Mosaic

Fall Leaves

I went wandering around Pacific Grove one day during my second month living in Monterey. Generally looking for something to see or do. My stated purpose was finding someone who could send me in the direction of a raku kiln. Instead, I found Charlsie. She is a watercolor artist, as in she makes money at it, and has a studio in PG. Every thursday, she opens up her studio for watercolor classes. To be perfectly plain, we pay $10, she brings brie, bread, wine, and snacks, lets us use her paints, paper and brushes and provides entertaining stories. No actual teaching is involved. It's lovely and I'm now a regular. Last month, she asked me if I'd be interested in putting something up for her fall-themed exhibit at the florist for the PG ArtWalk. I figured, that's as good an assignment as any I'm going to get, which is none. see below. So I whipped out some fall leaves. In my happy world, I'd have sold one. Maybe next time.

open season

this year, my watercolor class doesn't fit into my schedule and it seems that i can't be bothered to come up with my own art assignments. so, i come to you, my few and loyal fans, begging a favor. give me an assignment. an interesting one.

mini pictures

window cutouts

This is the view out my kitchen window. If I were a little taller, you'd be able to see the vacation house next door. I was playing around with Photoshop and discovered the "cutout" filter. That's the second image. Once I saw that, I thought, "huh, I have lots of extra time this week. Maybe I'll try actually cutting the whole thing out of paper. Yeah, that'd look neat." And twenty hours, one season of Lost and two movies later, here's the result.

Finding paper in enough different colors was a problem. I had to resort to raiding Home Depot for a 3-inch stack of paint chips. Unfortunately, they didn't have the really big chips.

Red Couch

'Tis the season

... for Christmas stuff to start appearing everywhere. Why break a trend? Besides, Christmas lights are pretty all year. Marguerite demonstrated wet on wet watercolor last week. Now that I know what it is, it all makes much more sense.

More Trees

Sorry Nana, I still haven't gotten around the making a tile from your tree print yet. It could still happen, though. A friend in town just got a kiln. Once we figure out how to use it, maybe I can fire all the stuff sitting under my table.

Here's some watercolors of your trees instead.

Negative Space

No, not that kind... I found a book in the library of watercolors I thought were pretty neat. The artist uses a LOT of masking fluid and a wet on wet technique. Not having any idea what that was, I tried to copy one anyway.

Sex Pot

I swear I didn't come with the name myself. That just seems to be what people come up with. Both my pottery and watercolor teachers called these "organic". That must be an artistic euphemism.

Quilt

She wanted us to play with color. This isn't the exact assignment, though. I changed it a little because I liked the outcome better this way. It's my quilt with the shadow of a tree falling on it. I'd like to do it again with some leaves, some wrinkles,and more of the quilt itself.

Seedpod Drawing

Here's one of my seedpod drawings. I got the pod from the gutter of my sister's neighbor's house in Austin. I have no idea what kind of pod it is so feel free to pipe up if you do.

Eucalyptus pods

I've been in a seed pod phase for a while. These are the first ones that I've painted. I think they came out rather nicely. They probably aren't done yet, though. We'll see. Perhaps I'll post some of my pod drawings later...

My first watercolor assignment...

Marguerite loves pears. and apples and cherries. It sounds like we'll have the opportunity to paint LOTS of them for class. Here are my first four. She wanted us to work with darker paper to try it out.

Pirhana "Vicious Fishes"

I did this one on a heavier, more textured paper. I like the way it came out a lot! The only problem is that the color doesn't come out as bright as it does on a smoother paper. It works with the fish scales, but perhaps not so well with something that's a smoother surface.

More fishies

I kept going with the Troll fish thing for a while. Copying turned out to be great practice. I got to figure out how someone else does little things that I like.

Blue Fish

When I saw Ray Troll's work at the aquarium this summer, I couldn't get rid of the thought that I needed to buy some black paper and pastels and try it myself. So, I did. My first attempt was this blue deep sea fish. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that it's a copy of one of his, as is every other fish that i'm about to post.