Group 17: Old Experiments Not Yet Cataloged for Sale

Below is the seventeenth  group of watercolors that I painted for earlier posts in this blog. The paintings below are still lifes (still lives?). I painted these in my ‘fruit period’. Originally posted on March 22, 2014 (Not Done with Symmetry Yet):   Originally posted on March 27, 2014 (Moving On): Originally posted on April 2, 2014 (Kiwi […]

Yellow Flower – Final

As promised yesterday, I implemented my idea in today’s watercolor experiment of yet another attempt at painting the elusive yellow succulent flower. But first, as I promised to myself, a daily shading study: Today’s watercolor experiment: I made a couple of attempts to paint a representation of the yellow flowers on one of my succulents, neither […]

When in Doubt

I swore I wouldn’t paint another bunch of bananas for quite a while (Hasty Banana). However, since I am on a road trip with my wife, Joy, to visit the kids and grandkids in Burbank, I am limited in my subject matter. But, everyone has bananas. When in doubt, resort to the familiar. I left […]

Hydrangea Flowerlet

Today’s watercolor experiment: Yesterday I painted an entire bunch of hydrangea flowerlets that make up a hydrangea bloom. I approached that composition from the ‘Grape and Mango’ lesson in Yuko Nagayama’s book You Can Paint Vibrant Watercolors in Twelve Easy Lessons. I substituted the flowerlets  for the grapes and proceeded from there. An individual grape is more […]

Hasty Banana

Today’s watercolor experiment: The subject of today’s experiment is yet another bunch of bananas. I decided to take the bananas outside and place them on the patio table. The sun was bright and even though it only 60 degrees, it was hot. Here is a photograph of my banana set up. The sun is quite a […]

More Bananas

Practice makes perfect, so the saying goes. But practice must also have a goal. Today’s watercolor experiment: I liked yesterday’s bunch of bananas except that the sketch was a bit confusing, if examined closely. The ‘wild’ banana’s left end didn’t match up that nicely with the stem. So today’s goal was to draw less ambiguously. […]

The Wild Bunch

Today’s watercolor experiment: Yes, we had no bananas in the house, so I went out to get a bunch. It was a big bunch, so I thought I would subdivide. This is the grouping I got: The two in the foreground sit well enough; that one in the back is the wild one. Bananas is one […]

Two Apples and a Lemon

I am getting a bit ‘appled’ and ‘lemoned’ out here: tired of drawing this kind of fruit without much improvement. Today’s watercolor experiment: Up to now, I’ve been using dilutions of watercolors to give me the different strengths of colors: undiluted for the darkest of color and very diluted for the lighter colors. For the […]

Color Matching

Yesterday I was able to articulate the next hurdle for me to conquer in watercolor painting: matching colors of real objects with colors on my palette. Today’s watercolor experiment: Before I started painting with watercolors, I procrastinated by painting many color strips. I made one for each of the colors in my paint box. Yes, […]

Suffering Succulent

Last fall I bought a succulent from the garden section of one of those all-purpose stores. It was unlike any other plant I had ever seen. The leaves were thick and meaty and covered with fuzz, like pieces of velvet. I transferred it to a clay pot and set it outside. I didn’t think to […]