Day 15, Soaking up local color

On my walk the last few days I have been collecting fall leaves. I am so drawn to the colors and the magic that seems to be taking place all around me. I would come home with arms full of leaves if I could! Jennifer is great since she has pouches on her wheelchair that I can stick all my great finds and she will carry them home for me. Today I decided to paint them before I lost the magic that is fleeting at best. It really isn't even fair to try and capture the colors as they are as vast as the leaves themselves. Here is my ode to Fall and my insatiable love of color!

Here are a few of the leaves I collected on my walk, beautiful!

I then did a sketch and added some color randomly around my paper. While wet I add some of the leaves color.

I then start adding more color and some detail

More color and details

Making my way through the group

Da da, finished and I love it. My 2013 Fall walks frozen in time, they are leaves from a Chinese Pistachio tree, Crepe Myrtles, and some Liquid Ambers. Heaven

Day 12- Wonderful Watercolors are blooming in my Garden

Fall just screams out yellows and oranges and the cooler weather reminds us summer is over. During the heat of those long summer days my nasturtiums struggled along, blooming but not happy. Reminds me of myself sometimes, struggling to bloom when the heat is on! I could tell they were struggling, I nursed them through those hottest days to find them going crazy in this cooler weather? While other things are getting ready to go to sleep my Nasturtiums got a second wind and are blooming up a storm. I know once the frost hits they might be gone but for now I am loving the blooms which add so much color to salads, pasta and paintings! What is blooming in your garden right now? Thankful for Flowers

Original, signed Watercolor Available 

9"x7" so it will fit into an 8"x10" frame with mat.

Nasturtiums in Fall  $55

A day at the Wild Animal Park

We took three of our grandchildren to the Wild Animal Park in San Diego today. The park was overflowing with baby animals, nesting birds and a special butterfly exhibit! It was perfect weather and the kids had a great time. I took tons of pictures and brought along my trustee sketchbook. I took everything home and painted a few things. I was inspired by all the wildlife, and I do mean animals not grandkids, to paint. Here is one of the Lorikeets that the kids fed while there. 

Watercolor 5"x7"

Plein Air Paint Out -Day 7

Today we were at Fairmont park, its a beautiful park with lakes and wonderful trails covered by mature trees. The weather has taken a turn for the COLDER! Brrr, we have a storm coming in and the temps are supposed to drop into the 40's again for the daytime high! We all made a good college try at a painting but once the drizzle started most packed it up. I worked in watercolor too but it wasn't drying to well concidering. Jennifer and Chloe came with me today, even with her little pink sweater, Chloe never did stop shivering.

Tomorrow is the Quick draw and a crique of some of the painting we have produced this week. Should be fun, most have decided to paint in their cars since we are expecting a few inches of rain. I can't wait to see what we produce in our cars!

Nap time

In my painting group online called Painting Friends we do a weekly challenge called "Friday Foto". We have to paint or draw the photo and post. I haven't had much of an opportunity to participate due to time constraints but today I made it a point to paint one of the challenges. Stephie, a wonderful artist and amazing photographer posted this weeks picture she took at the zoo. Here is my kitty picture, thanks Steph.

Peek at my new project

Peek at my new project
Originally uploaded by ddhabicht

Playing with some watercolor techniques, in inbetween sewing my latest art quilt. Sorry its blurry, taken with my phone. I started with a picture printed on my printer onto regular paper, you use vodka to transfer to paper, then enhance and add more paints, at the same time I incorporated tape layers to give it depth. At the end I pulled paint off using a stencil and a scrub brush.

WDE for Wet Canvas

I enjoy the weekly challenges of the weekend drawing event. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to participate for weeks. Every Friday I will venture in to the site to see the photos that the weekly host has posted. I usually can't resist and have to save one in hopes of painting it that weekend. This week the photos were amazing and

WDE for Wet Canvas
Originally uploaded by ddhabicht

I loved the grape picture along with several others I saved in hopes of painting
at a later date. I find that there are never enough hours in my day to do all the things I want to do! Tonight, with Randy gone for a sleep test, I stayed up and painted the grapes.Watercolor 9"x12"

Fuju Persimmons

My mom loves when the Fuju persimmons are ready, she buys them and eats them like apples. I gathered a few from her last shopping spree to paint. I am playing with watercolor, trying to get more of an oil painting feel. Here is Fuju, a 5"x7" watercolor.

My Blue French Dog

When we were in France on one of our many walks exploring the city we came across this dog. He was tied to a sign and stood looking into the store where his owner disappeared. No matter how many people passed by his eyes never wavered off of the door. He was not one bit interested in anyone else. You have to admire that kind of devotion. I am sure that is how we are supposed to be with the Lord. Watercolor 13"x 12"

Pears and shadows

Cindi in our watercolor group "Painting Friends" challenged us to do shadows. I decided to paint tonight and this seemed perfect. She had posted two pictures, one of a statue and pears, I "picked" pears! I think I was too tired to paint as I felt like I was struggling from the start. Somedays you just know instinctively, don't paint! Well, I decided to keep going, I mean, its just a practice piece, right? well soon I was getting mud. Mud is never good in watercolor painting, so I told myself, pretend your an oil painter. So now I was going for mud, colorful mud. I ended up with this, I do like it, it was fun. I want to get dark darks that still have color. That arent dead blacks or browns. So these practice pieces are great, thanks Cindi!

