Winter sketches

Line and wash landscape

Magnolia: work in progress

Christmas Card Project

Two Watercolors

Ann Swan did this composition in colored pencil, but I reinterpreted it in watercolor and graphite.

And this pond is for Pat.

Art inspired by a 1986 Datebook

All three done with a watercolour wash background and colored pencil over.

Watercolor World

I've been coordinating the focus on watercolor for the months of July and August with my international group of natural history illustrators.  Here are some paintings I did.

Wild Thing!

The May focus in my Natural History Illustration students group was called Wild Thing, as we were led by Kate Jenvey who is herself a candidate for Wildlife Artist of the Year.  She helped us to look at the underlying structure (musculoskeletal) of the animal to understand how it moves before attempting to draw it.

Here's my giraffe.  I drew the skeleton, and then put the muscles on it (most of a giraffe's muscles are in its neck) before sketching the final animal.

Eastern Bluebirds are back!

After several years with no sightings, the bluebirds have returned to  my garden.  So exciting!

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Seen in exactly this pose at Audubon Center/Francis Beidler Forest Sanctuary last weekend.  The photo reference was generously granted permission to use by the amazing wildlife photographer Phil Fowler who often birds at Beidler.

This was done with Polychromos and Luminance colored pencils on steel grey Stonehenge paper.

Phil Fowler's stunning photography can be seen on his website: http://phil-fowler-nature-photography.redframe.com/#/page/home/

Another with Harmonic Shadows

Line and wash Clematis

Inspired by a painting by Ann Mortimer, I added the ink lines and used my own colors.  Fun doing watercolor this way as it is SO fast.

And Blue!

First yellow, then orange and now red

The third in Sandrine Maugy's exploration of colour is this tulip.  Not my favorite of the exercises, but I did enjoy working in this color.

Another Sandrine Maugy Tutorial

The first was the color yellow.  This one is orange, beautiful orchids.

To get these vivid colors the work is first underpainted using what she calls "harmonic shadows."  A neutral grey made by mixing the three primaries that appear in the painting.  In this case I mixed Winsor Blue (Red Shade) (used to create the bluish cast to the leaves), Winsor Orange (Red Shade)  (one of two main oranges in the flowers) and Permanent Yellow (used in the centers of the petals).

Here's what the underpainting looked like:

Working in Pen and Ink

The focus of this month's effort in my Natural History Illustration group is pen and ink.  Liane Tancock, who creates beautiful and delightful art using this medium is our guide.  Here are my first efforts.  The week two exercise was to  create the same image three times on a single page using three different technique

The inspiration for the tortoises is a photo I took on my trip to the Galapagos.

Lessons from Sandrine Maugy

This French watercolor artist uses a technique she calls harmonic shadows to create beautiful works of art.  I have just received her lovely book Colours of Nature and finished the first exercise: yellow.  These quinces were underpainted in a shadow color mixed from the red, blue and yellow used elsewhere in the painting.  Orange is next.

Busy Month of March

Have been beavering away, inspired by a lot of new reference books, a promise to come up with 3 pieces for my dear friend Pat, and the Natural History Illustration group's March focus on colored pencils.  This tulip is probably the last cp work I'll do this month, as I am eager to work more  with watercolor, which is the medium for the Xeranthemum Immortelle pictured here.

Sandhill Crane in Colored Pencil

This is the companion piece to the Brown Pelican.

Brown Pelican in Colored Pencil

Finished this Pelican as the left-most panel in Pat's three-panel wall hanging.  The right-most one will be a Sandhill Crane (Pat's favorite bird) and the center will be???

Frog

Done in graphite with a bit of charcoal on the black areas.

Portrait of My Sweet Babu

Finished!  Have been working hard all month on accurately drawing fur.  Babu was done in graphite with colored pencil for her eyes and nose.

Mandrill in Graphite

Did this Mandrill as part of FurryFebruary for my fellow former NHI101 students.  This guy was really fun.  Scary eyes!

Landscape from a Yellowstone Postcard

Trying to work with what is being  taught in my beginning watercolor class, I did this small landscape.   Moose in ink.

Watercolor Florals

Finished the Camellia, although I rushed through the leaves and stem after feeling I had messed them up.  Then I did a rose.  Pretty happy with both of them.  Just need to practice, practice, practice.