EDM2015 - an envelope

Envelopes don't have to be boring. For the few bills I still pay by snail mail, I try and use these - they brighten my day and hopefully the person on the other end too!

 

 



I used a combination of watercolour, watercolour pencil and pigma micron markers for this. Shadows continue to vex me.

EDM2015 - bristles

I have to admit this was not the first thing that came to mind for the prompt 'bristles'.

I was thinking hedgehog, or my toothbrush but once the idea of a dandy brush got in, there was no other choice for me.

I'm sure brushes today come in a rainbow of colours but in my memory since that's what I painted this from, it has to be royal blue.

And of course, the hoofpik handle had to be red - how else would you be able to see it easily if you dropped it in the stall LOL.

EDM2015 - something hot

White hot sand!

EDM2015 - bottle of herbs/spices

This is as far as I've gotten today - took me awhile to decide what I wanted to draw and then trying to get my sketch right means it's not going to see any colour today.

Haven't decided on what to put in the bowl yet. Think it will depend on what colour palette I select. Possibly tomatoes or garlic heads or red onions. Can't be too big because I need to keep the peppermill and glass jar in scale. Maybe some lemons as if I was making lemon pepper chicken. That would work. 



Lemons it is! I also decided to ink this one. Will update it when the paint is on and dry. It's rather grey today so the sunny yellow lemons should help brighten things up.

EDM2015 - curtains

Deciding the subject for today was a no brainer - I just bought new curtains for my bedroom window. They bear little resemblance to these though LOL.

In real life, they are a hexagonal graphic pattern in a textured charcoal, aqua teal and cream coloured fabric. But they do have grommets and will be hanging from a brushed nickel rod, eventually.

It's just at the moment they're still in the plastic package and my imagination just couldn't picture how that pattern would look draped. So I plead artistic licence and have drawn them as a solid colour. I did have fun figuring out how to get the rod through the grommets as well what the view between the shutter slats would be.

Still not completely happy with the right hand curtain but this is the sort of thing that I could fiddle with forever and there's a glass of wine calling my name so this will do for now.

EDM2015 - a nearby tree

Today's prompt is 'a nearby tree'. I don't yet have a favourite tree at our new home so I've taken some liberty with that phrase and done one nearby in my heart. This is the poplar tree that stood guard on our front lawn for much of the time that we lived on the farm.

It's funny in our family how significant some trees are. We call them simply the willow tree, the elm tree the poplar tree and yet all of us know specifically which tree we're talking about - and on a 50 acre property, of which roughly 35 acres were bush, that's a lot of trees!

This was done from a picture taken on the day we finally had to take it down in order to upgrade the septic tank beneath it. No wonder it was happy for so many years.

Every Day in May Challenge

This online art challenge has been around for many years but for the first time I am officially participating. This means I have joined in with over 800 other artists from around the world and will be posting something every day for the rest of the month.

The way it works is that for each day there is a prompt on what to do. Any medium is welcome but so far watercolour does seem to be a the most prevalent.  Check out their facebook page to see an amazing selection of artwork.

Today's prompt is to draw/paint/whatever a favourite food. Well, food and I are very good friends so I had a lot to choose from LOL. Narrowing it down to what I could draw and paint helped tremendously. Some things, like a perfectly cooked steak, are best left to photography! Besides this cheesecake is calorie free.

Purple Flag Doodle

Just a bit of fun on a beautiful spring day.

This is what happens when you're not paying attention

SEYMOUR
 

So I set out to do a simple still life of a potted tulip. Seems straightforward enough right?

Well, I was focusing on the terracotta pot because one of my favourite things about watercolour is the lovely mix of colours you can end up with. I wanted it to look worn and slightly dirty; a pot with character not some newbie fresh off the shelf.

So far so good, until I looked up and my lovely clay pot suddenly had this mutant ninja tulip growing out of it LOL. It doesn't look as bad here on my monitor but trust me, in real life it looks ready to devour the viewer. The more I tried to tame it with shadow and light the bigger it grew.

I'm going to keep it, because if nothing else it makes me laugh every time I look at it!  As for the terra cotta pot - mission accomplished LOL.

Another Orphan

 Have been sorting through my abandoned orphans drawer and picking out pieces to work on. Most of them, as this one is, are from some of my very early watercolour classes. This one is from the fall of 2007.

I was studying with Johnnene Maddison, a wonderful local artist who was instrumental in teaching me the fundamentals of watercolour. Being new to the medium, I often only got the lightest of values down in class with notes taken on how to complete each painting later.

Now watercolours, by nature, dry considerably lighter than when they're first put down. During the week between classes, I'd get out my notes and tackle the midtones. Annnnnd that would be as far as I would get. I was so fearful at the time of ruining what I had done LOL.

As my confidence has grown over the years, I am really enjoying going back to these pieces and pretty much approaching them with reckless abandon! As it stands now, they're just scrap paper so I may as well do something to them. Being able to finally put in 'the darks' just makes them come off the page for me.

I still have lots more playing to do with this one - the left side has been terribly neglected so far - but I'm very pleased with the progress!