Tag: flower

Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month

Published on by kmgunnart14 Comments

Yesterday was the first of October, but it didn’t really click for me until I ran into town to pick up some critter feed and saw a couple of businesses with the flocks of plastic pink flamingoes: October is breast cancer awareness month, and locally that means it’s time for Pink-Out Putnam again. Local participating businesses will not only decorate with the standard pink ribbons, but since this is Florida it means there will be a population explosion of those wonderfully tacky plastic pink flamingo yard ornaments.

Along with pink being one of my favorite colors to wear, and flamingoes being one of my favorite birds to paint, there is a darker personal connection for me. Both of my mom’s sisters and my dad’s surviving sister have all gone through breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Thankfully, all three are still alive to tell about it, but having women on both sides of my family get diagnosed leaves me at a higher risk of developing this myself. (For the record, my appointment for my next mammogram in early November. VA healthcare system takes this seriously.)

My pink flamingo watercolor series

Last year, I did a series of six watercolor paintings that featured flamingoes in or near water as part of an art challenge, which included my first place winning Flamingo in Rippled Water. I’ll be taking the series to various local businesses to see if any new small mom-and-pop places would like to display them.

Pink flower paintings

Pink flowers are also on my list of favorite things to paint, and I have some of those to share for this very pink post. I did a cherry blossom watercolor painting this spring, actually a little earlier than they bloomed, but it is very much an annual thing and I love to see photos and paintings of them in March. I also did two pink rose pieces last year: one in watercolor and one in oil pastel. Gathering up the links for this post made me realize I have not yet blogged one of my pink flower paintings yet …

Pink Hibiscus

Pink Hibiscus watercolor painting by Katrina Gunn
Pink Hibiscus, 10 x 10 inch watercolor painting, original available $100 USD

First things first: yes, if you look closely you can see the grid I used for sketching the proportions out properly. I had used a red watercolor pencil to do this, thinking when I painted over it would dissolve. It was a lesson learned. Not all pigments in watercolor pencils will disappear with regular application of water. I should note that this was the last time I did my grid-and-sketch directly on my watercolor paper. Now I sketch in one of my sketchbooks and use graphite transfer paper to make my marks on the watercolor paper. The punchline here is that people who see it don’t seem to care. Feedback on this paintings has always been quite positive despite the graphite outline and grid lines showing. I guess folks feel that shows this was painted by a person and not a software program.

Purchase info so you too may “Pink Out” like Putnam

Along with overlooking this piece here on the blog, I had also forgotten to upload it to my gallery over at Daily PaintWorks, which is the online venue where I prefer to sell my original artwork. This has been rectified. I had also forgotten to upload it to my RedBubble shop, but I fixed that as well now, so those of y’all who want your RB swag with this painting can have at it. Finally, for those who want an art print larger (or smaller) than the original 10 by 10 inches can order it at my Pixels shop.

So pick your favorite pink painting for Breast Cancer Awareness month. Please feel free to share this post, because this is an issue that has affected my family … and perhaps yours as well. My county will be decorated to the nines with pink ribbons, pink signs, and of course plastic pink flamingoes everywhere, and I invited everyone to join us! I have at least one new pink flamingo painting in my mind already, so stay tuned.

Ox-eye Daisy drawing in charcoal and pastel pencil

Published on by kmgunnart13 Comments

I actually drew this ox-eye daisy for an art challenge back in June of 2021, but it got lost in the shuffle along with the horse head drawing in black charcoal I call Bridled. In fact, I drew it prior to Bridled, first piece of artwork for that challenge, and initially was not so pleased with it because it looks a bit different than previous drawings, even of flowers. At the time, I thought this was more of an experiment in mixed dry drawing media that didn’t turn out as well as I hoped, as it was the first time I mixed black traditional charcoal with splashes of color from pastel pencils, all on toned paper.

