Cardinal

Second lesson from Drawing and Painting Birds by Shirley Porter is this little cardinal.  I messed up his eye when I was trying to do the mask and had to resort to some white gauche because I couldn’t lift out the black.  I like the way his beak came out but I’m not happy with the leaves and his poor mutated feet and legs!  This was supposed to be a wet on wet lesson but I got way too impatient and didn’t let it dry enough before starting on the second pass.  I need to get a blow dryer – I’ve watched quite a few videos where the artists used a blow dryer to speed things up a bit so I don’t think it would be cheating!

Northern Flicker

First lesson from the next in my list of watercolor books – Drawing and Painting Birds by Shirley Porter – is this common flicker.

I gave up trying to do the last lesson in Colette Pitcher’s Watercolor Painting For Dummies.  It was supposed to be a herd of horses charging through some water, and I just could not get it to look anything like a herd of horses.  I will have to come back and retry it sometime in the future, but it was so aggravating that I ended up avoiding my studio, which is not what I want to do with what is supposed to be a “fun” hobby.

Once I decided to give up and move on, and crumpled up my third attempt at the horses, I suddenly regained my enthusiasm and jumped right back in with the bird book.  The detail is a little blurry and jumbled up but I don’t care, I like the way he turned out.  The funny part is I had to actually take off my glasses and get my face right up against the paper when I was trying to do his feet and the branch.  I think I’m going to need to go for those bifocals the next time I hit the eye doctor.  Or maybe like Sallyann suggested in a comment, get one of those big old magnifying glasses!  Shaking hands and bad eyes do not fine details make.

I got three new watercolor books for my birthday from my friend Charlie.  I now have a stack of six books full of all sorts of great lessons.  I may skip around a bit from now on rather then trying to go front to back one at a time.   Look at all these great books!

Lighthouse

Once again my wobbling hands made it so hard to come up with straight lines!  My second-to-last Watercolor Painting For Dummies lesson had me playing with salt, sprinkling it into the sandy grass for texture.  I’m not too unhappy with it but I liked it better before I tried to put in the grass and flowers in the foreground.  I made a mess out of it and then made it worse trying to fix it.   I like the sky and water though! 

Polar Bear

It is funny how much the level of my interest in the subject matter compares with my eagerness to get to my painting table after a long hard day at work!

After spending over a week on the previous lesson from Colette Pitcher’s Watercolor Painting For Dummies, this little polar bear taking his ease on an icy slab took only two days because I couldn’t wait to get back to him after finishing up my after work chores.  There really isn’t much too him but it was so much fun to splatter paints in the sky and ice.  I really like how he turned out.

Only two more lessons left and then on to my next book – The Complete Watercolorist’s Essential Notebook by Gordon MacKenzie.

Grape Leaves

My latest lesson from Colette Pitcher’s Watercolor Painting For Dummies was centered around negative painting, where you bring out the foreground by painting the background.  I must say I found this lesson very aggravating.  I tossed my first two attempts, and this one also leaves much to be desired but I’m sick of it and want to move on. 

I’ve been trying to use up the cheap raw sienna paint, but I am going to let go of my cheapskate mentality and scrape it out of my pallet and throw out the tube.  I can’t get a good wash from it; it separates the minute I lay it down, and I have the better tube ready and waiting.  Why frustrate myself, just toss it out already!

To end on a positive note, I do like the very bottom left hand leaf.  So not a total loss!

Chicken Family

Oh my goodness I love my little hen and her babies and her studly rooster mate.  Taken from a lesson in Colette Pitcher’s Watercolor Painting For Dummies, this trio was a blast to do.

For my usual nit-pickiness, the base of the tail and the rooster’s belly got muddy from me dragging too many colors around, and my hands were shaking more then ever doing the feet and the beak outlines.  I think I’m going to have to use a magnifying glass, these old eyes are crapping out on me!  Abstract painting rather than naturalism is in my future I believe

Goldfish

I’m getting closer to the end of my romp through Colette Pitcher’s Watercolor Painting For Dummies.  This little goldfish was so much fun to do!  She used a waterproof black pen on all the dark lines but I liked the way his colors turned out too much to go such a dark black.  I went with the same orange as the rest of him with some gray and violet mixed in to do the lines around his body and fins and eye.  I think he is cute as all get out!  Next up is a feisty rooster and hen.  I’m finding I like doing the animals much more then the landscapes but that’s because I’m a crazy cat and parrot lady, I think