Snow on the street in front of my house. All I want to do right now is paint the snow so it’s a good thing we are having a very snowy February. There has also been many beautiful sunny days and sitting to paint them from my windows is very calming. It forces me to slow down and really appreciate it–even the dirty snow on the street.
A beautiful sunny winter day today. I painted this exact view in November and did not realize it until I uploaded it to Instagram. This one has much more detail and the placement of plants is more accurate, but at a glance they look the same. The November painting is also much smaller at 7 x 10 inches whereas today’s painting is 11 x 15 inches. It was a bit harder to get the larger shadow areas as clean in the larger painting because the paint dried so quickly. I also noticed that on the November painting I did not even attempt to paint the snow-covered juniper at the bottom. And as my second attempt at painting that juniper, it does look a lot more like a snow-covered juniper this time.
Here is the November painting. A much quicker painting, but still nice.
I had a very good art week. I am finally getting back into the swing of things. This week I did a couple of quick cloud watercolours, a pencil sketch of the crabapple tree, one longer watercolour yesterday, and a very long watercolour today. That’s what I need to be doing every week. Just lots and lots of art. Maybe it is knowing that I must have something to blog about every week–I need those deadlines.
So this one took me four hours today. I started with the back fence and tree, then did all the ground snow and shadows, then added the railings, and lastly went back and added more detail in the background. I added the tree shadow at the end so it was actually an hour or two later than the ground shadows and by then the ground shadows were completely different, but it felt like it all worked, even though it is a bit invented. I think the tree shadow needed to be there. I also spent a long time on the railings–almost a full hour. In the past I have slapped the railings in at the end and not taken enough time to make sure they were straight.
Yesterday’s painting did not go quite as well. I wanted to paint the snow-covered junipers beneath the living room window, but it was a bit of a bumpy mess. Not only was it a confusing mess of bumps, but there were shadows on it too. I think that’s why I wanted to paint it, but I will have to attempt it again another day. The painting also suffered from lack of context–I zoomed in on just the juniper and ground shadows so it isn’t quite clear what you are looking at. Oh well, it did challenge me.
My trusty patio–always a nice view to paint from my living room and always different. And my oregano is uncovered once again. I have now painted this view of my patio in January, February, April, July, and November. And what a beautiful day it was today! I can’t believe this is still January. It feels like spring! By the time I was done this painting most of the snow on the patio had melted. And then to top off the spring-like feeling, the seeds that I ordered for my garden just arrived! Don’t worry though, I don’t start planting seeds in my trays until the end of March–I have learned my lesson with starting too early. But I have been planning. I have all my yard projects for this summer planned out already. Though there’s still plenty of time to change my plans before then. In the meantime I will be documenting the snow on my patio.
A could study and my first painting of 2019! I am aiming to start doing weekly posts again but as I made no resolutions this year, I haven’t let myself down by starting three weeks late. As long as I start at some point I’m still winning.
I don’t have much else to say–just a short and sweet first blog post in a while.
I am way overdue for a blog post. Time goes by so fast. My last post was back in March and now here it is, winter again. I started using Instagram in the summer and I guess I forgot all about blogging. Then I felt like I had to catch up on the missed paintings on my blog which made me procrastinate even more, so I’m just going to skip the missed paintings and start blogging again. I am also thinking I should start doing my Watercolour Wednesdays again to get me back into the swing of things. So this is the view from my living room today of the front patio covered in snow. A sunny winter day and a view I have painted a few times before. I like the wind chime hanging in the tree. It’s always fascinating to me how you can paint the same view over and over, but it always comes out different. Good for a homebody like me.
I was tucking my daughter in to bed the other night and I caught a glimpse of this sunset out the window so I rushed to paint it. I only had minutes to get it done so it was a bit frantic and I think it shows. Very different from the painting in my last post. For this one I did try using both the watercolour pens and watercolours together which helped me to get down the most intense colours very quickly. I started with the pens and then finished it with watercolours and brushes, and a whole lot of water to blend it together.
Very pretty morning sky the other day. Very subtle and pale, a cool end-of-winter morning. I did this one with my regular watercolours. I am not as happy with the photo though–the painting looks better in real life. For this one I also painted right to the edge of the paper, which I don’t usually do with watercolours. I don’t know why I usually leave so much blank space, but I’ve become more conscious of it lately and feel like I need to “finish” them.
I also did a quick second study with the watercolour pens to try it out, but they weren’t quite right for capturing the pale colours. I will have to try using the pens when there is a super vibrant sunset. The pens are much faster to work with so that might actually be perfect. Here is the super quick watercolour pen one (which isn’t true to what the real sky colours were).
I’ve been experimenting with using the watercolour pens with other subject matter, but so far they have worked best with the flowers. The pens are so vibrant. Maybe I will try using both the pens and my regular watercolours in a painting. Last week I tried to do a painting of the big tree across the back alley using the pens, but it was very strange. I still can’t bring myself to post that one. It really was like learning to paint all over again.
I got one last painting in before the tulips were done. At first I was not as pleased with it because I did not match the colours quite right–the tulips were starting to fade and I still painted them in vibrant yellow and red. I was planning to do another painting the next day to try to capture the fading colours, but the next morning I just touched the table and all the petals dropped off the flowers. So that was that.
I am already missing having tulips on the table. Only a few days until the first day of spring and everything is still covered in snow here. I am busy dreaming and planning my garden, but it isn’t quite enough and I am itching for some real flowers. I think I need to buy some more tulips, even if I don’t paint them.
Dayna Bordage Art 