Inspiration behind the drawing

The inspiration behind this drawing is actually quite simple: I hadn’t drawn a daisy in ages, and wanted to see what I could do with it. I had recently purchased the Canson Mi-Tientes assorted colors pad, marked as being for pastels in particular though I had used a sheet for my Blue Dragonfly I did in colored pencil. So with an idea in my mind, I next went to Pixabay to hunt for a reference photo that I wanted to use, in the process creating a folder of nothing but daisies photographs. (Trust me when I say, there will be many more daisies in my artwork!) I found this one, then cropped it to my satisfaction, and then it was a matter of making marks with the traditional black charcoal until it looked like a daisy.

charcoal and pastel pencil drawing Ox-Eye Daisy
Ox-Eye Daisy, 9 x 12 inch charcoal and pastel pencil drawing, original available $100 USD

Experimenting with color alongside the charcoal

Not satisfied with just black marks on the toned paper, I then decided to mix my dry media, just to see how I liked the result. I had a small set of eight pastel pencils that came with a twenty-some year old drawing set, the kind that tends to sell well around the end of the year, and the set has white, yellow, blue, and a medium purple. I purchased a sepia toned oil charcoal pencil to try out, and used that for the shading on the ox-eye center. Then I fiddled some more with the shadows on the petals, first with blue, then with purple, then added in the white highlights, but leaving the midtone areas blank to allow the paper’s tone to show. Lastly, I picked up the bright yellow and used that for the highlights on the top of the flower’s center.

Purchase links for Ox-Eye Daisy drawing

The 9 x 12 inch original drawing is available through Daily Paintworks here. If you’d like a smaller or larger art print for your wall, you can order what prints you need through my Pixels store. If you’d like this printed on apparel or accessories, check out the various swag at my RedBubble shop. Personally I think it looks best on the classic coffee mug:

two mugs on a shelf showing both sides of the print design Ox-eye Daisy
my mixed dry media drawing Ox-eye Daisy on a classic mug at RedBubble

Evolution of my feelings about this drawing

As I have hinted at throughout this post, my feelings about this experimental drawing have changed over the fifteen months since I made it. Now when I look at it, I get the subtle impression of movement – and given the floral subject, that movement feels like a very gentle swaying in the slightest of breezes, almost nodding a greeting to the sun’s rays that must be hitting the flower in spots where I put the white on the petals and the bright yellow of the center. Usually I have all the subtlety of a wrecking ball, and am notorious for not picking up on hints, so this change surprised me when I reviewed this in preparation for the daisy challenge this summer.

More daisy artwork since then

It has not been that long since I did the short three day art challenge with the challenge theme being daisies, but I thought this was a good spot to mention those for newer readers. Working backwards, and very much related to this piece, is my Daisies in tinted charcoal. The day prior I did a single daisy in watercolor using only four colors, though if I redo that one I will see how it looks with only three colors. To start the challenge, and cover down on a different art challenge from a different source, I did a blind contour drawing of a partially-painted daisy that is still (!) on the easel, waiting for me finish. It made a good model to stare at as I drew without looking at the sketch pad. If you are trying to parse that statement … just go read the post. Seriously, blind contour drawings are an “in-context” thing.

Finally, here’s a small selection of daisy photos from Bob Decker’s blog archive. He seems to have just about every angle covered for this one flower.

As a final thought, here is a very accurate article from Inside Art about the truth behind a quote attributed to Edgar Degas: “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” It hit my inbox last evening, and boy howdy did it resonate with me! Something to think about as I settle in to work on more art today.

