Two small sketches

... trying to do these small landscapes quick and loose

Landscapes

Misty creek

 

Bruges 2

Foxglove

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)

There are quite a few foxgloves blooming right now in my yard and I have been trying to paint them for the last three days. They proved quite difficult for me, with too many distracting details. Here I tried to ignore the color variations and the  fascinating sprinkles on the inside of each bell and focused solely on the shapes.

Peonies

It has been a wonderful Sunday morning, sitting in the backyard, painting flowers. Beautiful weather, quiet and peaceful...
I painted these peonies while waiting for another piece to dry. Did them quickly, without drawing and they turned out much better than the other painting, which I planned and drew. Isn't this typical!?

Poppies again...

still very far from what I would have liked, but there are a few things I did right...

Poppies before the hailstorm

It has been a while since my last post.After returning from a long absence my first task was to get the garden in order. I have been thinking about the similarities between gardening and painting. You make a plan, choose plants with the right color, size, blooming time, etc. But there is much left to chance in what comes out in the end. And if you try the same combination of plants at another spot, the result is never exactly the same. 

These poppies bloomed yesterday in the backyard and today I sat outside to paint them, in a record hot weather. Half way through that process a cloud appeared, but I couldn't imagine rain on such a hot and sunny day. Well, five minutes later there was a thunderstorm and.... hail! I managed to get inside before any damage was done, but now the poppies are a sad sight. My consolation is that there are still a number of unopened buds.

Erma gorge

My internet connection lately has been so bad, I cannot even access some blogs and can hardly open others. At least I can still view and post on mine.

This is a view of the gorge of the small Erma river, located about an hour drive west of Sofia. It was a lovely trip to a picturesque site.

Sketches from Sofia

A couple of small sketches from Sofia - the Bulgarian capital. These may be the base for larger pieces later on.

The gilded domes of the cathedral church Alexander Nevski

Sofia University

A few sketches

(once again, a post that disappeared somewhere in google's "cloud" some time ago... )

A few sketches I did on the go. Still having hard time getting used to the sketch-book paper and pan colors..

Bruges

Based on a photo from a Benelux tour a few years ago. Going through the photos now, I'm thinking that Bruges is a perfect place for painting outdoors. If only I painted back then....
One of my goals with this view was to avoid fussy details, like the ones on the Elora painting in my previous post. So I did a pencil sketch, then a quick watercolor sketch. By the time I started the actual picture I knew the major shapes and had gone through filtering out the unimportant details. Funny how hard it is to make it simple!