"Pears" watercolor 5x7

Mushrooms

We have had mushrooms growing in our lawn, even with all this heat! It either means we are over watering or we have some pretty tough mushrooms! Randy got our camera and took some close up shots of these little beauties. They are so wonderful and unique. They come up in a day and are gone almost as quickly. I think they are a challenge to paint since they are so overly simple and not very colorful. The challenge here is to make them interesting. I had a piece of left over primed watercolor paper. Although it only had a green wash on it I found it hard to capture any good light areas because of the green. I will paint these again but here is my quick watercolor painting of Mushrooms.

WC Still Life Duo Challenge #1

On Wet Canvas they are doing a challenge to set up just two objects and paint them, then remove one of the objects and add another. Paint again, then remove the oldest object and add something new, so that you always only have two objects. I think we are supposed to do a series of 6. I decided to join Marta and Casey in this challenge, I just loved what they were doing and I love a good challenge. Making just two objects come together to make a nice compostition will be a good lesson. I really need to think about the overall compostion of things as I set them up. Here is my first one, it is a teapot that my oldest daughter made in a ceramics class. I just love it although I have never heated water in it. I did this in watercolor and think that I will do the next one in Pastel.

Summer Peaches

There are a few things that mean summer is here! One of them is eggplant and fresh tomatoe sandwiches (to die for!) and the other is fresh picked peaches on Bryers Natural Vanilla Ice Cream! Oh yummy.

We moved both my apricot and peach tree during the construction this last year and I was sure that I wouldn't have much fruit. But to all of our surprise the tree, happyin their new location, set tons of fruit. I watched the apricots start to turn a beautiful orange and as I got ready to pick the birds got every last apricot! Oh no! I swore that this wouldn't happen to my peaches! Its amazing how the birds just know when the fruit is ready and they come in and get them right before picking time. I have done everything from nets to CD's hanging off the branches at our old house to try and beat the critters to the fruit. So I was getting ready to cover the tree when I noticed that the fruit was ready, so I ate some just to be sure, perfect! So I picked a bowl of them, we ate them over the next few days and I went back out to see if there were any left and to my amazement, nothing was touched. This repeated itself twice again until now I am down to a few left to pick. The birds for some reason haven't touched them, makes me wonder whats wrong with them?

I took tons of pictures to paint so I can thoroughly enjoy my peach season through out the year. I then bought some new watercolors to help inspire me!

Two hour challenge

I belong to a watercolor group online and we set challenges up weekly. It is great fun to have such a rich selection of photos to pick from each week. These are meant to challenge us to try things we don't normally do, whether it is a different medium, style or subject. This week I managed to fit in 3 quick paintings. This one was a boating scene from Roger's photo group. I cropped out one boat and focused on it and the surrounding water which I have never painted. It was a great stretch for me, I obviously need more practice at it. This painting was done in about 1 hour. Its really about just making myself try and paint or draw something everyday, another challenge. Have a great Monday everyone!

Its a sewing marathon

I am busy sewing new quilt patterns that I am designing for a trade show we are doing in May. I feel like a production sewer! It will be nice to get back to my art quilts and painting. I have done a few postcards for my postcard exchange. These two are the ones for the fruit series. Not overly exciting but I am glad that I am seeing the light at the end of this tunnel. I have taken a ton of pictures of the grandkids at the park and in the pool that I want to paint. I bought these two giant frames, 8'x4' I am trying to think about what to paint for the picture inside. I thought a giant family portrait might be nice although pretty tough. Still thinking about it, I want it to hang in the office so it need to be the right kind of painting.

More Christmas card ideas

These are quick watercolor paintings without a prelim sketch, very loose, fun, and fast. Jean Haines did a wonderful video demo at the Watercolor Haven on loose Santa's and I just had to play! Her work is very loose and fluid. This style is meant to leave some areas for us to figure out. I love this style and since I am working on loosening up this is a wonderful exercise. I love the fact that by creating disappearing edges and leaving out most of the details we allow our minds to explore the picture and fill in the blanks. I think it makes for a much more interesting picture sometimes than spelling everything out. But, after I have said that, I also think there is a fine line between too loose and to much detail so I am trying to find that place where I feel it looks like a finished piece. I think these turned out well, it was hard trying to for see where the beard would actually be so I didn't paint there. I want to try and capture the feeling of Santa, happy,warm, inviting, I think the third does that the best. Number one looks a bit grumpy! I can't wait to do some more.