graphite pencil drawing

 A fragile flower, Iris, with graphite pencils

Pelarganium botanical drawing

After I have been busy for a while with taking macro photos I undertook a new adventure: teaching online botanical drawing for beginners.

Just finished writing the text and drew sketches and drawings for the online course.
The content of the online course is 47 pages with more than 80 pictures and 34 excercises.

It was a huge challenge.
The drawing of the Pelarganium is placed on the last page of the course.
As always: very difficult to take a scan of this drawing like this, but here it is.

watercolor flower

The last 2 years I concentrated on painting fine art with oilpaint.
But Spring is in the air and so it is time to paint some flowers with watercolor paint.
So difficult to photograph though.

underlayers of 3 little paintings "Old Master Technique"

For the Summer months I started 3 little paintings (15x20cm) I want to work on them without the help of my tutor. The next course will start in September.

On the painting of the Waterlily I worked 7 days and many many hours of painting only this first underlayer.
The background with the detailed leaves took very long to paint. The Waterlily has other challenges. The white and the shadows are not easy to get right
Many other underlayers will be added before I will start to ad layers of color.

 

Yesterday I worked on the face of this portrait of a little girl after a painting of Bougeaurau. Today I will work on the hair and the bottom.

And soon I will begin to work at the portrait of the dog.

I like to work on several different paintings at the same time so I do not have to wait till a layer is dry.

hydreanga finished, very colorfull

In finished the little painting of a hydreanga flower. 15x20cm
What a joy to paint all those tiny flowers.
Very difficult to take photographs. The layers of colors are so subtle and the underground is shining through.

I learned so much from painting this subject.
To see and paint all the different shapes and the many many tones.

hydreanga flower, oilpaint, underlayer, first stage

To relax a bit and as a great excercise I started a new painting.
I am painting the underlayer with Titian white and raw omber. I love this color mix.

This is the first layer and it took me many hours so far. I have to paint the leaves the same way and then................. yes, start over and paint everything again. I have to add pure white to lift the lightest places and make other parts also lighter and sometimes other parts darker. But not too dark though

The Titian white oilpaint sink somewhat in and therefor I have to put another layer on top of the first layer. Perhaps I have to repeat this process befor I can add some transparant layers of color.
Size of this little painting is 15x20cm and I use MDF with a couple of layers of grey acrylic paint on it and I sand the surface really smooth.

balloon flower, ink and watercolour

I had lots of fun working with ink again. First I did a drawing with ink and than I did another one and made tones with dots of ink and filled it in with watercolour.

I used Arches Hp and Indian ink with a dip pen.

botanical painting

I love botanical painting, I always did. But I feel it is so difficult. I bought some DVD's of very famous painters and my most favorite DVD is of Billy Showell. I bought also a lot of books about drawing and painting in a lot of different techniques and subjects. I searched the internet for botanical painting and painters and also for an online course. I found a course, but it costs so much money, too much for me. But then I discovered that one of their students (a professional artist now) put her journey while following the course in a book. It became a beautiful book and also because she shows and tells