Painting Projects

Sketching and painting still fill a few hours each week, yet most recently it fills a few minutes each day.  My attention has been geared towards nature journaling.  I shared a few notes about the sketchbook I purchased in a previous post. After getting my nerve up, I am now filling the pages with projects, but I am using my photos as references and painting at home.  What I am still hesitant about is laying shades on the pages creating the scene I see in front of me while actually out in nature.  That will come one day!     

Nature Journaling

One of the nature journal projects was to paint a visual story about a hike I did while visiting Joshua Tree National Park in California.  The first painting is from a tutorial and the following two small ones are from photos I took along the trail.  The painting from the tutorial could actually be from one of my photos.  

After returning from last week's trip, I created a nature journal two page spread showing the route I took and some of the locations along the way.  I added some other tidbits of information and a few little paintings.  

May Challenge

It was time to get going on another painting challenge!   This is what it looks like so far.  The idea is to paint a picture a day spending no more than 30 minutes to complete it.  The picture needs to be something related to nature that I saw while out & about.  Each square measures 1 1/2 inches.  I failed miserably on May 5th, after returning from my get-away, I accomplished nothing related to being out in nature.  I did savour a beer on my deck though.  On May 9th, I settled for painting a squirrel I saw on the tree out my front window.  Stay Tuned!  I will post a picture of the finished project at the end of May 31st.

Still Learning

It's a strawberry ice cream in a waffle cone!  This painting was rendered from a tutorial.  It taught about layering paint starting with a very light wash then adding darker levels to show shadows and to give depth & dimension & detail.  Part way through, I considered ripping the page out of the book and starting over, but remembered many times a project gets to a point where it looks like a hot mess, but just forge on and that is what I did.  This does look delicious!  Savouring something like this in the coming days may be necessary to help keep cool if the weather transpires as forecasted.