Watercolor Cats

 

Well, I had hoped to write my second part about the weekend in Ostfriesland (here's part 1), but I unfortunately didn't find the time. The last few days were just busy with all kinds of unforeseen stuff. So I'm turning to some watercolors I made both recently and not quite so recently, but which had never found its way into the blog.

I'm still very much a beginner when it comes to watercolors. I simply don't practice enough and while I'm telling myself that I shoud change that, so far I haven't done it. The cards in the top picture are the result of a class with Laly Mille about "art flow cards". 

One of my dreams has been to paint landscapes with watercolor. This is a first try to paint mountains in the distance and closer by.

The following is from a class, but I cannot for the life of me remember which one it was. It is a couple years ago and I remember that I enjoyed it very much. I was surprised that even a few accidents didn't turn up too bad.

And then I stumbled over a couple cat watercolor classes and I was sold. This first one is the result from the first class. I don't remember the name of the teacher. I later gave it to a neighbor who had gifted me a big bag of her apples (that I turned into apple sauce) - she's the owner of Kibeau, the cat who resides in my backyard.

The second class was by Terry Runyan, and she is a real inspiration. Here are a few of my watercolor cats:

One of Terry Runyan's watercolors I liked so much that I tried to create something similar. Cats from the back are a lot easier to paint!

And here's the real cat - Kibeau lazily lying in my open studio door to the garden while I paint, waiting for me to finally get up and offer him a treat.

Cat faces for Nicole's Friday Face Off today!

A Few Faces

 

Recently I practiced painting faces again, most of them in a class setting. This first one, "Moon Goddess" is actually not that recent but from September of last year. It was part of the Taster Lessons for Art Soul Gathering; this was a class by Sue Young. I didn't know Sue before, but liked her style of teaching and had actually almost finished this painting by the end of the class. I only had to add the background a bit later.

A couple weeks ago Karen Abend invited to one of her Sketchbook Get-Togethers that happen live on Zoom. I knew that I couldn't be there for the actual class, but when you sign up you get the link for the replay. It was a "watercolor portrait play" with artist Claudia Kazachinsky.

Before the class we got a warm-up lesson during which we learned about shadows and created a face just by painting shadows.

This was very interesting, even though I don't like my painting very much.

The "real" lesson was much more complex and I was glad that I had the link for the replay, because I definitely needed much more time than just the two-hour class. While I'm not super content with my painting I learned a lot in this class. I definitely need to better manage the amount of water. I also chickened out in drawing my own face, but used the reference image that I copied onto the paper. Claudia explained very well and never became tired answering questions from the students in the live class. 

The class inspired me to practice faces more. It's definitely something I do not feel comfortable with. I practiced on scrap paper, mainly using shadows. But this time I drew the face as well - as you can clearly see, no one has a face like that! She looks like a bad tempered horse. This was done with graphite and charcoal.

Of course these faces are for Nicole's Friday Face Off.

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I have to say here that I am incredibly grateful for Senator Cory Booker and his amazing marathon speech in the Senate last Monday evening to Tuesday evening. Other than a certain senator from Texas who in 2013 used his filibuster speech to read from children's books (Dr. Seuss anyone?), Senator Booker's speech was substantial for the entire 25 hours. I first became aware of Senator Booker in 2016 during the presidential campaign, I liked his reasonableness and have appreciated him ever since. He stands up for democracy, for this country and for the American people. He is one of the few decent politicians we have. I hope we can keep him - he is up for re-election in 2026. New Jersey, stand up for him!

Watercolor Woman

 After a long time I'm joining Nicole's Friday Face Off again with this watercolor I did quite a while ago. I had mixed both colors until I liked them - the blue is actually more of a light blue-green, kind of teal color that my camera didn't capture. The stars are stencilled on with acrylic paint. I was really happy with this painting until I changed the background by adding swirls and stenciled shapes, and I didn't like it at all. To make things even worse I tried to cover it up with titanium buff which didn't work either. I guess I have to live with it. Lesson learned - if you're happy with a painting, don't fiddle with it anymore.

Water Creatures

 

For this week's Thursday Art and Dinner Date over at Rain's place the topic is "water creatures". I start with a small watercolor painting I did last year in the spring. I think it was either Sketchbook Revival or one of those Taster lessons - I really can't remember and unfortunately I also forgot the artist who was doing the lesson.

Let's continue with birds - there are so many that are found in or around the water. Here's one of my favorites - a Black-Crowned Night Heron.

But I also love Egrets and Great Blue Herons.

Only once did I see at the lake what I believe is a Wilson's Snipe.

Watching pelicans is always a joy - either the American White Pelicans inland in the winter or the Brown Pelicans at the ocean.

At the ocean of course we have lots of gulls - since I'm not good at identifying them I hope that David will help me out here.

As you can see there are also other water creatures in the left image, albeit pretty dead - freshly caught salmon in Valdez, Alaska, where we also saw very cute sea otters, but I don't have a picture of them.

Another gull with its dinner.

If it's not dinner, it looks like this:

Angry bird...

Oystercatcher on Spiekeroog, an island in the North of Germany.

And a sweet Common Ringed Plover (I think) that I saw in Ireland.

A Bald Eagle casually sailing by on an iceberg in Prince William Sound - do they still count as water creatures? They catch fish...

A very special fish - made from pumpkins! Photo courtesy of Kaefer (she took the picture at the garden show "Blühendes Barock" in Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart).

