wren

                                   6x9

A lot of wrens in my yard; such pretty--and loud--little birds.

The background isn't what I envisaged, wanted more backruns ... but you never get them when you want them! Pleased with it anyway.

Also tried an ibis!

junco and finch

                                  6x9

I'm going to be in a group show in June, and the organizer wants bird paintings from me. Ever since she told me that I haven't been able to paint a bird! (These is from a few weeks back.)

more apples

Getting closer, but still a way from what I want, and a long long way from approaching the apples off maybe the best apple painter in watercolor, Charles Demuth. (The best, imho, in oil is of course Cezanne!)

Charles Demuth, Still Life: Apples and Green Glass, 1925

this week in class...

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I took this reference photo two or three years ago; I think I was drawn to the overlapping planes.

This painting is pretty true to the photo. I did add the car, which is why it's out of scale!

When I do this again--and I will because I think I can improve it--I'll make it less of a close-up ... maybe put the ocean in the background?

And I'll change the colors of the houses and roofs: too many midtones here; I think I need to get some stronger high-low contrasts in there to make the scene brighter.

sparrow

6x9

A sparrow in the snow.

I love sparrows, and these little scenes give me a chance to work on my grays.

cardinal

                                 @6x9

As with recent boat painting, I settled on a technique at the end rather than the beginning! At least I'll know what to do next time.

Here, I painted the bird and the more prominent branches then began thinking of the background.

So, I wet the background with a light warm-to-cool wash and painted branches into it using palette grays. I wasn't happy with some on the left, so I smushed them together. When it dried, I added a few more light branches.

Did I overdo it?

portrait class

                               11x14

I'll be starting a portrait class this week. I'm not interested in portraiture per se, but I thought paintimg people would be a good challenge ... Sometimes challenges yield good results.

The teacher is an oil and acrylic painter, and that's where the focus will be, I guess, but I'll be using watercolor. If I get brave, ink.

I surreptitiously (or not so surreptitiously, according to my friend) snapped pictures of this young woman at an outdoor bar in Atlantic City. I liked the strong light, and her hair is a gorgeous deep copper color!

The shadows on her face, especially around her mouth, are a little weird, but maybe will work better in watercolor. 🤞

And a page of blind contour drawings from lesson 1 of sktchy's 30 faces 30 days online class

rowboat

                                   8x8

Looking for subjects to paint over graded washes...

I wanted to not create a hard line between the boat and the water, especially on the shaded side, and may have gone over it too many times. But, on my last pass, I finally hit upon the technique that gave me the effect I wanted: with the painting on a 45 degree angle, put on some realtively strong paint, then flooded it with water.

in class today

...we painted clouds. The idea was to work with paint-to-water ratios and hard and soft edges.

Have to say, I found this very relaxing, painting madeup forms, just "practicing."

back to class ...

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This week went back to class with my friend and teacher Marie Natale.

We worked on small (imagined) landscapes painted over graded washes, one neural, one in color.

A good exercise 1) is using a "bead" to create a smoothly gradated wash and 2) using value to show distance ... 

Dis a quick apple sketch this a.m. too. Maybe beginning to understand the volume?

turnerish sky

studies: 3 apples, 3 days

 

@ 6x9 each

My neighbor gave me a big basket of fruit that contained some Delicious apples; since I usually find I don't like to eat them, I thought I'd try painting them.

May go back to eating them! Seriously, I'm having some trouble with these apples! 

When I first started painting, I used to paint apples all the time ... MacIntoshes. The Delicious apple is more difficult for me: 1) I cannot get the color, neither the dark red nor the almost translucent yellow-green that you can see in places, and 2) I somehow cannot really grasp the volume, the shape ... where it turns, where it's flat; I have tried some different lighting, hoping it would help but I haven't hit on the magic formula yet.

These are some quick studies. I was of course hoping to get a reasonable facsimile of a Delicious straight off, but since I didn't, and can't, I'm going to keep trying to figure it out.   

And I'm open to suggestions!

plein air: park in FL

 

11x15

I went to FL last month to celebrate my sixtieth birthday with my brother and our good friend Mike, who is also a watercolorist, and a fine potter too. (Really, he can do pretty much anything.)

Mike and I managed to get out for some plein air painting one afternoon; we sat under a shelter and painted while it rained.

I wasn't able to find something to focus on, so I looked as it as a chance to practice palm trees.

lbb

 

6x6

Little, uncomplicated bird paintings are a good way for me to get back into a semi-regular painting practice.

Planning to focus on birds for the next month or so.

Instagram has a widget that selects your nine most popular post of the year; these are mine. Most of the paintings were done recently; the top left and bottom right are from the summer.
You can find me on Instagram as: laurastarrett

happy new year

 

6x9

My last post was in September, and now it's January?!

I have been doing a little (a very little) painting, but going through one of those fallow periods ... 

When I have painted something I've posted it on Instagram, which is very easy to do!

Sometime last year my phone stopped letting me post to Blogger; so I had to go back to the old way: photographing a painting, uploading to the laptop, then posting it.

Then, the photo software on my laptop stopped letting me post to Blogger; so now I upload the phot, then upload it to another file then ...

I've got to figure out how to streamline this process!

I bought the palette below--which has removable 42 paint wells (which I really like) and comes with an optional turntable (also like)--from Robax.

Believe it or not, this is NOT their biggest palette: there's one with 85 wells!

Just have to fill it ...

plein air workshop, day 2

10x14

For the second day of workshop we moved indoors, to the Cape May-Lewes ferry terminal. Marie demonstrated painting peple, and I painted this couple whose picture I'd taken the day before.

plein air workshop: Delaware Bay

 11x15

My teacher and friend Marie Natale held a two-day workshop this week. The first morning started out gray and cloudy, but we went ahead and it cleared up beautifully. 

I started a second painting, planning to capture more sparkle on the water--getting the right ratio of water to pigment continues to be the major challenge--but the wind kicked up and we moved to a more sheltered location.

11x14

plein air: pierce's point

 11x15

Spent a morning painting with a group of artists I met recently, most of them pastel painters.

This is a view looking south along the Delaware Bay. I've been painting this scene since I first started painting--that wedge of water never loses its appeal!

plein air: first ave beach (wip)

 10x15

There were some spectacular ever-changing clouds at the beach on this morning. So beautiful it seemed pointless to try to paint!

But I did a little before it started to rain.

plein air: mount vernon ave

 

11x15

Went back to Mount Vernon Ave to try again.

This time I made a loose sketch of the scene, which I think helped me try to arrange the space ... though I still overdid it somewhat: I'd like to reduce the the grass shapes to just a few large shapes.

I do like the foreground though.

 

plein air wip: the red store

 11x15

The Red Store is a very popular--and very high end--cafe and small grocer. Back in the day it was a mom and pop general store; now they sell their fresh squeezed juices for like $8 a glass. On a weekend morning people stream in and out without a pause. An idyllic setting, but I can't help but feel a little conflicted! Maybe that's why I can never do a decent painting of the place ... or maybe it's just the hard to reproduce red it's painted!

I did a nice sketc of this scene: keeping the building in the background and focusing on the Joe Pye weed in the foreground. But when I transferred the drawing to the watercolor paper, I made the building too prominent. So I redrew it (below) but by then I'd lost interest.

Haven't decided if I'll try to salvage this or not. Maybe not, because I really don't care about it!

8x10