New Project, New Style?

For quite sometime I've admired the work of Shirley Trevena . Her style is colorful, expressive and delightfully/creatively free. She works a lot with watercolor but isn't afraid to mix it up a bit. I've spent the last few days studying her online gallery and I'm both inspired and challenged as a result. Last night I drew up a still life setting from imagination based on some of her works but today felt I should go through my photos and gather things that have meaning to me. I don't own gorgeous vases or have access to fresh flowers at the moment but I do have cats so they must be a part of my still life. I found a photo I took last Spring of Digby, my male cat catching some sun while I worked in my studio so I started a new sketch, using this image to begin.

Btw, don't pay any attention to that dirty window(photo) or the suncatcher that looks like a hubcap(sketch).

Daniel Smith Watercolors

Trying out some new colors today. New colors to me anyway. With my winnings from the DS art contest I purchased a few new watercolors that I've been anxious to use. I ordered DS Perinone Orange, DS Opera, DS Quin Burnt Scarlet among a few others. I took some inexpensive paper and banged out this silly little owl today.

Red Hat Ladies 2 ~ complete

It took me as long to complete as to get started but it's done. I do need to clean up the right edge on the hat of the lady in the foreground, though. I just noticed that but I had to snap a photo while the light was right. It's been so gloomy here. The painting was actually finished yesterday. I'd like to say this one fought me all the way but I think a lot had to do with my mind set. I'm 'winter weary' and it shows in my work. I'm a moody artist, it seems and it's a fight to stay in the mood to paint at the moment.

Second image: made the corrections to the hat, added some Quin. gold spatter to the BG and signed it. Done!

Reference photos courtesy of Judy Wright on PaintMyPhoto

Red Hat Ladies 2 ~ WIP 3

I've been pecking away at this one a bit everyday. I ran out of light before taking the photo so it's a little blurry. At least I hope that's the reason. My camera hasn't been taking the best photos lately and I really don't want to buy another at the moment.

Red Hat Ladies 2 ~ update

February has got me moving in slow-mo. I blame it on the winter doldrums. My momentum is down to a crawl. The drawing sat on my easel until we had a brief (1 hour) power outage just a few days ago so I was left with nothing else to do but get started on this painting. I think it would still be sitting there naked today if not for that event. Hopefully I can get this finished faster than it took to get it started.

Red Hat Ladies 2 ~ WIP

I've just started a second 'Red Hat Ladies' after running into a slight problem. I had planned on doing two separate portraits as companion pieces for the original RHL (link) but discovered the leftover illustration board wasn't large enough for my purpose. I had forgotten I cut a strip from one side to use for painting trials so was left with an odd sized, square-ish piece to work with. Normally I would've gone back to the alcohol inks until I found a solution but that isn't an option at the moment. Finally a lightbulb went on in my head and I came up with this composition. This is just a photo of my drawing on tracing paper and, once again, I realize how much I would dearly love to have a lightbox, especially when working with human faces. Capturing the correct facial expressions of these lovely ladies is crucial to this piece and freehanding was challenging but I tried to keep it to a minimum. I'm really posting this so I can see it online to see if it 'works'. I invite my visitors to feel free to chime in with their opinions.