Tag: watercolor

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Looking Ahead for the Second Half of 2021

Veterans Float on July 4th, 2021

I thought it would be a good thing to look ahead for the second half of 2021 now that the excitement of Independence Day has subsided. What does the future hold in store for my art over the next few months?

Summer

As the temperatures and humidity begin to rise painting en plein air will happen early in the mornings and on clearer days. We’ve had a bunch of rain in the Hill Country over the past week but looking ahead it’s time to get out and take advantage of the nice weather. Last week Ilene and I took a walk around the train at Lady Bird Johnson Park and I scouted some landscape areas I’d like to sketch and paint. Continue reading “Looking Ahead for the Second Half of 2021”

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Award Winning Artist

As a student of Nan Henke here in Fredericksburg I qualified for entry into the Fredericksburg Art Guild’s 10th Annual Adult Student Art Contest. All of Nan’s watercolor students and Truby Hardin’s Oil Painting students were eligible to enter.

Judged by Jeannette MacDougall, who is co-owner of Studio Comfort TX and an instructor at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio, over 30 students exhibited their art. Awards were given for Best in Show, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places as well as the Oil Palette Knife Challenge, Most Promising Watercolor (Blue Winter), and two Best in Show Awards.

Blue Winter

All awards went to oil painters with the exception of Most Promising Watercolor, which I was honored to receive. Continue reading “Award Winning Artist”

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Student Art Show

2020 Art Guild Entries

Well, it finally happened. I’m about to enter into my first Art Show. Yes that’s right, I’m entering the 10th Annual Student Art Show sponsored by the Fredericksburg Art Guild. The show runs from 6 February 2020 to 1 March 2020 and will be held at the Art Guild located at 308 E. Austin in Fredericksburg, TX.

OK, so now that I’ve gotten that out of the way let’s look at what I’ve been up to over the past month. As you can see my last post was in early December of 2019 and like all of you we had a busy holiday season and things are finally starting to slow down a bit. Continue reading “Student Art Show”

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Bookmarks

I thought I’d show some bookmarks I’ve been working on. Sorry for the late post but it’s been a busy week as we get ready to travel from Texas to Tennessee to pickup our new Oliver Travel Trailer.

I did, however, manage to paint a couple of bookmarks that I’m considering laminating and selling.

Hope you enjoy. Next week we’ll be on the road so I hope to have time to post a longer piece. I’ll be taking my travel kit so hopefully I’ll get some nice paintings and sketches done.

In the mean time, go make some art!

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Back to Basics

Creating Textures…

It’s time for me to get back to basics. After a month of pumping out paintings for World Watercolor Month I’ve decided what I need to do now is work the basics. What do I mean by basics? I’m glad you asked.

My “style”, if you will, pretty much revolves around pen & ink and watercolor. I’m not an oil painter. I don’t work in pastels or acrylics and my style is based upon a sort of realism that’s, I believe, a bit like illustration. With that in mind, as I look at my recent works I want to delve deeper into my pen & ink work and basic watercolor. Continue reading “Back to Basics”

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World Watercolor Month

World Watercolor Month is in the can! It’s done, finished…over…

Crape Myrtle

As I mentioned back in July in my article Quantity-Quality-Or Both, participating in challenges such as World Watercolor Month gives me an opportunity to produce a number of watercolor sketches—quantity. As I reviewed them this weekend I noticed that, as I thought, some were higher quality than others.

I also noticed that as I got closer to finishing the month, quality seemed to go down…until that LAST painting. My first painting last month for World Watercolor Month was the Crape Myrtle on the left.

Continue reading “World Watercolor Month”

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Sky Studies

One of Two-Wet on Wet vs Wet on Dry

This week I spent some time working on sky studies. Clouds and sunsets, colors and techniques to improve my landscapes.

Prompted by World Watercolor Month for clouds last week, I decided to spend more time getting to know skies a bit more. After all, I’ve spent a lot of time up there and I certainly have seen some beautiful skies.

Two of two Wet-on-Dry

Steve Mitchell, The Mind of Watercolor, had a good tutorial on clouds the other day working in both wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques. As you can see in these to photographs each has its own merits depending upon the affect I’m trying to achieve. Naturally I didn’t want to waste the paint and time so what do we to with two cloud/sky studies? We add a landscape of course!

Continue reading “Sky Studies”

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Time to Get Serious

The union oyster house Boston 11 x 14 cold press watercolors by Matthew Mc

After several weeks of World Watercolor Month #worldwatercolormonth, it’s time to get serious about painting. Now…don’t get me wrong, I’ve been very serious and taken my time and done my best on many of my paintings, but…

When I see a painting like this, The Union Oyster House, by Matthew Mc I realize I still have a long way to go when it comes to composition, value, and color in my work. As I mentioned in my post Quantity-Quality-Or Both, I’ve been pumping out a quantity of art, especially this month, to practice and learn but once this month is over I’ll need to concentrate on quality. Continue reading “Time to Get Serious”

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A Peek Behind the Curtain

First layer…somewhat loose

I thought I’d give everyone a bit of a peek behind the curtain this week when it comes to my paintings and sketches.

On the right is my first layer of a painting I did for #worldwatercolormonth sponsored by www.doodlewash.com, whose daily prompt was “Blossoming”. As this is a “loose” painting, meaning I’m not trying to make it a photo-quality work, I used a large quill brush on 300# cotton paper. The idea is to just get a rough outline of the subject.

Continue reading “A Peek Behind the Curtain”

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Of Pen & Ink

Pink Crape Myrtle

I like to experiment with different techniques of pen & ink. Recently I bought a dip pen with several nibs and went to work on a couple of botanical studies.

On the Pink Crape Myrtle painting to the left I penciled in the overall outline before going to the pen & ink. Usually when I’m using a fountain pen I tend to just draw out the sketch without first penciling in the outlines.  Freely inking the sketch forces me to concentrate more as I draw my subject. Continue reading “Of Pen & Ink”