Daffodils

Finally my daffodils are blooming in my front yard.   They make me smile whenever I see them.  Unfortunately the fragrance is not so pretty.

Poppies in a row

I think this is one of my favorite watercolors of poppies.  Instead of doing a pencil line drawing, I used watercolor pencil to sketch in the basic shapes.  Then I dropped in watercolor.  It's those tiny details that made this painting pop for me.

A lone pine imagination painting

The colors remind me of Bryce Canyon in Utah.  The oranges and reds and the glow of the fading sun.

red and blue sea

I must be thinking about the ocean a lot because a lot of my imagination paintings have an ocean theme going on.

One man walking through the foothills

I just love this concept of imaging a painting and see it unfold as I add color.  Even the small detail of the man hiking in the distance gives the illusion of him walking up the foothills

The raging blue sea

This is one of the small paintings I did the imagination landscape class that I took back in February.  When I was dropping in the paint, I was thinking of the sea right before a major storm.

Poppies

I love poppies.  This was just a quick study in my new journal. I plan to do a few more.

Handmade watercolor journal

I love making watercolor journals that I'll probably never run out of journals to fill.  This journal measures 7.5 x 7.5 and has 5 signatures that were hand stitched, then I applied book cloth to the spine.  Once the glued dried I added the cover.  I used scrapbook paper for the cover and used wasbi tape to seal the edges.

As you can see, I've already done a few watercolor paintings.

My new IPAD

Look what I got today!!!  I got the new IPAD 3.  Shamelessly I can now say that I'm a two IPAD household.  One for me and one for my husband. And I didn't have to wait in any line.   Last week I had gone to a local Apple retailer and they were taking sign ups.  I was third on the list.  So this afternoon I picked mine up.  It's in a black case and it's 64 GB.  The graphics are great and I love the built in camera and face time. 

Today I also got my two orders from Daniel Smith.  I bought 16 Daniel Smith watercolor sticks.  The colors are just as great as what you would get in the tube version.  I also bought two travel size watercolor brushes and restocked some of my wc's that I was running low.  You know what I'll be doing all weekend...painting and playing with my new IPAD....

Maddie...

This is my cute little Maddie before she got her hair trimmed.  I did this painting all free hand...meaning, no pencil drawing;  I just went straight for color and created wet on wet.

Roses...

I love flowers, especially roses.  Living in Southern California, we always have lots of sunny days, so my roses grow really fast.  This is a bouquet from my backyard.

dropping paint

I've been doing a lot of experimenting lately using various papers and just dropping watercolor paint onto a really watered down piece of paper.  In this painting I just dropped oranges,yellows, and reds and just moved the paint around.  Once it was dry, I went back in and added some red to form flowers.  When the paper was dry, I took my black sharpie and looked for shapes and lined those in.  The completed painting reminded me of sunsets that I sometimes see living in the high desert.

Happy Pigs

Ever since I read an article about George Clooney and his pot belli pig that he had years ago, I look at pigs in a new light.  Not only do they look sweet and cute, it makes me wonder about them and their personality.  Since I'm not going out to a farm anytime soon, painting them is about as close as I will get.

Pane = Bread

Lo voglio il pane = I want bread!!!  There is nothing like nice warm Italian bread.

Spaghetti anyone???

I need to learn how to say spaghetti in Italian.  Spaghetti is pronounced the same way as we do in English.