Painting flowers has been great while sheltering in place and I have painted more than my share in the past three months. But good news here on the reopening, next week our parks can be used for more than exercise. I am definitely looking forward to painting landscapes again.
This is the model from yesterday’s Zoom drawing session. She has beautiful expressive features and it was a pleasure to sketch her. A positive feature of Zoom is that it allows the artist to be very close to the model, much closer than would be comfortable in an actual drawing session.
I prepared my black Bristol board with several coats of acrylic gloss medium ahead of time, so it had some of the non absorbent characteristics of yupo paper. I worked on an easel so the gouache would flow downwards and make interesting textures that emphasized the models expressiveness.
I was able to join my cousin’s sketch group in Fresno by Zoom. I painted several 20-minute sketches and had so much fun doing it. This was the last sketch of the evening and my favorite. I like the way the round shape of the chair holds the curves of the figure and the simple colors of the painting.
We took a longer walk today and came across this small house with a stone driveway.
I was late meeting my cousin on Zoom to sketch with her group in Fresno. In the 10 minutes I had with them, I did the contour drawing above, and then spent the evening doing small gouache sketches.
Of the twelve roses in the bouquet, one had a particularly wonderful shape, and I found myself painting and drawing it multiple times. This was a bouquet that kept on giving
At first I painted it in a vase on a tablecloth.
Then I focused in on it more by shortening the vase.
And finally in the first painting above, I pretty much just painted this rose of unusual shape.
I have been watching the zucchini grow, and its flower is definitely eye catching. It only opens for the first part of the day but puts on a great show for those few hours. Its shape seemed perfect for block printing and I spent a very pleasant day trying to capture it with a gouache and linoleum print.
Deliberate Sketching 