Watercolour studies - more pears!

If you have seen my earlier posts (here and here) you can see how my paintings developed, getting simplier!

I also changed the accent colours, choosing from the real ones I would see.

 I painted many more, but already sent them as postcards! 

At the end I ran out of the ready cut  paper - and used some Canson 200 gsm paper for the last pears( as the one above). It dried much faster, and doesn't have the structure of the Fabraiano Artistico coldpressed watercolour paper, but it's also interesting.

Now - it was time to stop!

But I will definitely repeat this painting session as an excercise soon. I also recommend it as a watercolour lesson to everybody: choose a  simple subject, paint small size and repeat several times!

It's very meditative and zen - and you learn a lot!

Watercolour studies - pears!

Some days ago I painted a series of pears from my garden (link here).

 I started with more naturalistic paintings, but slowly started to simplify. 

Below  you can get an idea of the process!

 More tomorrow!

Painting pears in my garden - so delicious!

Pears, watercolour  10x15 cm

We have had such a hot July, but finally last weekend the temperatures went down a bit, allowing me to move outdoors and enjoy my garden again. I wanted to paint a series of postcards for the postcardartgroup.

The vegetation and flowers have suffered from the heat, but I did find something to paint!

        Pears, small watercolours in progress, 10x15 cm

I started to paint the small pears that are maturing right now.

The first paintings were more naturalistic, even if I was using a loose style. 

I repeated the same subject several times...

 It was very relaxing and meditative to repeat the same subject with small changes, to see which changes would actually improve the painting. or which solutions I'd like more. 

Usually I like to paint large, but doing all these studies was possible because I kept the size small, like a postcard - and I highly recommend this excercise to everybody who loves painting!

                          The postcards are of now, but  I'll show you more pictures soon!

Playing with watercolours... Summer colours!

Alcea Rosea, watercolour 24x30cm on Fabriano Artistico 300grs paper

I have either been very busy or very lazy lately, so it's definitely time for a new post!

I painted this hollyhock (Alcea Rosea ) from my fantasy, last week,

when the flowers in my garden were already suffering the heat of July...

And this is what I did first, an underwash just playing with some colours. 

To be honest I wasn't really sure what it was going to develop into!

And yes, I admit I was definitely inspired by Jean Haines, if you don't know her work, click on the link for lots of inspiration.

 work in progress