Going Bananas and Oranges: More still life in watercolor

Published on by kmgunnart2 Comments

Second in my still life watercolor paintings series I am doing as part of a short art challenge is this unimaginatively titled work, Bananas and Oranges. As previously mentioned, the challenge was to do three new artworks in three days, all focused on the theme of banana(s). Since I had considered doing some bananas as still life subjects, I jumped on it with my watercolor paints at the ready.

collage of reference photo and my watercolor still life painting Bananas and Oranges
reference photo and watercolor painting of my still life Bananas and Oranges

Using my artistic license to make the still life more traditional

While I was able to find a reference photo to work from, I was much less impressed with the color choices the original photographer made. While I loved the dark background and shadowed surface, I detest the red bowl. It is jarring to my eye, especially next to the oranges in the bowl. So, I needed to pick a different color for that bowl. Should I make it white (very traditional) or a complementary color like purple or blue? Since I was not feeling a white bowl, I decided to make the bowl one complementary color with the background being the other.

In-progress scans

This piece didn’t flow as easily as the first one did, but after I blocked out the sketch, transferred it to watercolor paper, and got the background painted a lovely deep Prussian blue – and got scans of those two steps – I slipped into “the art zone” and didn’t stop until suddenly it was finished. I really did mean to get more scans of the stages! It’s just that once I am in the zone, I don’t think of anything else but the work in front of me.

collage of the in-progress stages of my watercolor still life painting Bananas and Oranges
the two stages of my second bananas painting: the main sketch and the background

Painting the bananas and oranges

Contrary to most watercolorists, I like to start off with the darkest shadows. I know the conventional wisdom says to work from light to dark, and I have certainly tried that the first couple years. This series of paintings, I decided to try doing it “backwards.” Long story short – I prefer it. It even helps me get my shadows deep enough. Since this was basically a repeat of the subject matter, I just used the same colors as the day before. Once again, I was pleased with the color.

food-themed still life make a wonderful accent for decorating
Bananas and Oranges still life printed on a tote bag
someday my watercolor paintings may hand in a museum like this
fruit still life watercolor painting Bananas and Oranges framed and hanging over the dining table

Links to purchase the original painting and art prints

How can you purchase this artwork? If you have the right space for the 9 by 12 inch original watercolor (on paper) painting, get that through my gallery at Daily PaintWorks. If you want larger (or even smaller) sized prints, you can order from 8 by 6 inch all the way up to 45 by 60 inches from Pixels here. For my mother and sister, who prefer to wear my art, there are several apparel options along with home accessories with this image printed on them in my RedBubble shop.

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New Floral Painting Iris in Watercolor

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I know I’ve left y’all hanging on the Going Bananas series, but this most-recent floral watercolor painting is getting so much positive feedback on the handful of social media I’ve posted it to that I just had to do this one first. Plus, it’s a white iris in full bloom – how could I not?

The inspiration behind the painting

I never thought I would say this, but the inspiration for this came from Facebook … specifically, FB asked if I wanted to reshare an image from three years ago, an (overly) detailed drawing of an iris in full bloom. Seeing that drawing again made me realize I had never done anything else with that image, and the next thing I knew I was transferring the general outline to some watercolor paper to do it in better and in color.

detailed charcoal iris drawing from 2020 and the watercolor painting I made from it in October of 2023
my iris drawing from 2020 and watercolor painting from last week, late October 2023

Before I traced over it to transfer the lines, I did do a high-quality scan of the drawing first, so if you’d like an art print of it you can get one in the size you want. I used my first tinted charcoal (sepia) for the background, though looking at it now I can see it is both too dark and too light and didn’t provide me with the contrast I hoped to achieve. That is probably why it’s called drawing practice.

Recording the painting process

Since the little Nikon digicam died at the start of another art challenge, I was left with just using the old webcam my husband bought a few years ago when 1080p was the top-of-the-line in video. I used it for most of the four pieces in that challenge (I’ll link to it once I get those written!) and I have to admit: I love having video clips of it. In fact, I love it so much I am making an effort to do it more often. I also checked out the current top-of-the-line 4K webcam. It’s on my wishlist. (Edit: I bought it. Yeah, I am really impatient with some things.)

