Floral Alphabet Watercolors - S & T

For these 5"x7" watercolor paintings of the letters S and T, I started with an ink outline of the letters with an abstract floral pattern. I taped these down to help keep them in place (and to keep the paper from warping when it got wet) before I began painting.

Then, I completed an initial light wash of color, letting the watercolor ooze outside of the ink outlines in a few places to give it a painterly feel.

I next started darkening the non-floral areas of the letters (a.k.a. the background) with blue and violet watercolor paint.

I splatter pink and yellow paint over both paintings for further detail/visual interest.

Finally, I darkened the blue-violet areas more, and added more layers of pink, yellow, and green to the floral and leafy parts of the design, painting only strategic areas to give it an almost "stained glass" abstract look.

Here are the final paintings, after they've dried, been untaped, and signed.

Floral Alphabet Watercolors - Q & R

Only 10 more letters to go in my floral alphabet watercolor set! I decided to paint Q-V all at the same time, so the first image is of the ink outlines of those six paintings taped down to my gatorboard - while the rest of this post is dedicated just to the letters Q and R.

I was pretty happy with the procedures I'd established for my first 16 paintings, so I continued doing the same thing. I started with a light wash of color to establish which flowers would be painted which color. This is also where I let some of the color "leak" out of the letter outlines to lightly stain the background and give the finished paintings a real watercolor look.

My next layer was yellow and pink paint splatter, along with some preliminary darkening of the blue-violet non-floral parts of the letters.

Finally, I added more layers of yellow, pink, and green to the floral and leafy areas, as well as further darkened up the blue-violet background areas.

When the paintings were dry, I untaped them, signed them, and photographed them.

Come back soon to see my next blog post - letters S & T!

"Enthusiasm" Colored Pencil Drawing

As I mentioned in my last post, I procrastinated for a long time before I started this drawing. It was the next colored pencil drawing on my "symbolic floral drawing" plan, to be drawn on cadmium yellow Canson Mi-Teintes paper, just like my previous "Nourishment" drawing - but after having a missed miscarriage in September, I wasn't really in the mood to do much art at all, let alone one titled "Enthusiasm."

I finally got around to this drawing in January, finishing it over the course of a few days. The flowers are pink bouvardia, and the title comes from one of the symbolic meanings of that plant. I thought the pink flowers and green leaves would look rather "enthusiastic" set against dark yellow-orange paper, and was excited to see how those colors would work together.

Because the yellow paper is such a unique color, I did some small "test swatches" in the upper left corner (outside of where the drawing will be cropped to when it is eventually matted to 8"x10" size) to see which colored pencils would work best on the yellow paper.

Then I started drawing some of the little bouvardia flowers, using several shades of pink, red, and dark purple. For the larger leaves, I used several shades of green.

Because just one plant didn't fill the paper as much as I would like, I added another set of flowers on the right side, and some more large leaves on the left.

To add some dimension and variation in color to the yellow paper, I added a lighter "canary yellow" and other pale colored pencils (light peach and light green) to the corners and bottom of the drawing.

Finally, I went back through the entire drawing again, adding more dimension, depth, and detail. I darkened the shadows, brightened up the highlights, and blended the colors together. For the leaves especially I did a lot of blending to give the leaves their signature waxy/glossy look.

Below is the final drawing:

I'm hoping to complete several more of these "symbolic floral drawings" in 2019, with my next set of two planned for green colored paper.

"Nourishment" Colored Pencil Drawing

I started this drawing in early July 2018, took a rather long break from it, and then picked it up again in late August, finishing it in early September. It's one of my "symbolism" drawings, where the title is a single word describing the symbolism of the flower being drawn, and the first such drawing I did on cadmium yellow Canson Mi-Tientes paper.

Earlier in 2018, I was in the habit of doing two of these drawings back-to-back, both on the same color of paper. (See: "Ambition" and "Fertility" on red paper, "Flight" and "Playfulness" on blue paper, and "Loyalty" and "Prophecy" on gray paper.) I had planned to do the same thing here, drawing "Nourishment" on yellow, and then "Enthusiasm" soon after. Instead, this "Nourishment" drawing took a lot longer than anticipated, and I couldn't even bring myself to start "Enthusiasm" for awhile. Wanting to continue the tradition of at least posting two same-colored-paper drawings in consecutive blog posts (even if they weren't consecutive artworks), I postponed posting "Nourishment" until I finally finished "Enthusiasm" as well.

I'm not entirely sure why it took me so long to complete these drawings, other than I got distracted with life and my heart just wasn't in art at all for awhile. I have a long list of these "symbolism" drawings all planned out and ready to go - a list of the flowers I intend to draw, the corresponding title, and the colored paper I plan to use for them - and in early July, "Nourishment" just happened to be next on my list.

I found a picture of sunflowers to use as a reference, and started lightly sketching in the yellow petals and brown centers.

And then, after about 10 minutes of work, I stopped.

When I started "Nourishment," I wasn't yet pregnant - but was hoping to be soon. I had a lot on my mind. If I had completed "Nourishment" in the time frame I usually do, it would've likely been complete long before I knew I was pregnant; instead, I procrastinated and stalled and got distracted, and for 7.5 weeks, this drawing sat around in this barely-started state. During that time, we started trying to conceive, and found out I was pregnant on August 10. We started telling people the news, and I made plans for my pregnancy. I didn't get back to this drawing until August 27 - at which point a drawing titled "Nourishment" seemed to be laden with so much more meaning. It felt like such an apt drawing to work on, while my body was busy nourishing a growing baby-to-be. It took me a few more days to finish, working on it a little bit at a time (for I was still not quite in the mood to focus on art), and I finally finished it on September 2.

First, I finished lightly sketching in the plants by adding in light green leaves.

Then, I started going in and adding depth and detail. I darkened the brown centers, and lightened the yellow petals with white and yellow colored pencils.

Then I darkened the leaves somewhat (though not adding much more dimension/detail to them, since I wanted the focus to be on the sunflowers themselves), and darkened the brown centers yet again, to heighten the contrast of the sunflowers.

The above picture is the completed drawing, complete with signature. Here are some close-up shots of the final drawing, below:

Five days after I finished this drawing I learned that I was having a missed miscarriage; six days after that, on September 13, I had my D&C. I understandably wasn't in the mood to create much art for awhile after that (for an entirely different reason than before) - and I especially wasn't gung-ho about starting the next symbolic floral drawing on my list, which was titled "Enthusiasm." I eventually worked on some other projects during that time instead, but I still kept putting off "Enthusiasm"... In January, I finally started and finished that second colored pencil drawing on yellow paper, which is why I'm posting "Nourishment" today. "Enthusiasm" will be the next post.