Cardinal

Cardinal, watercolor 30 x 22 cm

Cardinals are of the few birds brave enough to overwinter here in Ontario. It is definitely the most colorful one. Unlike the sparrows who have been frequenting my bird feeders this winter,  this bird seldom stays long enough to let me take pictures. But several days ago this flamboyant male cardinal was so kind to pose for over five minutes.

Cardinal, watercolor 22 x 30 cm

A little one

Chimp, watercolor 29 x 22 cm

Bird-watching

Morning Dove, watercolor 22 x 30 cm

The lazy way to do bird watching - fill up a couple of bird feeders, hang them on a tree outside a window. Then sit inside and sketch...

So far I counted seven different species of birds, a few of them are quite rare and I only caught a glimpse of them, like the red cardinal and his wife (no, not the Borgia one) and the house finch. whereas the gold finch in its more subdued winter coat as well as the ordinary sparrow are the most common visitors. Of all, I keep being surprised by the multitude of soft pastel colors present in the plumage of the morning dove. The colors on the ones I painted are naturally exaggerated.

Dark-eyed juncos, 30 x 22 cm

Morning Doves, watercolor 22 x 30 cm

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.

Friendship

Friendship, watercolor, 28 x 38 cm

This is based on a picture of my mother and Sunny, taken several years ago, when the dog was still alive. He was not allowed to climb on the sofa, so he cheated by getting in my mom's lap when she would sit on the sofa. Of course, he was too big to fit in her lap, so his hind feet would still be on the floor - cute and somewhat funny.

More sketching in the sun

Under the gray sky
The last day started with clouds and drizzle. I hid under a beach umbrella to paint this.

When once I shared with a friend my fear of painting outside, due to potential observers, she said "I love people watching me paint, they only say nice things." And she was right. Most passer-by-s last week would simply mind their own business. The few who stopped and looked at my activity, were very encouraging.

Here are the rest of my vacation sketches. Have a very nice week, everyone!

Flamingos, watercolor in a sketch-book

The straw umbrellas

These lanterns, situated along the path-ways in the resort
created a somewhat mystic atmosphere

Fruit and wine - a subject inside the room.
I completely failed with the bougainvillaea
flowers, but I like the bottle and am proud
with the glass, done without any masking
or white paint

Horse jumping

watercolor, 32 x 23 cm

watercolor, 40 x 30 cm

This will be my last attempt at portraying Olympic sporting events. I have been a little intimidated to try to paint horses, as I have much respect for these animals, but know very little about them. That's why I left this subject for last. I know I didn't do justice to this magnificent animal with my pictures, so, Horses, I promise to make it up to you, with time...

Canada geese

A few small and quick sketches that I did last weekend. You see these birds everywhere here in the parks and ponds. And even sometimes crossing the streets in a long solemn procession, stopping the traffic for a while. I did these sketches in the sun at over 30C heat, which forced me to work really quick.

Studies of water

These are a few small watercolors, which I did in order to study painting water and reflections in water.

The geese in the willow pond are done entirely wet-in-wet with quite thick paint. I mostly let the paint spread by itself on the wet paper, but also did some dabbing for the horizontal lines at the bottom half while it was all wet.
 

The red boat I like the most. I first painted the water wet on dry. Added a few ripples while wet. Then let it dry completely before painting the boat and its reflections.

And the rowing boat, the same view as in the previous post, I did in a mixture of wet and dry with much dabbing, so the colors got muddy. i started with this one and I like it the least.

Water-soluble graphite

Water-soluble graphite on paper

Water-soluble graphite on paper

The last two days, I continued exploring my new materials. For these two sketches I used two water-soluble graphite pencils, 2B and 6B and a graphite stick. The stick, wide about 1 cm is perfect for covering large areas, like the hair in the portrait, and produces very good dark color. I am really pleased how the graphite marks from all three nicely spread with water. These, combined with a water-brush, could be perfect tools for sketching on the go.