Once I get the video footage edited, I’ll embed that here. Until then, you can see a couple of short vertical videos I’ve uploaded to YouTube here.

software-generated mockup of a larger print of my iris floral watercolor painting in white matting with a slim dark wood frame
how my Iris in Watercolor floral painting looks in white matting and a slim dark wood frame

Notes about my iris floral watercolor painting

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, this was another one of those watercolor paintings that felt as if it just flowed from my brush. I absolutely LOVE when that happens. In fact, the part that took the longest was simply getting the background dark enough to provide the right amount of contrast for the white petals. I used alternating layers of dioxazine purple and indanthrene blue, going round and round the unpainted flower until it finally looked right. Painting the iris and its stem took less than a third of the total painting time, according to the video footage.

my Iris in Watercolor painting printed on the cover of a spiral notebook from RedBubble
Iris in Watercolor printed on a spiral notebook cover from RedBubble

Links to purchase

The 9 by 12 inch original painting is still available to buy through Daily PaintWorks. This artwork scanned beautifully, so you can order an art print through Pixels in sizes as small as 8×6 inch all the way up to 45×60 inches before framing. I also uploaded it to my RedBubble shop because my mother and sister like to wear my artwork. Finally, if you want an original but need a larger size, you can always commission me to do a similar painting. (I could not paint an exact duplicate even if I tried.)

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Today is National Farmers Day: Celebrating with farm-themed art

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Apparently, October 12th is National Farmers Day, as well as still being Columbus Day. Up until this morning, I had never heard of this, but y’all can be assured it is now officially on my calendar! Ever since I was a small girl, I wanted to be a farmer. In addition to my attempts at gardening and mad tree-planting sprees, I also raise (working) dairy goats, rabbits, and chickens. What better way to celebrate my new favorite holiday than with farm-themed art?

Hayfield Art

So far, I’ve done two paintings featuring hayfields: my Sunset Over the Hayfield in oil pastel, and the watercolor sketch Make Hay While the Sun Shines. Since I live at the dead end of a dirt road in a very rural corner of a rural county, hayfields are a common sight whenever we drive anywhere. There is just something about a field full of hay bales that gives me a warm and happy feeling in the depths of my soul. Round or square, though round are definitely the locally preferred format, I love to see hay bales sitting in a sunny field.

in-progress photo of my oil pastel landscape Sunset Over the Hayfield
watercolor sketch Make Hay While the Sun Shines

Produce artwork (fruits and vegetables)

While our property came with two mature Asian pear trees, we’ve added to that list a LOT in the decade since moving in: lemons, limes, oranges, sweet kumquat, dwarf pomegranate, an olive tree, and this year added two grapefruit and two fig trees. I still want to plant a couple of Barbados cherry trees, some true date palms, Indian/silver date palms, and pindo (jelly) palm trees. My husband also started growing moringa trees from seed this summer. Even more interesting, we discovered someone at some point in time planted a pink dwarf banana tree in the back of our property – I looked it up and those are native to Asia. The wildlife got our bright pink bananas this year, but now we know it’s back there, so perhaps next year we’ll get to eat some.

All that preamble to explain why fruits and vegetables are high on my list of favorite things to draw and paint when I want to do up a traditional still life piece of art. I’ve even gone to the grocery for the sole purpose of getting picturesque produce to do a photo shoot the other year. (For the record, only half of those photos were in focus, which is why I am not a photographer.)

I intended to post all of the produce-themed still life drawings and paintings here … but that is quite a lot of artwork! Instead, I’ll direct you to the category page – click here for the fruit and veggie still life. Even if I can’t grow it this far south, I can still buy and paint it.

Livestock Artwork

This category I do more than I draw or paint. Y’all have been treated to photos and stories about my goats, but I’ve only shared one drawing of one goat so far. It’s on my list of subjects to feature more, along with the chickens and rabbits. I’ll be doing more of that over the dark season, because we browsed the selection of farm animal T-shirts on Amazon and I was NOT impressed with what is out there. The obvious solution to my creative mind is to make my own! I do have my produce-themed art on apparel over at my RedBubble shop. Stay tuned, because I’ll probably do a rabbit first.

drawing of our goat Prim in tinted charcoal
sketch in tinted charcoal of our big girl, Prim

Celebrating National Farmers Day with art

I’ll need to wrap this up, because the charcoal pencils are calling to me to get to today’s drawing session. If I had known prior to this morning, I could have had something to paint, but right now I am quite content with just posting here to the art blog for this year’s short-notice celebration.

