As the days get shorter and cooler I find myself dreaming of hot summer days spent lying in the sun. The changing of the seasons gives me some anxiety as I find winter to be long, dark and often sad. While I don't mind autumn as a season (except for the rain) I find myself anxious of the inevitable grey months of winter. To help myself deal with this seasonal stress I have decided to embrace the seasonal colours in my artwork. Fall colours are probably my favorite and possibly the most cohesive when put together.
This piece started out in my sketchbook, and after throwing some paint on it I knew I had to do a real painting of it!
Hibernate is 9" by 12" watercolour and pen on watercolour board mounted on a black cradled board.
It is for sale in my Etsy shop!
Every once and awhile I feel the need to paint some still life. It's good practice for form and shading and it's always nice to switch things up a bit. Lately my Dad and I have discussed at length how difficult flowers are to paint. They look easy but when you are going cross eyed trying to find the specific petal you are working on you suddenly realize there is a 'real' art to painting flowers. It's been a little while since I fought with some flowers so I dove in with these two studies for some extra practice.
In both cases when the painting was finished it felt empty to me. Just some flowers. I wanted more life in the images so I added some life! Butterflies have been fluttering through some of my art lately and the little mouse in the second painting is the vole from my cabin. When I had added life to the still life studies they finally felt fully complete.
Both of these paintings are for sale in my Etsy shop.
Sketchbook addiction seems to be a real thing. I love buying a new sketchbook, filled with blank pages of possibility; it is always a fresh new start. At first I enthusiastically plan and fill the first few pages with work that will set the tone of the rest of the book and then somewhere along the line the sketchbook and it's blank pages get forgotten and piles up with the rest of my partially filled books. Sigh.
The thing is, I really like this sketchbook! It is a small Strathmore watercolour sketchbook filled with luscious thick watercolour paper. The landscape layout is a new thing for me so I am trying to pick themes and designs that travel across the spread of both pages. My goal is to have this book completed by next summer. Assuming that this one does not fall into the sketchbook abyss my goal should be attainable!
Last August I started a sketchbook dedicated to portraits. My idea was that I would get a couple portraits drawn a week and complete the sketchbook in a timely fashion. What actually happened was that I worked in it on and off and then it got lost under the clutter of other sketchbooks and temporarily forgotten until this past month. After a year I have only completed 19 of 64 faces.
These portraits are all of random people (although Sebastian volunteered a photo of himself in a wig) and I try to connect the opposing pages through colour or background designs as much as possible. This sketchbook is all about practice and colour experimentation.
My new goal is to have this sketchbook completed by the summer of 2016
which means I have 9 months to paint 45 portraits. It's possible,
assuming I stay focused and on task!
This piece started out in my sketchbook, and after throwing some paint on it I knew I had to do a real painting of it! 
The thing is, I really like this sketchbook! It is a small Strathmore watercolour sketchbook filled with luscious thick watercolour paper. The landscape layout is a new thing for me so I am trying to pick themes and designs that travel across the spread of both pages. My goal is to have this book completed by next summer. Assuming that this one does not fall into the sketchbook abyss my goal should be attainable! 
These portraits are all of random people (although Sebastian volunteered a photo of himself in a wig) and I try to connect the opposing pages through colour or background designs as much as possible. This sketchbook is all about practice and colour experimentation. 