Daisies drawing in tinted charcoal

Published on by kmgunnart8 Comments

Now, to wrap up the three day daisies art challenge from last weekend. For the third day, I decided to do multiple daisies instead of another solo daisy study, and it was high time I did something significant with my Derwent tinted charcoal set that I’ve mentioned before. Before I show the result, I want to mention that I did not use a black charcoal at all for this piece, despite how it may look. I used two shades of green, two shades of blue, a yellow ochre shade called sand, a medium brown they call driftwood, and white charcoal for the highlights. I drew the preliminary sketch in that trusty old sketchbook, which ought to be full by summer’s end, and then transferred the contour sketch to my good charcoal paper, Strathmore 500 series with laid texture in what they call a natural white and what I call a warm white.

first version of Daisies, tinted charcoal on paper
Daisies, tinted charcoal drawing on paper, before darkening the background

Looking at the scan, I could probably have worked the dark on the background in a little better, to push the value contrast (the fancy art term is chiaroscuro, which is Italian for “light-dark”) that gives charcoal drawings their visual impact. In fact, now that I have seen that, I cannot unsee it and therefore must fix it.

Two charcoal layers later

Okay, I am back now. I think this is an improvement, though I am staring to feel tempted to just grab a soft black traditional charcoal pencil or stick to seriously darken that background up, despite starting this wanting to use only the tinted charcoal.

Final version of charcoal drawing Daisies
Daisies, tinted charcoal drawing on paper (darker final version), 12 by 9 inches, original available $100 USD

The reference photo

I almost forgot to include the reference photo I used from Pixabay. As y’all can see, I cropped it to simplify the composition and took my usual amount of artistic license after that.

photo of multiple daisies
original photograph

Links to purchase

Now that I have fiddled with it a bit more, time for the links y’all will need. If you want the original in all its dusty glory (and that is with a couple layers of fixative spray) and have the right spot and frame, you can purchase the unframed drawing through Daily Paintworks. You can order larger or smaller prints through my Pixels subdomain, with some fun swag as well. For an even-larger variety of apparel and accessories, browse my RedBubble shop.

Final rambling thoughts

If anyone is wondering what took so long for me to post the last piece of the daisy art challenge, I decided to move the blog to a new host and it did not go smoothly. I spent an entire weekend banging my head against vague error codes, and once it was finally done I did not want to even look at the blog for a couple days. Now I will be going back and revising all my previous posts, since I now have more tools to use.

Meanwhile, I feel like I have fallen even further behind. I have another new artwork to show off – the painting for my June 2022 frame giveaway, which I mailed off today – and forgot to get a snapshot of before I packed it up. I still have the last candlelight piece to post here as well as finding some more small watercolors from before I was blogging anywhere, so plenty more art-blogging to come.

Feature Friday 5: Let’s get blog-retro

Published on by kmgunnart8 Comments

It’s Friday once again, and this week I grew a brain and started this post the day before, in the spirit of the old army saying: “Proper planning prevents poor performance.” Soldiers being the eloquent creatures we’ve been since the dawn of time, call this “the five Ps,” although most would add in a sixth word starting with P that is not family-friendly. Last Friday I failed to plan, and when the thunderstorms rolled in about midmorning to mess with our satellite internet, I had nothing ready to go. Once bitten, twice shy … at least for now. With two weeks’ worth of links to share, let’s get this round-up started!

