I felt motivated to paint today, and this painting of a red admiral butterfly has actually been on my easel for a few weeks without progress. I originally picked out the subject and reference photo back in November for the red challenge that I didn’t finish. In fact, I had even done up an acrylic sketch on paper. You can even get a print of the sketch, though once I complete the final painting and scan it in, I will be replacing the image that is there now.
rough acrylic sketch for red admiral butterfly, 11 by 14 acrylic on paper
I did it quickly, and in the evening after running errands around the county and was tired and my back hurt … yet when my friend Keashia saw it, she immediately said I needed to do it again “for reals.” I didn’t get around to that until last month, and am not setting any speed-painting records on it, but today I’ve managed to make it look like I want it to look.
on the easel: red admiral butterfly, 11 by 14 inch acrylic on stretched canvas
Yes, that is purple where I will eventually be painting black (maybe). I have two sampler sets of Golden brand Open acrylic, which is their slow-drying formula made for the en plein aire painters, but right now I am using the quick-dry acrylics to get the undertones down. I don’t have actual black in the Golden Open sets, but I do have a very traditional work-around: ultramarine blue and burnt umber, along with a convenience mixture they call sap green which I am using in the background of the piece.
The red admiral butterfly
When I looked up the red admiral butterfly, all the sources said I ought to have seen this pretty and eye-catching bug at least over the winter season, as Florida is very much in their habitat range. Alas, I have yet to catch a glimpse of one, though we have plenty of swallowtails and sulfurs fluttering across and around the property. I’ll be painting those as well in the future.
So, I intended to do up a flamingoes watercolor painting roundup when I noticed I only blogged about two of my six paintings last year. Oops! It’s high time I fix that, so grab a beverage and some popcorn (if you like popcorn and your husband hasn’t yet eaten it all) and let me get caught up on my favorite pink-feathered birds.
As I mentioned last year while it was happening, this was for a seven day challenge that had the theme of liquid. I naturally decided to use watercolor paint as my medium for the entire week, and picked out seven reference photos of flamingoes in or near water, and my Flapping Flamingo was the first one I painted. I fell behind on the blogging portion of the challenge, resurfacing to post my favorite of the series, Flamingo in Rippled Water, which y’all will recognize as one of the artworks that won first place in last autumn’s VA Healthcare system regional competition. When I finished up the challenge with a beachscape, I mentioned I would upload the others “soon.” I suppose less than a year can sort-of count as “soon,” in a certain light.
Very pink flamingo
For the second painting of the series, I did up this one I just call Wading Flamingo. I seriously doubt I will ever win any recognition for naming my art, but that doesn’t really bother me so I keep naming things with an obvious title. While this one isn’t really my favorite of the bunch, I have heard from a few folks who saw it and liked it. One artist also participating in the challenge said it was her favorite of the set. Like all the other flamingo paintings, this is on 9 by 12 inch watercolor paper, and prints are available. The page at my RedBubble swag shop is here.
Wading Flamingo, 9 by 12 inch watercolor on paper, $100 USD available
Fun flamingo pose
Third in this series, and my second favorite overall, is this much more subdued version I call Curious Flamingo. My husband says flamingoes have such expressive faces, and that expression often looks startled, but I have found some nice ref photos where the bird looks not-startled, like this one. It still looks almost silly, the way this flamingo has cocked its head just so, but the overall effect with the less-saturated colors just work for me. Also on 9 by 12 inch watercolor paper, with prints available in larger sizes. Link to the RedBubble swag shop here.
Curious Flamingo, 9 by 12 inch watercolor on paper, $100 USD available
Flamingoes on the beach
For my fourth flamingo watercolor painting, I managed to salvage something workable from what at the time looked like very much the disaster. After a couple days of touch-and-go, my masking fluid finally tore the (bleep) out of my paper. I was furious, went on Facebook and asked in a watercolor artists’ group for a better brand than what I was using. Once armed with a brand name that was recommended, I placed an order that very evening for what I now use, which is Pebeo drawing gum. As for the painting, which I was originally going to call Beachcombing Flamingoes but instead titled Impressionist Flamingoes … I totally intended for it to be done in an Impressionist style. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I am still a bit ambivalent about the idea of selling the original due to the damage to the paper’s surface, but it scanned well and I uploaded it to RedBubble for apparel and accessories. Prints in various sizes are available.