Painting my mood

Normally, painting takes my mind away from work. It is an activity quite opposite to my technical profession and helps me keep a balance. Yet, when the stress from office politics and nonsense at work passes a certain level, I loose any desire to paint. Not having painted for days then depresses me more, and the vicious circle feeds itself.
Last weekend I tried to force myself to grab the brushes and I ended up going overboard with squiggling and splatters, producing the crazy flower above. Didn't feel any better though. You can't force a peace of mind.

Finally today I managed to do some productive work and with that came the desire to put paint on paper...
And there is so much to catch up with in blog-space!
 

Parrots

Arches, 30 x 40 cm (12 x 16 in)

The Mexican resort where we stayed prided in its Eco theme. The grounds were turned into a park and much of them were left as the original jungle. A number of wild animal species lived freely there - wild parrots, woodpeckers and other colorful birds, monkeys, iguanas, racoons and coatis. We did see monkeys twice jumping through the trees outside our window. To make things more interesting for the guests, the hotel had a few introduced species, like these gorgeous Macaws and several peacocks. These birds were left free during the day, but spent the nights in an enclosure. Why take the risk to have any of these beauties become the victim of those little bandits, the racoons...

The above painting I did at home, while the two sketches below were done live. The place where the parrots spent the day was relatively crowded and I drew the attention of a number of people with my activity. That wasn't so terrifying after all. A good exercise to overcome my fears.

Live sketch 18 x 23 cm

Live sketch 18 x 23 cm

Watching you...

Celebrating color

Santa brought me several instructional watercolor DVDs. One of them by Jean Haines - a DVD bound to build up your enthusiasm and make you pick up the brushes. After watching the demonstration on painting cockerels, I had to try it myself. I understand now why Jean is so excited about this subject. It gives the opportunity to really enjoy color.

Arches 140lb, 28 x 19 cm

I found a couple of  photos of roosters that I have taken on my vacations.  The photo of this first handsome guy above was taken in the Swiss ethnographic village of Ballenberg.

Arches 140lb, 19 x 28 cm

And this cocky guy (pun intended) I saw pacing self-importantly on a sunny city square at Key West, Florida.

In expectation

This is by a photo I took a few years ago of a litter of stray puppies. They seemed quite in control and independent, lying around a pile of gravel near a building site in Sofia. Probably mom wasn't far too.

I wanted to use the opportunity to wish Merry Christmas and very happy holidays to everyone!

Camels

It is cold outside. We had the first snowfall already. But my mind is at warm places...

Sunny

I think this is not too bad for a very first attempt at painting a portrait. Sunny is special to me not only because he is my mother's dog, but also as the son of a dog I had. Don't be fooled by the wise expression on his face. The reference photo was taken while he was extremely concentrated monitoring the trajectory of our every bite at an outdoor patio. 
I have been making sketches of him lately, but didn't dare painting him. Then today I saw this posting on Konstantin Sterkhov's blog, and thought that I could try my luck...

Grey Squirrel 2

 

A second attempt to paint the same squirrel. I wanted to do it more wet-in-wet with softer transitions and less explicit dry-brush furry tail. But I don't have good control of the wet paper and paint yet and I ended up correcting and fiddling, so the result is not very different from yesterday's.

Grey Squirrel

Squirrels are frequent visitors in my back yard, especially when there are seeds in the bird-feeder. They hang and swing on the feeder until all seeds fall to the ground. Then they can pick whatever they like from the seed mix.
Last summer a few self-seeded sunflowers grew in several spots in the yard. At one point their flower heads started disappearing. Then, one day I witnessed the "bandit" squirrel, who climbed up a sunflower, struggled with the flower until its stem snapped and bent to the ground. Then the little bandit cut the flower off, took it onto the fence and started eating it like a waffle. They are fun to watch, and a few times I've remembered to take a picture of them, like the one I used here.
 

Ground squirrel

Ground squirrel in Banff  (28 x 26 cm)

We met this curious little guy in the Rockies a few years ago. He saw us eating chocolate and insisted we must share. We knew it was not good to feed the wild animals, but he was so persistent, he practically got in my lap. Couldn't resist and gave him a little piece and he allowed us to take a few pictures of him in return.

Ground Squirrel - sketch

"I love Swiss chocolate!"