Layered landscape scene, watercolor by Leora Wenger 2014
Haven’t had much time to blog – I was working today (on a Sunday!) and helping my daughter with a school project (about Chana Szenesh), and all of a sudden, it was 5 pm. I started preparing dinner, and now that a few things are warming up I decided it would be a nice time to post the above landscape watercolor, one that is an exercise from One Watercolor a Day.
If you are observant of details of this blog, you may notice that I added a subscribe box with a teacup watercolor to the right sidebar. “Be My Guest” is the current motto. I plan to write a post about subscription boxes on my Websites for Small Biz blog.
Elsewhere in the Blogosphere
Thank you to Naomi Firestone-Teeter of the Jewish Book Council for hosting the February Jewish Book Carnival and including my review of Rabbi Lau’s book.
Fanciful Fish, watercolor by Leora Wenger 2014
Another day, another watercolor: inspired by the Day #5 exercise in One Watercolor a Day, I drew a fanciful fish using a drawing from a Dover book filled with art nouveau drawings. Then I drew it again on watercolor paper, put on some masking fluid, and painted in some color. All as I fancied – I made up the colors and some of the pattern as I went along.
Here is a detail of the fanciful fish watercolor that I posted last week on Google+:
I decided a good way to use Google+ is when I am having a busy day, but I need a creative break, I quickly post a detail from a painting that I later plan for a whole post on my blog. I also sometimes post photos on Google+.
I am up late writing this post (people who know me well know I am usually an early to bed, early to rise type) because I am waiting for my son to come home from a trip. He went to visit my other son at college. He said he had a great time. He missed the first train he planned to take (a good experience in travel not always going perfectly), and my husband is out now picking him up.
I did a watercolor landscape last week that I based loosely on the photograph at the bottom of this Meron post. I also have lots of photos of robins – they seem to have invaded my neighbor’s backyard (and the gutters of my roof as well). So maybe a post on robins tomorrow – we will see. Thank you for visiting!
Red Admiral Butterfly on a Leaf, watercolor painting by Leora Wenger, 2014
Last year I went in search of birds and I found red admiral butterflies. This year I’ve photographed plenty of birds as I’ve been good about filling the bird feeder, but it has been sparse on butterflies. One of the advantages of art is you can re-create what you like in a watercolor.
This watercolor is inspired by an exercise in the book One Watercolor a Day by Veronica Lawlor in which you are supposed to paint a design, such as a butterfly, using masking fluid. After drawing your design in pencil on watercolor paper, you paint the masking fluid on the white paper first, then let it draw. Once it is draw (takes about fifteen minutes), you can paint on top of it and around it. When your paint dries, you can then carefully peel off the masking fluid (I used an eraser). You will now see the bright white of the paper. That’s the best way to get white in a watercolor painting: let the paper show through. I used masking fluid where you see veins of the leaves, white dots on the butterfly, and also for the orange areas. I painted in the orange after I peeled off the masking fluid.
I may try this exercise again with a different sort of design. Maybe I’ll look one up in a book – a castle might kind of interesting for example, or a dragon. Someone did a simple paintbrush with a variety of colors and got beautiful results. I originally thought of painting a bird, but it didn’t seem to lend itself well to a masking fluid project. I want something with different parts and pieces that can be separated with the white lines I create with the masking fluid.
Thank you to Michelle of Rambling Woods who helped me identify those red admiral butterflies last May. If you want to see what else I’ve been inspired to paint from nature, here is a red cardinal watercolor painting.
On a completely different note than a red admiral butterfly watercolor painting, here is a photograph of my daughter and my husband at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (I’m posting this so she can use it for a project in school, where the teacher said they can only use photos from Google Images (?!x!?)):
My favorite part of the Metropolitan Museum is the American Wing. If you have been there, what is your favorite part? Do you have a favorite in another art museum?
Sometimes you have been elsewhere than the blogosphere, and you want to convey some of what you have learned and seen, but you don’t always have a set tale or a method or a how-to or some other funky way of setting up the oh, so awesome post. So some of the places I have been: 1) skiing in Pennsylvania with my sons 2) strolling through Central Park in the cold snow with my husband and daughter 3) viewing the Chagall exhibit at the Jewish Museum 4) creating watercolor exercises like the wet on dry Gerber daisy flower above for the FB group One Watercolor a Day and 5) working away for various clients, including one project for anthropologists that started last June and may finally be close to becoming two new websites. I’m not going to say more about 5), because there is still more to be done, but maybe I can talk a bit about the other “subjects.”
On the topic of blogs, what is this blog about? I want to continue to share artwork; this blog can help propel me forward with creative ideas both for my traditional fine art and for illustration work that might be for client work. I would like to continue to share in Nature Notes, though I only participate when I have been photographing nature, and that has been slim pickings lately. Sometimes I talk about Highland Park – I’ve done Hurricane Sandy and some recent power outages (there were more tonight; friends on the South Side are not having fun). I used to do more recipes – my thinking in the future is maybe I will focus on teaching creative cooking. For example, how does one create a good soup? a tasty salad? Years ago I wanted to blog about how to get one’s children to eat healthy food. I still struggle with that, but my children probably do eat more vegetables than the average American, although only if placed directly in front of them in a manner that is appealing. I will sometimes post book reviews, but those take a lot of my energy and time, so expect those sparingly. There are Jewish topics, often of a creative nature like a piyut (liturgy poem), that I love to explore. In the past, I’ve interviewed artists and writers – maybe I’ll have the opportunity to more interviews. And with all of these topics, I love getting your feedback. If you share my enthusiasm for any of these topics, would love to hear so in a comment.
Getting back to my recent adventures, here is a favorite ski slope scene:
For this blog post, I’ve said enough. Will have to save more conveying in a future post! To finish off, here is the wet-on-wet version of the Gerber daisy flower I painted:
I joined a wonderful online Facebook group related to the book One Watercolor a Day by Veronica Lawlor. You share the exercises you do from the book in a closed group. At the right is the first exercise, sometimes known as Day 1. You were supposed to experiment with different colors and marks on a page, keeping a set palette with each watercolor. I did a lot of what is called wet on wet – you apply water, then a color, then another color – it’s not easy to control, but one sometimes gets lovely results.
So I was wondering when am I going to fit in doing a watercolor a day? Or even one watercolor a week? This past Sunday I learned if you have sunlight but no power, you can paint and paint and paint. At about noon on Saturday we (and thousands of other Edison and Highland Park residents) lost power (there was a damaging fire at a substation in Edison, New Jersey). We did not get out power back until 4 pm on Sunday (others got power back at varying times). It was a totally unexpected blackout. Those who had bought generators after miserable Hurricane Sandy were happy(satisfied?) to use them.
I learned (again) how much we depend on technology and power. Indeed, I had a pile of work I needed to do, but it all had to wait. Happy to have a little space and time to paint with watercolors.
There is also a Facebook group for the book One Drawing a Day (see my review called One Drawing Per Week). I’ll try that one later – one can only do so much.
