Scenes from Valletta

Between the world cup, gardening and catching up at work I finally found some time and energy to paint. The two value sketches, done during a couple of football matches, helped to get the motivation for the large paintings.
These two I did following Alvaro's technique, which is perfect for city scenes with stark contrasts of light and shade.

Valletta, Republic Square, watercolor 54 x 40 cm

Valletta, Republic Square, charcoal sketch

Valletta, the Library, watercolor 54 x 40 cm

Valletta, the Library, charcoal sketch

Sketching people

I'm back from a longish trip, but haven't got back to painting. So, here are a few more pages from my sketchbook of people who happened to sit in the same place long enough to finish a sketch.

From the sketchbook

A few sketches from Bulgaria.

Tsarevets is a fortified hill where the medieval capital of Bulgaria was located. Not much is left from the buildings and fortifications, but the sight is picturesque nevertheless.

The other two sketches I did very quickly trying to capture a beautiful mountain view, before the rain clouds had gathered.

Tsarevets 1

Tsarevets 2

Iundola

Belmeken

From the garden

Yellow daffodils, watercolor, 30 x 22 cm

Purple iris, watercolor sketch

Primulas, watercolor, 30 x 22 cm

More poppies

Poppies 3, watercolor, 22 x 43 cm

Poppies 4, watercolor, 12 x 43 cm

A couple of more attempts, but instead of the transparent colors from the previous post, I used cadmium red and yellow here. I like the spontanaety of the previous two much better

Poppies in the wind

Poppies in the wind 1, watercolor, 28 x 33

Poppies in the wind 2, watercolor, 28 x 33

I have been quite busy lately, and after a break it is sometimes hard to get back to painting. I decided to try to do poppies with the simplest possible brushstrokes. I like the result. Maybe I'll explore this some more...

Clay Water Pot - PADT challenge

Old Water Pot, watercolor, 22 x 28 cm

I love ceramics. A few years ago I even did a couple of pottery classes, which unfortunately showed me that I lack the required strength in the arms and hands for decent results on the pottery wheel. But I didn't stop being fascinated by the endless variety of rounded shapes of old ceramic vessels and the lovely natural colors that traditional glazes produce.

So when I saw the picture of an interesting clay pot in this month's challenge at Paint and Draw Together I had to give it a try. My focus were the colors of the glaze, so I painted only the pot for simplicity. Although, the carved wooden fragment and the shadow patterns on the floor are a composition each in itself too.

Daffodils

Daffodils, watercolor 28 x 38 cm

There was a pot of small daffodils on my table, waiting to be painted. I've always found it hard to paint yellow flowers. I had to exaggerate the orange of the little "trumpets" to give the flowers some dimension. I cannot wait for all the spring bulbs to start blooming in the yard...

Spring is here!

Robin, watrecolor sketch

I saw a couple of robins today! Here, robins are the sign of spring.

And talking about birds, recently I saw in National Geographic the most beautiful watercolors of birds. They were by an artist named Karl Martens. I looked him up and found that he paints exclusively birds. You can see some of his paintings here.

Jamon Iberico

Cutting ham, watercolor 28 x 38 cm

One of my pleasures in Spain was tasting freshly sliced ham.
The challenge here was to simplify a very busy scene with many colors, objects and light sources. The obvious way to go was to use just a few colors. In this case:  ultramarine blue, yellow ocher, quinacridone red and burned sienna. I ignored the actual background and also tried to use only four or five values. A preliminary charcoal sketch helped me figure these out. I like the contrasts that this produced.