But back to the ocean - harbor seals are plenty here and this year we saw more elephant seals than usual.

I shouldn't forget seastars and sea anemones - and of course shells!

The following water creature is not only found in Hawai'i and California.

But in Hawai'i you find the Green Sea Turtle and at our lake the small Pond Sliders

Here's a fun one - this one lives in the Berlin Zoo and is one of the offspring of Knautschke, a hippo  born in 1943 that survived the bombardment of the city in World War II. He died in 1988 after fathering many many little hippos; he was the darling of Berliners, and of course there is a sculpture of him near the hippo enclosure.

And look at this cute water creature! Or is it a mud creature? She was 16 months old when we took her to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Northeast Germany which is home to many lakes. She loved playing in the water and also did her first independent steps in the water (she was a late walker and very early talker).

What's for dinner? You guessed it - fish and seafood of course!

Some Watercolor

 

Last week I spent almost every day watching the Taster sessions for Kaleidoscope 2023. Other than in previous years, this time I actually did some of the lessons right away while watching the videos. I was mainly interested in the watercolor sessions and those were the ones I did with the exception of the owl class that was taught in acrylics and colored pencils, but I did in watercolor anyway.

This was also the first time that I didn't use the traceable images the artitsts provided, but tried drawing everything myself. Sometimes that didn't turn out that well since I don't have drawing skills.

First up is Kim Dellow's lesson - this is the class where the artist used acrylics and I used watercolor instead. The other medium used is colored pencils which don't work that well on cold pressed watercolor paper.

Next up are two sessions by Tamara Laporte, the host and creator of Kaleidoscope. The peacock was quite some work, and I decided to make the background much paler than in Tam's example. 

The colorful poppies were the first of the taster sessions, also by Tam. I loved this one, even though some of my poppies look a bit wonky. This one was a lot of fun.

My favorite class was the session by Australian artist Toni Burt who I find very inspiring. This time we did a painting with a little bird which, as far as I can tell, was a wren. In my painting it doesn't look like a wren except perhaps for the tail; otherwise it's on the well-fed side, but who cares? Toni used black ink for the outline of the bird which I didn't have, so I used charcoal which didn't quite react with water the way ink would do. No matter, I love this small painting.

Since this is a T Tuesday post I need a drink, otherwise Bleubeard and Elizabeth will kick me off! Yesterday was a beautiful warm and sunny day, so different from all the June Gloom we had until then. That's the kind of weather when I like to drink a glass of rosé in the evening. The sunflowers were a gift from friends who came for dinner on Saturday.

Have a lovely week, everybody!

New Watercolors

 

Last week I got new watercolors. These are the Cotman Watercolours from Winsor & Newton. So far I have only had a little travel set (also Winsor & Newton), but while I enjoyed mixing the colors, I was still craving more. This studio set had been on my radar for about six months and after I had got a big order through my shop I decided to splurge on this.

First, I unpacked all the little half pans and painted a sample with each color to see what they look like when they have dried on watercolor paper. 

I'm still little experienced when it comes to watercolors, but I really want to learn how to use them. While I painted quite a bit with watercolors, I didn't really know what I was doing. Not that I know much more right now, but eventually I will. After all, my word of this year is "explore".

So I painted a tiny little piece because my fingers were itching to try out these colors. I used a stamp and simply colored it in, adding the chili peppers as a final touch.

This is my art part for Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date. Now on to the dinner part.

There are still tomatoes and zucchini that I harvest from my garden. Last week I made veggie pasta with shrimp that I had marinated in sesame oil, smoked paprika and salt & pepper. Zucchini and tomatoes came from the garden plus Red German garlic from the garlic guy at the farmers market.

I had put a little chili sesame oil in it towards the end of cooking time to give it a bit of a kick - it was delicious!

What are you cooking these days?

Cat Face

 

I have always loved the look of cats when they peek around a corner, wall, building... there is something curious and vulnerable about them at the same time. When I found a picture on Pinterest of a black cat in exactly that pose I knew I had to try and paint it.

Of course I did NOT draw the cat myself. I printed out that particular photo and traced the outer shape of the cat on textured paper in the size of an ATC. I knew that I didn't want a black cat - I was thinking purple and magenta shades. And I wanted to use watercolors - I only have a travel kit of Winsor & Newton watercolors with 14 half pans which means I need to mix my colors most of the time. Here I used only two colors and worked on the different shades with more or less water and also let the colors run into each other. I do like the effect. The eyes of the cat are a little bit too green, but I just wasn't able to mix a much lighter, warmer shade. The backgound is made with yellow ochre and a little bit of burnt sienna, and I used a paw stamp with distress ink as the final touch.

I'm linking this to Nicole's Friday Face Off.

There's something weird going on with the cats in our neighborhood. Within two weeks two cats on our block have been found dead. There were no visible injuries, no bites, nothing. We suspect they were poisoned - most probably by rat poison or snail or ant bait. Even fertilizer can be a culprit. Thankfully I have nothing of these in my garden, but I am still concerned about my permanent residents. Usually they don't leave my garden and they are too old or lazy to chase any rodents or birds (which I am very happy about; I still remember when I twice rescued a hummingbird out of Kibeau's mouth; the second time the little bird was flying out of the mouth the moment I had opened it). We just hope that no one intentionally poisons them. Not liking cats is one thing; killing them is a completely different matter.

Otis doesn't have a care in the world (except for getting fed on time) - who knew that a hard rock can be such a comfortable pillow?