Next year, though, I will be pulling out the stops! Happy National Farmers Day to everyone, and have an art-full day.

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Going Bananas: New 3 day still life art challenge

Published on by kmgunnart4 Comments

I could not resist jumping in on a quick three-day art challenge over on Fine Art America’s artist discussion board. Like most of the art challenges over there, this one has a theme: banana(s). I have thought about doing a series of banana-themed fruit still life like my Apples and Oranges series for a while, so I figured this was my cue to just do it. Just to be cute, I am calling this short series “Going bananas!” and intend to execute it in classic still life format as I see it.

graphic collage of the reference photo of bananas I used for my still life watercolor painting for the short art challenge
reference photo of bananas I used to make my still life watercolor painting

(I should note that I have not abandoned the 100 faces challenge. I am only taking a quick side-quest, as the DnDers would say. I’ll also say that I successfully completed the challenge, and just need to get caught up on blogging it.)

Finding paintable reference photos

I’ve probably mentioned before that what makes for a good painting reference is not always what makes a good photograph. Hunting up some reference photos to use proved that – most have softer lighting so the subject can be seen as well as a two-dimensional image can allow. A good painting, on the other hand, works best with dramatic lighting, with a single light source ideally. Dramatic lighting produces dramatic shadows, which a lot of photographers seem to avoid. I did manage to find three photos with a more or less classic still life arrangement … and one that is more of a wild card that I may do as a bonus.

Setting some clear objectives

I wanted to do this short (and fun) art challenge with some pre-defined objectives, which is military for goals. (The cranky old Army sergeant in me still rises to the surface from time to time.) I knew I wanted to do somewhat traditional fruit still life paintings, so that cried out for a mostly-traditional medium. Since I hadn’t used my watercolor paints in quite a while, this seemed the perfect excuse to work in watercolor. I did choose to use more modern pigments, and am happy with the results.

Since only one of my reference photos had anywhere near the level of drama in its lighting, another objective was to see if I could adjust for that on my paper.

My final objective was to utilize complementary colors: the obvious yellow/purple, but also some red/green where I could.

Painting the bananas in my still life

With my objectives in mind, I went to work. This first painting simply FLOWED from first my pencil, then my paintbrush. It was one of those days when every step went smooth as silk. In fact, I started the sketch at approximately 1030 and was waiting for the paint to dry so I could scan it before 1530! Only five hours from start to finish, including drying time, is a quick and easy watercolor painting for me.

graphic of my watercolor still life painting simply titled Bananas, in the square format sites like Instagram love so much
square graphic of my watercolor still life I simply call Bananas

Hubby says he loves how the green looks on the bananas, with the comment that this small bunch looks exactly like what I search for in the grocery store – still a touch green. To contrast with the green, I chose to paint the plate as a reddish wood, instead of the really light color in the photo.

Overall, I am VERY pleased with how this one turned out. I feel I nailed both the color and the lighting, though I should probably at some point practice painting wood grain, as that is the only part that I think needs improvement. It scanned even better than it looks in person (to my eye; hubby disagrees) which is unusual for my work. Personally, I think my painting is better than the photo I used for reference.

All in all, a good start to this new art challenge.

How to purchase!

If you have the right space for the 9 by 12 inch original painting, then click over to the listing at Daily Paintworks to handle the transaction. It’s likely quicker than trying to hunt me down when I am in a mood to be unplugged.

Need a bigger and bolder version? I have art prints available through my Pixels shop ranging from as small as 8 by 6 inches to as large as 60 by 45 inches, so that should cover most walls quite nicely. You can also get jigsaw puzzles through this link.

Want to wear my art, like my mother and sister prefer? Click through to see the options at my RedBubble shop. There are also some home accessories – and yes, my favorite is still the analog clock.

I made a video of this post

Check it out on YouTube, give it a like and share!