Blog links for your weekend reading

  • Jim Cook at Ramblings of a Hot Shot Photo Guy took some lovely travel-brochure style photos of a Japanese garden in Fort Worth, Texas called Mono No Aware. I think he captured to quiet beauty of the place so nicely. (Remember, I make no claims to being a photographer myself, as I have proven in previous Feature Fridays.)
  • Sharon Popek posted photos from her experiments using clear glass and liquids. I always thought photographing liquids in transparent or translucent glass would be so much easier than drawing or painting it, but apparently I am mistaken in that idea, and there is real technical know-how required for photography as well as drawing or painting.
  • Bill Swartwout freely admits he was in the right place at the right time to get the gorgeous colors in his beach photo at Ocean City, Maryland. I could so see that as a painting, or maybe three paintings – and I mean that in a nice way. It’s a great photo, but the painter in me would love the chance to try my brush at it.
  • Siena Blue posted her blog hop featuring the blind contour challenge. Overall, she is happy to have gotten someone new to play old-fashioned blogosphere party games (that would be ME) and is thinking of doing another one. I’m down for that! Let’s bring back all the fun stuff bloggers used to do back in the day like link round-ups, blog hops, link parties, and if we can get enough art bloggers who are up to it, maybe we can resurrect the old blog carnival idea. (If you blog your art – or are thinking about blogging your art – do join us. It really is a fun and motivating way of blogging.)
  • Hiding behind the pen name of Pencil Paws, is another animal and wildlife graphite artist who looks to be restarting her blog with a lovely drawing of her two cats, along with the story of they came into her life (spoiler alert: they were rescues). I like her careful and meticulous style, and hope she decides to continue blogging her artwork.
  • Finally, the blogging powerhouse known as Judith shows she isn’t shy of tackling a deep and somewhat dark chapter in art history with her exploration of the “degenerate art” of late 1930s Germany, along with some commentary about being lefthanded and how back in the day adults tried to “correct” this. Her post gets deep from almost the first paragraph, but it really impressed me, not just her research but some of the conclusions she reaches by the end. I am the type of person who believes we should know all of our history, not just the pleasant parts, because when we forget the bad stuff, we have this bad habit of repeating our mistakes.

Links to art supplies

For a few years now, I have been splitting my art supply budget between Jerry’s Artarama and Dick Blick art supplies, because each carries some items I like that the other does not. Jerry’s does not have an affiliate program … but Blick does! I signed up this week, and am now an affiliate as well as a customer, which means if you use my links to purchase something from their site, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Personally, I love it when they run the eCard sales, where you get an eCard code in a certain amount that arrives in your inbox two weeks after you’ve ordered. I still have to figure out where all the promo items like images and banners are in the platform, but I figured I would make a general announcement. I’ll be putting together a page with my personal recommendations, because I do indeed have my favorites from them. If the link looks funny to you, it’s because it runs through a tracking system. Both Blick and the platform have a good reputation online.

Obligatory eye candy snapshots

This being a blog all about my visual art means I need to have at least one image in the post, even my link round-ups. I thought this week I would feature the squash plant(s) that have grown out of the compost heap that are still going strong despite the heat of summer settling in (and wreaking havoc on my poor Swiss chard plants). This started out back in the autumn, October or November, when I bought some picturesque produce to get reference photos for my still life drawings. The butternut squash got wet and started to mildew, so we tossed it out on the compost heap to let it continue its breakdown. Usually, I don’t expect seeds from a grocery store-bought vegetables to sprout since I figure they are picked early to keep them from getting too bruised in transit. The seeds sprouted, and they must be dreaming of world domination at this point.

the squash plants have spread out from the compost heap and are shading the grass in the chicken yard
this is only about one third of the squash plants’ growth

Just an FYI: this particular snapshot is from a week or so ago, and the plants are colonizing the open area on the other side of the fence con mucho gusto. My husband has needed to trim some off to keep the footpath to the pumphouse and water spigot for the pig pen clear, because squash vines can be a bit tangle-foot-ish.

yellow squash flower among the green leaves
big yellow-orange squash flower in among big squash leaves

We’ve been trying to get nice snapshots of the flowers I can use as reference photos to paint, and I got to say it is difficult to get nice photos in the bright morning sun here in Florida, especially on the humid mornings when there are dew drops everywhere reflecting the sunlight. I still intend to keep trying for that one decent photo of a big honkin’ squash flower – seriously, the one that opened yesterday was bigger across than my hand. I also need to start bringing some of the squashes in for a nice picturesque pile. There will also be bean blossom and bean group snapshots soon as our summer garden beans are budding.

I still have one more daisy piece from the three day challenge over last weekend, plus a daisy drawing I forgot to post on the blog from last summer that may interest you. I also have the final painting from my candle light series a couple weeks ago that I just have not gotten around to posting. Then it will be time for a new art challenge – if I don’t see one that I like, I’ll just post one here and see who wants to play along with me.

