Juliet

My outdoor cat is having trouble acclimating to outside. She's become such a wuss. That's what I tell her anyway. She sits by the back door and if I open it she might poke her nose out but she's become wary of my foot right behind her. :) So while she was sitting there longingly the other day, I took advantage of the pose.

Watercolor Portrait Sketch

This is a watercolor sketch of my friend and fellow artist,  Peter Yesis. Several of us got together a few weeks ago to paint and after lunch I started this quick portrait of Peter while he was working on his painting. I only got about half way with a sketch and a wash so I snapped a picture with my camera so I could finish this at home. My photo was really blurry which is good and bad. You can't be real fussy about the details because you can't SEE them but at the same time...you know what I mean. ;) Go check out Peter's blog "Daily Painting Practice". He's a fantastic oil painter and in his blog, he chronicles all of his ups, downs and in betweens as he pursues his craft.

Watercolor Crocus

This is wishful thinking...

I love painting crocuses and daffodils and I'm looking forward to my flowers blooming. I started out trying to paint this with only 3 colors - quinacridone magenta, new gamboge and cobalt blue. While they are lovely transparent colors and perfect for flowers, they just weren't dark enough for the background and a few crevices in the flower so I also used alizarin crimson, ultramarine, winsor blue, cad yellow, raw sienna and burnt sienna.
7 x 5 inches

Watercolor Portrait - John

After a couple not quite successfulpaintings, I finally hit it right this weekend with this portrait of my friend John. I'm calling this "Winner" (I think he'll be finding that out here) because I took this after he won first place for one of his beautiful 3-D wood pieces at our art club's annual art show and also because I think he's pretty special and a winner in my eyes.