When Pears Go Swimming

I'm trying out a new brand of watercolor paints and really like them. They are called Maimeri Blu and are made in Italy. They come out of the tube with an intense color that holds up well to painting with lots of water. Here I used pears as a subject, because that is part of the April project challenge for the Watercolor Workshop group I take part in. Also, I did some playing with effects of spattering, spraying water, dropping in salt and also adding a little alcohol....not all in the same place, but in various spots on the painting.
While this is not quite the fully planned out painting, it does show the "study process" that you need to do to try out new materials.

Lotus

This painting was started from an exercise in intuitive composition I did while reading a book on composition by David Friend. It was started by drawing lines freely on a piece of paper while not looking at the paper and not trying to draw objects.
The next step was to look at my sketches done this way and see what they reminded me of. In this one, I could see a woman sitting and looking down. From there I went on to design the whole painting. It is mostly painted in watercolor, but in some areas white gouache was added to the watercolor paint. Also, in some areas I did a glaze of Daniel Smith Iridescent paints. This is difficult to see on a photo of the painting, but it does give a bit of mystery to the scene. If you click on the painting, you will see a bigger image and some of the iridescent glint shows up. This was a fun process.

Morning Mist at the Lake

Here is another of the projects for the Watercolor Workshop group I belong to. This month we are painting fog and mist. The photo reference we were using had a big clump of trees in the exact middle. So I spent some time rearranging the elements before I was happy to paint it. It was a challenge to paint the atmosphere of the mist and not be tempted to paint the actual trees and lake.

Woman Sitting By a Tree Stump in the Desert

From time to time I like to show art done by my grandson, Benjamin Wilson Feit. Ben loves to paint and to do collage. But, recently he has been making sculptures out of Sculpy. One day this past week a small package arrived at our house from Ben. Inside was this very creative sculpture along with a note from Ben about the sculpture. The note is above, beside the sculpture. By the way....Ben has a great imagination and takes on characters . From time to time he has been one of the Beatles or various other favorites. Right now, he is signing his name as "Bjorn" in honor of one of the musicians in the group: "ABA".

This Old Boat....Needs Some Repair!

This is a painting in watercolor that I did for the January project for the Watercolor Workshop group I take part in. We all paint from the same photo reference, but are free to change, adapt, compose our painting as we want. This was fun as it dealt with an old boat with peeling paint.

Dutch Shoes

The Watercolor group I belong to has a project each month and the December project was to paint shoes. Several years ago, I bought a pair of Dutch wooden shoes at a yard sale and am fond of them as they reflect my Dutch ancestry. They looked rather plain to just paint them, so I added a touch of spring with the tulips.