Rust, an exercise from Watercolor is for Everyone, by Kateri Ewing
Angels Among Us, an exercise by Kateri Ewing

I hope you check out the referenced artists, especially if you feel the need for a boost to your creativity.

Posted in painting

Playing with Watercolor

Posted on by Laura Kate

I received some new paint colors this week and it’s time to see what they look like. So I did a little free exploration.

Olive green and burnt umber have been added to my palette.

I splashed them on Stonehenge 100% cotton paper with ultramarine blue, quinacridone red, quinacridone gold, and alizarin crimson. While still wet I worked in some metallic gold.

Here I am trying out a new brush. It is a 1/4 inch dagger, very soft, and shaped like a, well, a dagger.

The paper was first splashed with water, causing the lines to break up and run down the paper. I pulled the brush through the center of the curves to carry the blue all the way down. After the paper dried, I added a few lines with extra-fine Micron pens.

Wonder what I will do tomorrow?

Posted in painting

Watercolor Wednesday in October

Posted on by Laura Kate

“She offered me a hummingbird” again

Finally finished this last 6 x 6 for our local art association fundraiser. This one was important for me to get right because it faithfully reproduces the layout, colors and feel of the actual event.

When the visitor offered me the bird, it was in her hand extended forward to me. The bird was in this posture – wings stretched back into a V and head slightly raised.

I used two reference photos. The hummingbird came from Unsplash, it was taken by B Hong. I rotated his image until it had the posture I remembered in the live bird.

The hand model was me again. I chose a bright sunny day and held a button in my palm to try to recreate the shadows.

It was enough for me to get the idea. When I needed help, I took the painting to Open Studio today for advice on attaining better shadows. Cheryl Bryan was there. She advised me that I should not try to match the photograph. Softening the shadows and allowing a little space between the palm and the bird made for a better painting. Then I kept darkening and tweaking everything until a good range of values was present. I finished the details with white gouache and a few colors of Micron pens.

For those interested, my pigments are raw sienna, transparent orange, Winsor green blue shade, Winsor green yellow shade, carbazole violet, Paynes gray and white gouache.