"Recidentia Absentis" (Jan 11)

I discovered the joy of trying for mountains in combination with a mysterious mood... yet to be improved, but only my first attempt...

"Far Away"

(19 December 2010-17x13)

A new approach - my intial trials getting into landscape painting, however with the intention to combine them with fantasy related themes. Trying to render perspective and distance. It was a fun painting to do!

Work in Progress - Meadow Dreams

(December 2010, 24x30) Almost finished - but still final touches left. This is another painting that I started 5 years ago with only the background painted. Unable to to finish the painting due to lack of ideas of how - it has been lying in the corner and I never had a hope that I ever finish it. But one day it grabbed me and invited me to start looking at it closer. I used masking for the foregound 5 years ago. Now the challenge was to try and render it more 3 dimensional and make the flowers and butterflies come alive while keeping the light persistent within the painting. In the background I painted in some shapes of flowers and leaves in a paler colour in order to render distance. Mixing lost and found edges with negative painting turned out to be a real fun experience and a technique that I will continue using in the future. And Voila! - almost finished - I will upload the finished painting soon....

"Midnight Whispers"

Part of the joy (sometimes frustration) with watercolour is that you never really know how your finished painting will end up looking, but that is part of the excitement. Also elements that were not planned in the beginning find their way into the painting mostly by accident. (I try to reduce planning time, only do a quick sketch on a separate paper and then draw directly on the paper. Tracing is too time consuming I find!). You learn new things as you go along... learning by doing is what I realised after having spent too many years reading books and looking for inspiration. What  became clear with this one is that blues are not reacting very well to glazing, and unfortunately read somewhere that it applies to all blues. Perhaps intensify them more till next time and try with only 1-2 washes, so this was the lesson learned this time. Also fun to work with shapes, and a mixture of abstarct and detailed.

"Precious"

(November 2010) This may be the last leaving present for some time... This one unfortunately done in all haste starting on Saturday while being cramped into an otherwise busy weekend - not finished until 2pm on a Sunday night...but sometimes ideas don't spring to mind when needed... It ended up with a lovely lady retiring after 28 years of service in the job.

A leaving present for a dear colleague of mine... thought I experiement with a slightly different approach to shapes... not leaving out the butterfly of course!...

"Petaldust"

This is my latest work  (Nov 10), also inaugurating my blogg ... I named it Petaldust. The background of this painting had been lying around for the last 3 years unfinished - after 3 years from an unfortunate break in painting got around to pick up my brush again - and I decided to pick up the trail where I left - and hopefully not give up this time! Its so much fun! Windsor Violet - and Perylene Violet laid the base for this purple mood! :-)