Erica's Collection

As she walks home from university, Erica collect things for me to paint; this week cotoneaster berries and a big fat rose hip. The pelargoniums are still going strong in the window boxes, so I threw one of those in to compliment the red theme. And the hydrangeas? Well they speak for themselves.

Orchid Contours

Another exercise, this time doing contour drawings of orchids. I have to admit, I did lift my pen off from time to time. But heck. It's my page so I can do what I like. These orchids were the most odd and beautiful shades of yellow, gold and orange with touches of red. They were a gift from my mom and dad during a recent visit. All of my live orchids were afflicted with a strange white mould last year and slowly died off. This new batch of cut orchids inspired me to go out and start my live collection again. I picked up a rescue orchid at the local hardware big box store. It was marked down to a very low price but still had several buds yet to open. Score.

Lemon Fresh

This was part of a lesson from Jane Lafazio's online class. I should have made more of a page of it but the lemon looked so bright and fresh that I could not bring myself to mess with it. And so, the lonely lemon.

More Hips

I spent an afternoon volunteering at my friend's art gallery. I snipped some rose hips before I left home, wrapping them carefully in a cloth, more to protect me than the rose hips. Gosh those rose thorns are sharp and spiky. The gallery was quiet on All Hallow's Eve, so I took the time to slowly look at the rose hips and eventually cut one in half to see the seeds. I love the way the watercolour makes the hips glow and look shiny.

Online Painting Class with Jane LaFazio

What a world we live in! I am taking an online illustrated journalling class with Jane LaFasio. I'm up here, she's down there and the other participants are all over the US, Canada and Australia. I think that is pretty cool. Here are a couple of versions of assignment 1. Fruit. I definitely am guilty of trying too hard; never a good strategy in watercolour. The final version I did in my tiny journal was fast, fresh and probably the best of the batch. Of course by the time I got to that painting, I had looked very carefully and painted 2 or 3 other versions. There is something to be said for practice too.

Nice pomegranate, overworked middle pear. Dang!

Fast and fresh in my miniature sketchbook

Blazing Out

I was going to call this post "Fading Beauty" because both images show flowers that are past their best. But it is pretty obvious that the colours are anything but fading. It has been such a remarkable fall for colour. The low angled, bright sunlight has had everything glowing brilliant red, yellow, orange, purple and green. Even the browns are vibrant this fall. Maybe in the season of shrivelling and death, there is a metaphor in the blazing riot of fall colour. Or maybe there is just beautiful, sunlit colour.

 Rose Hip

Rudbeckia

It's a Dog

I had a great idea when I started to paint this teapot. It would be a quick flowy painting and I would do cool line work on top. I've been trying to get better at line work. Well, here is the proof that good ideas don't always come out as planned. This teapot is a real dog of a painting.

I live in a neighbourhood where people really love their dogs. By calling my lousy teapot  painting a dog, I could be accused of being dogist and insulting all of the neighbourhood dogs. So I painted a dog from a picture on the internet. The dog painting turned out to be quite sweet so even though it is a dog, it's not a "dog".

Now I see that I mentioned a "lousy" teapot painting. I think you can guess what my next painting might be.....entomologists stay tuned.

Bad Dog

Good Dog