That’s pretty much all I have for today, though I will leave y’all with this market research question: When you have bought artwork (original or prints) what was/were your main motivation(s)? Inquiring artists want to hear!

Daisy watercolor painting in only four colors

Published on by kmgunnart2 Comments

While I am behind on blogging it, I did finish up the three-day daisy art challenge. Before I start in with the second day’s daisy watercolor painting, I thought I would share a comment left on my Pixels page for the blind contour daisy drawing that made me chuckle. Fellow challenge participant Karen Kasper remarked that it reminds her of a Pablo Picasso drawing, and she suggests I get a better image of it so it could potentially be a bestseller on the site. (I should probably clarify she means Picasso’s later work – he started out classically trained and did wonderfully detailed representational drawing and painting, but later followed his muse to something completely different.) I intended to replace the blind contour with the acrylic painting I was looking at while drawing it, but in light of Karen’s comment I may leave it up.

Next daisy artwork, a watercolor painting

Now to move on to day two of the three day art challenge focused on daisies as its theme. I knew I wanted to do at least one daisy painting in watercolor, so Sunday after sketching out a single flower, I transferred the outline to the first cold press watercolor block I picked up and then sorted through my watercolor paints to see how few tubes of paint I would actually need. I am up to three brands of watercolor paint now: the Mijello Mission Gold paints that I discovered in late 2020, that are excellent for beginners because they don’t run across cold press paper as much as other brands; the Turner paints that don’t lift as easily as Mijello, run at a medium rate, and have always been in stock over at Jerry’s Artarama each time I’ve looked; and my new brand, QoR from Golden (more about this brand later). I had purchased a bottle of QoR’s synthetic oxgall to make my Mijello paint run better for backgrounds, and holy cow does it make the Turner paint really spread, so I knew this would be my most unpredictable paint to work with wet-on-wet. (Note to self: this probably makes no sense to anyone who has not painted with watercolor paint. Must write a post on what all this means.)

Choosing the specific watercolor paints

I ended up with only four tubes of paint: Turner ultramarine blue for the background (because daisies need either a green or a blue background), Turner permanent yellow and transparent yellow oxide for the center of the daisy and to mix with the blue for the bit of stem, then QoR’s ardoise gray for the shadows on the petals. Just don’t ask me to pronounce that name. I wanted to get the paint done while cats were napping, and succeeded, so I was pleased with the result.

watercolor painting of single daisy flower using only four colors
Four Color Daisy watercolor sketch, 9×12 inches on paper, $80 USD original available

The one thing that sticks out to my eye is that the transparent yellow oxide (yellow ochre for all intent and purpose) does not go well with the permanent yellow in the flower’s center. I probably could have gotten away with mixing the grey and permanent yellow together to achieve a more-harmonious shadow for that part, and I may do it over doing just that sometime this summer.

Links to purchase

The 9 by 12 inch original is available through Daily PaintWorks, as usual sealed with Dorland’s wax medium. If you want a larger print, those are available through my Pixels store, along with greeting cards and some accessories. RedBubble apparel, accessories, and swag is here.

The starting photo

For those curious, the reference photo I used is this one from Pixabay. When I look for a reference photograph, I don’t worry about the shot’s composition, just lighting and subject, because as you can see I crop it to what would make a good painting or drawing to my eye.

the reference photo for my Four Color Daisy

I suppose my lack of reverence for the original photo is a product of my total lack of photography skills – I’ve received valid criticism of my wildflower snapshots, but the simple fact is I am not much of a photographer. If I am going to do a fine art image, that will require something other than a camera. Once again, all I can say is I am so glad digital cameras were invented, or I would still be wasting money and resources on film developing.

Still one more daisy picture from the challenge, then I will need to post up one I did last summer for a 30 day drawing challenge I ended up dropping out of about halfway through, and of course I will need to finished the acrylic painting I used for the blind contour drawing, so there will still be plenty more daisy artwork in the near future.