Bananas – Behind the Art with Katrina Gunn
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John Chapman Charcoal Portrait: face 3 of 100

Published on by kmgunnart1 Comment

Moving right along in my attempt to get caught up on blogging my 100 faces art challenge is John Chapman, a portrait of a famous American folk hero done in traditional black charcoal. You might not recognize his real name, but you have probably heard his nickname: Johnny Appleseed. He was a colorful enough character to fill up a whole book, but I promise I’ll keep this short enough to still only be a blog post in length.

side by side comparison of the cropped reference photo on left and my charcoal portrait on right of John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed
reference photo on left; my charcoal portrait on right

Better known as Johnny Appleseed

The main points about Chapman are fanciful enough to have earned him the colorful nickname of Johnny Appleseed, which started throughout what was then called the Northwest Territory while he was still very much in his prime as a man and as a businessman. Even by early 19th century American standards, he was considered a very eccentric character, though a lot of sources shy away from the reason behind that.

In fact, I was surprised that not only did my dad not recognize the name John Chapman, but he also had never heard why he was often seen barefoot with a cooking pot as a hat. For the record, my dad was a history major in college and has lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana (where Chapman retired to, and was buried) since the mid-1970s, so it is possible to not know that Johnny Appleseed was a devout follower of the Swedish Christian mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg.

Because Swedenborg was against grafting, Chapman planted as many apple seeds as he could and nurtured them. Another factor of his legacy lies in the requirements for making a homestead claim in the region: planting a fruit orchard – even a small one – was one of the major factors that would get the homestead claim approved. So, when Johnny Appleseed came into your area with several young apple trees, it just made sense to buy some and plant them near your home. Even though most wouldn’t be good for eating straight off the tree, all could be used in making hard cider.

Only reference photograph

I could find only one historical photograph of John Chapman, and that is this one taken sometime between his birthday in March and his day of death in September of 1845. The reason there is only one is quite simple: he achieved his local legend status prior to photography being invented and becoming available to the broader public. As was the style of early photo portraiture, the photo shows most of his body as opposed to being a close-up of his face.

John Chapman shortly before his death at age 70 in 1845 (better known as Johnny Appleseed)
John Chapman shortly before his death at age 70 (better known as Johnny Appleseed)

Portrait in black charcoal

I wanted my charcoal portrait to be only a close-up of his face, so some cropping of the original and enlarging was necessary. Then it was just a matter of gridding the crop and putting charcoal to sketchbook. I even made a cute collage showing the progression. U chose to use traditional black charcoal just because I liked the value contrast of his white hair against the black background.

two in-progress scans and finished portrait for Johnny Appleseed (real name John Chapman) showing the evolution of this charcoal drawing
evolution of my charcoal portrait of John Chapman

Applying the after-action-review process to my charcoal portrait of John Chapman

I learned a rather useful mental tool in my time in the army, the after-action review (of course we abbreviated that to AAR). The format for it was to first summarized what happened, then to discuss three things that needed improvement, and to finish up with three things that went well. I decided to apply this to all 100 faces I draw and paint for this challenge. I may not have all the points for an official AAR, but the general practice of finding thing that could be improved and finishing up with things done well is a very practical and valid learning method.

What could be improved

The big thing that jumps out at me when looking at the finished portrait is that I either drew or shaded his face too fat. His face in the original photo is lean from his years of voluntary austere living. I probably could have shaded his beard a little better. It looks fuller in my drawing than in the photograph. I also got the one ear too low, and did not notice until just today.

What turned out well

I am pleased that I was able to catch and correct the eye placement early enough that it didn’t mess up the portrait! Given that the paper does not tolerate much erasing, that is a big thing in my mind. I was also pleased with the overall look to this drawing: this is obviously an older man with white hair. Basically, he looks like a real person, so I am counting that as a win.

Newest portraits on Facebook

Just to let everyone know: I do post the newest face I am doing on my art page on Facebook because that is part of my accountability. My page is open to all the public, not just FB members, so other than Meta wanting you to login or sign up, you ought to be able to check there and see what I’ve posted most recently. I even post in-progress scans sometimes, like yesterday’s peek at my number eight.

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