Impressionist Flamingoes, 9 by 12 inch watercolor
Pale flamingo
Pale Flamingo is as its title suggests, and a pale pink on the flamingo’s feathers while it feeds in shallow pale blue water. The black of the beak and tail feathers provides sharp contrast with all the pale versions of color, and this one was identified as another artist’s favorite of the series. The contrast is certainly eye-catching. The original is also on 9 by 12 inch watercolor paper, and prints are available from my Pixels store, while the RedBubble swag is located here.
Pale Flamingo, 9 by 12 inch watercolor on paper, $100 USD available
So this gets me finally caught up on my flamingo series of watercolor paintings, which means it’s about time I painted and drew some new flamingo artwork. I’ll need to finish a few pieces on the easels – yes, I now have multiple easels to hold my works-in-progress – and one of those just happens to be a flamingo.
I had the idea to do a post on all my rose paintings and drawings the other week. I figured it would be a compilation of links to the individual posts for each piece … then I discovered a couple of watercolor paintings featuring roses that I have not blogged either here or the previous version on blogspot. Even more embarrassing is that one of the rose watercolor paintings is my header image!
Yellow Rose, watercolor, 6.25 by 9 inches, available $45 USD
Small red rosebud
Another early watercolor painting that turned out nicely is Red Rosebud 1, a small 5 by 7 inch piece I did early last year – probably inspired by Valentine’s Day that was coming up. I did have it scanned and uploaded already, but it was scanned with the old scanner and I decided to rescan it because my current scanner is just that much better. So, rescans have been uploaded – but in the process I discovered a dirty spot on the top tape line that is not coming off, so I am hesitant to offer the original now. Prints are available at my Pixels store, while apparel and accessories are at the usual spot at RedBubble. If I can clean that spot off the original, I’ll post it as available, but I may need to do a little research on how to get dirt off a watercolor sealed with cold wax medium. Here is the rescan, which shows the colors so much better than the previous one.
Red Rosebud 1, 5 by 7 inch watercolor, prints available
Links to the rest of my rose artwork
Now for the roundup of my previous posts involving rose artwork:
Eight so far – but I intend to expand upon that this summer. It was actually fun looking over my work and seeing how many roses I’ve drawn and painted so far.
The theme for the 30 day art challenge running the entirety of November is red, so I started off with an obvious choice: an apple still life. It is a classic in art because it is simple yet elegant. For my first attempt, I did a trio of honeycrisp apples, but had difficulty nailing down the gold-green of the variegated skin. This trio was also my third painting for the 3 day three themed challenge, and while it does look interesting, it just was not what I wanted to paint. I did upload it to my Pixels store, and input a few prints of it, but until today was not sure what to do with the original. It has kind of grown on me, I guess. Anywho, this is the opportunity to test out Daily PaintWorks’ auction feature. Interested? Bid here.
Apples sketch, 12 by 9 inch acrylic on paper
Since my first attempt wasn’t what I was trying to paint, I did a second painting of these apples, flipping/reversing the photo to just be different, because sometimes that results in a better piece. I am quite pleased with this result: it is bright and colorful.
I think this covers all of this episode of apples as still life subjects, for now. I will be revisiting these reference photos – even after we eat the final apple.
As a companion to yesterday’s Three Dragonflies, I present the nocturn version (a nocturn is a fancy word for a painting depicting night) Three Fireflies. I like this one better than the day version, just because the colors came out that much more … insert another fancy art jargon word here. My mind is on today’s painting, but I am waiting for the black gesso to dry. (As an aside, I may need to write up a product review on this stuff at some point: Golden black gesso.)
Three Fireflies, 9 by 12 inch acrylic on primed paper, original available $80 USD
The painting scanned so beautifully! Honestly, unless you look at with under strong light, it looks a bit darker in person. I am still quite pleased with this scanner I bought with pandemic stimulus money last year.
The original of this is available, on 9 by 12 inch gessoed paper, through PayPal via Daily PaintWorks. Prints both smaller and larger are at my Pixels store, while apparel and accessories are at my RedBubble shop.
So far, the other art challenge participants seem more enthusiastic about this painting than they are about the first one, but that’s okay because I agree with them. At some point, I will want to revisit the whole fireflies nocturn idea, but today kicks off a 30 day, “red” themed art challenge while also wrapping up the three day one, so today’s painting will need to satisfy two art themes (which thankfully do not conflict!). So if I am able to stick with it this time, expect a whole month of paintings involving red … which will definitely include some poinsettias.
