One of the three works in progress posted here is finished. At lest for now. Here are some of the intermediate steps.

I wasn't happy with how it was turning out, so I covered a big part of it. Jane calls this phase "monkey-ing" the piece. It means covering a chunk of the piece to force it to go in a different direction instead of brooding over something that is not going anywhere. 

It might be done now ...

I played catch-up over the Christmas break - my sketching habit took a hit lately. I decided to sketch some of my presents and some leftovers.

The year is drawing to a close - let's hope that the next one will be better!

.I found three 300lb pieces of paper that I used as warm-ups during the Bob Burridge workshop in Vermont this summer.
This is a particularly busy time of the year at work, so my art time is reduced to minuscule increments here and there. 

I decided to start by painting a dark background and then adding 2 big shapes on each paper. That's it. 

Then I added more marks on each paper: dripping high flow sepia paint, splattering acrylic ink etc.

Here is the beginning:

This is few iterations into the process:

Stay tuned for the evolution of things ..

One of the classes I am taking over at Art Tutor is about watercolor pencils. I bought a while back 10 Inktense pencils and I seldom use them. I also have watercolor crayons - and I use them even more seldom that the pencils. 

I also think that they might be a better choice for sketching out - at least for now. They are easy to carry around and I can use the water brush. When I will get better and faster with watercolors, I will take them out again.

Inspiration - a photo taken in Girona. I am pleased with the result. Different from pure watercolor washes of course, but not bad. What do you think?

I don't have big chinks of time to paint these days. I found inspiration in a photo I took few months ago of a hibiscus plant. 
Step 1 - the super fun part - wet the paper and lay down washes in the colors if the flower.
Step 2 - add more washes hoping to end up with a hibiscus ...

Well in my case it is an extraterrestrial hibiscus!

Or maybe a new variety that will be named after me ... or a carnivore plant ... or ...

I like the colors,  but I think I overdid the background. I wanted to make the flower pop more and I am not convinved that purple was the way to go. As I type this, it crossed my mind to cover the purple part with a piece of collage. Why not? Stay tuned fo Extraterrestrial hibiscus - part 2 !

I picked up few art classes over at ArtTutor - they were on sale this past weekend. One of them is "Watercolor wet in wet" with Andrew Geeson. Watching the videos, I realized the mistake I was making. Well, one of them anyway. I used to wet the whole page, which made it very hard to control the paint. I decided to practice the approach and test it with pen line. 

​Here is the result:

For the apple, I used some lines with the Platinum Carbon Pen and for the gourd, the glass dip pen. I like the gourd the least. I see potential with this method, but more practice is needed of course,