Here are a few notes given to my students from my watercolor class. I have started teaching here in my little Mexican community in San Antonio, Mexico. If you are interested in this series of “Painting from Life”, feel free to email me at paintsdaily@gmail.com.
simplify<study line art
check out Picasso early line drawings
Stay loose, don’t worry about details.
Speed draw whenever you can.
Use the timer on your cell phone.
These birdhouses are made of recycled materials found in anybody’s garden shed. Whether wood or discarded metal fixtures or old roofing materials, the birds enjoy the shelter.
They are feeding on a gigantic sunflower center. I took a little artistic license with the scale of the seed pod…because I can. Moths and butterflies join in on the party.
The pen and ink is done in India Ink and an old fashioned crowquill pen nib. The original is drawn on Bristol board paper, and has been sold but read on to purchase the image on various mediums.
This artwork is available on my Red Bubble POD site. Click the picture to go there and purchase prints or accessories.
I have always drawn freehand. This means no outside aides such as projectors or outside electronic devices. Now I’m on a venture to get bigger and bigger in my artworks and I need to at least make my photo and apply a grid to it so I can get my proportions correctly. Yesterday I spent 3 hours drawing and erasing a medium sized layout on watercolor paper. It was a nasty experience and I still don’t have it right, so I’m feeling frustrated. The last time I used a projector was in 2004 when I painted a several big oil paintings.
This was a very large oil on linen that a good friend in Washington is holding for me. It is rolled up in a tube with a few other big oils and someday I will arrange to get them back to me in Mexico. At the time, I had an old projector and I remember that I hung the linen on the wall and did an outline of the composition in oil and the color I recall was burnt umber. That’s all I can remember at the time. But I think I worked on this painting a really long time…..maybe a few weeks.
Once again I am toying with the idea of going back to oils but right now I have a major focus on watercolor as I feel I need much more attention to getting better and better at the elusive water media.
I know it’s a well documented idea but it’s important to never compare yourself to others. One thing I am know is that I had classical artistic training that I am grateful for it every day.
There is a story to these scissors. It is about how I love tools and figured out a way to keep them, in spite of letting them go. Loving tools can be a good thing or a bad thing. When I left my home in Washington, I was determined to get rid of everything that was not absolutely essential. My new chapter in life had to be bare bones. I was successful. My wonderful friends helped me de-stash. If you have never done it, it is hard. They did a big 2 day garage sale for me while I left the premises for those days. That was a good plan. I did not want to mess things up. I know I would have cried and acted weird so they took over.
Here are just a few of the things they sold for me.
So here’s the point to this story. …You never lose things in life. They are in your memory, your heart. That’s what this making art stuff is all about. You make an effort to try to enjoy what’s in front of you before it disappears because you know you will disappear too. If you leave a little art behind, maybe somebody will get a chance to enjoy what you did too. amen
Painting Mexico 
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