Holland Marsh River in Heat!

Holland marsh river at Bradford oil on 18x24 canvas

This is from a photo I took a couple of weeks ago during the hot humid weather of July.
The whole thing has been a challenge and I think it still is a "Work in Progress", it shall go on the "But" wall for a while.
I painted without a drawing, never done that before, just roughed in the general shapes with very thin Burnt Sienna, and then went from there, the challenges were the leaves in the blue sky and the reflections on the water, and now I notice a tree branch in the top right hand corner that will have to come out!
Ah well have to wait till the brown dries.
In the mean time I'm going to tackle two horse and riders.
"Such Fun" as the English say!
John

"Just Walking in the Rain"

"Just walking in the Rain" oil on 8x10 board

An experiment in painting and a bit of nostalgia:

So this little painting is a sort of memory of about 4 years ago when I returned to UK for a few weeks due to an illness in the family. My sister then lived in Wembley, a short hop on the tube and we were in the centre of London, and she has has a love affair with this City and loves to visit as often as possible. 

Both of us have a love for Art and this was an  opportunity to visit all the Galleries together. I think we were more often than not a bit like a couple of kids enjoying every moment we could, no matter where we were. 

We made a decision to visit the British Museum which covers just about anything to do with
History so much to look at, mind boggling! 

On our way home it was raining. I can't remember taking the photo but somehow John found it on our photo steam, I have always wanted to paint a picture of the rain including an umbrella!

The result isn't axactly riveting but it's just the job for me!
Babs

Watercolor - Painting or Paining?

For Christmas we were given an unexpected gift, a set of watercolour paint!

We have both talked about water colour painting on an off for a while, and here we were with no excuses and decided to try them as soon as we could..

Having all the equipment necessary to start a few days ago we got down to business and worked on our first project I picked some roses. and came up with this:

I am so used to painting with oil paint and realized trying this new medium is certainly a very different technique from what I am used to. I found the paint thinning to hardly a colour and building the petals slowly hardly using the brush and waiting for parts to almost dry before applying similar colour to mix into the petal.

Next my favourite subject, a doggy:

I realized you have to have a different mind set from painting with oil. I managed after a fashion to complete the picture but knew by the end of it my patience had been slowly draining and concentration certainly giving me a hard time. I thought it would be a good idea to show the work I did, but, now at least if I decide to continue, like anything you want to do when it comes to creativity is practice,
Practice ,practice so hopefully watch this space !!

Babs




I tried using watercolours about 8 years ago and after much splashing came up with this:

Last week I used a photo of some hollyhocks resulting in this:













And today a photo of a water-lily led to this:

Watercolour paints are so different than oils it is like learning another language, You have to rely on the paper colour to capture white, it is impossible to predict the results when painting wet on wet. But somehow the process is quite relaxing.
I suggest if you meet anyone who paints with watercolour bow your head and give due respect.

John