Wild Horse Watercolor

9"x12" original watercolor

Here is today's painting. I'm working on several art pieces at once, and haven't posted anything new in a few days, so here is one I just completed. I will list it on ebay soon.

I have found an interesting third party ebay tool called seller circle. It puts a "floating gallery" at the bottom of each of your ebay listing pages. There's also a separate page that is created with all your ebay listings. (Mine is http://www.sellercircle.com/caren) If you have a Mac, the cool look will be familiar to you. If you don't have a Mac, you might wonder why you don't.

Sea Turtle

9" x 12" watercolor

Here's a subject I like but haven't often visited. I normally paint what I am more immediately connected to on a daily basis--horses, birds, etc. But I like sea turtles and fish, despite the fact I live in the mountains, not near the ocean. It felt a little strange diving into this subject, I can paint or draw a horse with my eyes closed, but sea turtles, I had to look at some photos to make sure I knew what they looked like.

Many years ago, growing up in Southern California, I became a certified scuba diver and did dives for a few years, so I am familiar with being in the ocean, it's just been awhile. My interest in doing ocean scenes was awakened after I took a watercolor workshop with Lian Zhen in 2008. (See my blog posts on the workshop HERE.) He had us paint an underwater scene with fish, and it turned out to be really fun as you "find" more fish shapes to bring out negatively when you study the initial washes of color. (The two fish on the right and the smaller turtle in this painting were developed negatively.)

Another Rock Art Horse

I'm having fun with this theme. I like being only partially in control of what happens with these types of paintings and "finding" horses within the color shapes. What a great way to stay loose.

Rock Art Horses

9" x 12"

Here is an example of one of my color samples inspiring a subject. I have been wanting to do some rock art horse paintings for quite awhile now, but didn't have the components in my head as to how I was going to do it. I've seen lots of rock art paintings, some really well done and some that is tacky and "motif" like. The best rock art of all are the amazing originals, and though I have never been to the cave of Lascaux in France, I have been up close and personal with some pretty cool petroglyphs in Wyoming.

So a little color sample I did the other day reminded me of a warm, rocky texture, and it inspired my first rock art painting. It mostly was unplanned, I "found" the horses after the initial colors were painted.

Watercolor Sample Colors

When I cut a 22" x 30" sheet of watercolor paper into four 11" x 14" pieces, the only waste is a 2" strip. I cut the strip into 2" squares and made some three color combination paint samples. I have been meaning to do some experimental paint samples for quite some time, and with this strip of watercolor paper staring at me, I finally did it.

And not only did the strip of paper inspire me to start some samples, but some of the results have inspired painting ideas based on the colors alone. Don't you most often think of the subject first and then decide what colors to use to depict the subject? Well with these three-color samples, I not only found some great and not-so-great combinations, but a couple of them have inspired subject matter ideas.

The sky in my previous posting was inspired by the color sample in the upper left hand corner. I'll post more of my colors-turned-into-subjects as we go along.

Sunrise/Sunset

4" x 6"

Here is a little landscape painting I just did based on some photos I took of the last sunset of 2008. However, it could just as easily be a sunrise so you can look at it as an ending of a lovely day or the promise of a new day or a new year!

A New Beginning

I didn't get to paint today on this first day of 2009, so here is a painting I did a couple years ago that reminds me of new promise, new beginnings. It's a little painting--only 4" x 6".

I didn't think about making any New Year's resolutions this year, but I heard someone talking about resolutions and what instantly popped into my mind for myself was "do bigger paintings". In watercolor, I usually do 9 x 12 or 11 x 14 paintings, rarely venturing into anything much larger.

So this year I want to bust out of the safety and tidiness of small paintings, and occasionally throw some paint on larger pieces of paper. I have some large pieces of watercolor paper hiding behind my desk, just waiting to be taped to a board and painted on.

An ongoing goal I have is to paint looser and more spontaneously. I spent many years painting in oils and it never had the serendipitous magic that watercolor does. I believe people who try to control watercolors too much misunderstand the medium. There's no bigger thrill for me than to have different watercolor colors run together and create new colors and shapes. I am not an abstract painter though, so my paintings have to look like something. I just want the "something" to be at least partially loose and surrounded by flowing color.

So here on the first day of 2009, I proclaim that I will do some larger paintings (two or three a month) and continue in my quest for spontaneity and looseness. If I stray away from that in the coming months, someone holler at me!

Happy New Year!