"Sunny Day" 8 x 8 oil on board

The Girls Just Wanna Paint theme for April is "festive". This is my interpretation.  Throughout the months, especially during winter, I will often bring a bundle of sunflowers home from the local grocery and put them in the window.  Each time I pass through the room, I get a little festive zing from their angles, the sun bouncing off the petals, and the reflected light inside and/or beneath them.  Each flower has its own personality.  

I used a photo reference of sunflowers on my porch for this painting; taking what I needed for the design.  Here are some process photos:

Reference photo: you can see how I adjusted the design for this square

Blocking in, laying down the lightest and darkest notes

Added in the background, a cooler, neutralized green; good time to carve out the edges of each sunflower; making sure nothing was too symmetrical

More modeling in the darks, the leaves.  I softened a bunch of edges, added dappled sunlight onto the flower below and the leaves, implying depth.  Looked for areas to push elements behind other elements to create depth, and vibrated color into the center of the top right flower.

As always, thanks for looking. You know I love your comments.  

Celebrating One Year of Daily Drawing with a GIVEAWAY!!!! Win this drawing!

 Yesterday I finished my first year of daily drawings!  Thank you for following my year, for your comments and thoughts.  I am celebrating by hosting a giveaway.  I will choose a winner at random for this 8 x 10 drawing.  
To enter the giveaway:

    Follow me on Instagram, @jodypaints
    Leave a comment on my Instagram GIVEAWAY post.  

    Deadline is Friday, October 5, 2018. 
    Winner will be chosen at random and notified via Instagram direct message. 

Again, thank you for following me on my daily drawing journey.  Let's see what this year brings!

Day 258 "Bouquet" watercolor 12 x 9

Each week, we have our choice of flowers from church.  I brought home this bunch, laid in some broad watercolor strokes, intending to refine the painting with some pen & ink... but then decided to leave it.  The flowers are angular, and tell some of the story.  
This is my two hundred fifty-eighth daily drawing, this time with paint.
Thank you for looking. 

Day 259 "Sunflowers - Six Views" 12 x 9 ink & watercolor

Each week, there are bundles of flowers for the taking at our church; plenty for all.  So, each week, I bring home whatever strikes my fancy.  This week I brought home a bunch of sunflowers.  Yesterday I painted the whole bunch as a watercolor sketch.   Today, I taped off the page into six boxes, rotated the arrangement six times, drawing from a different angle each time.  You can see the painting in progress in the following photos.  I drew the view, turned the vase until something else caught my eye, then turned again.  It is interesting to study a subject so many ways. This is my two hundred fifty-ninth daily drawing. Thank you for your continued interest in the world through my eyes. 

Day 111 "Sunny Patch" pen&ink 5 x 9

When drawing this patch of flowers, I concentrated on a few distinctive shapes, then used the rest of the space to construct foreground and background within the patch, using the group of flowers as reference for basic shapes.  I like the combination of sunflowers, black-eyed susans, and another type of smaller daisy-like flowers within the one patch, all yellow.  I  could spend more time adding more and more detail and depth.  The drawing becomes a sort of doodle, where the lines and shapes I add are in keeping with the feeling of the flower patch, but I add them where they work best.  This is the same idea I use when drawing the brownstones on Newbury Street in Boston.  The buildings are initially drawn from life, then I add the architectural detail around windows and doorway referring to here at this link.  
 This is my hundred eleventh daily drawing.  Thank you for your continued interest. 

Day 104 "Sun Day" 12 x 9 mixed

 There is a kind gentleman in our church congregation who picks up flowers from the local grocery and brings bunches of them to church, leaving them in a bucket for anyone to take home after the service on Sunday.  Today I brought home a couple of bunches of sunflowers.  The last couple of weeks have been feeling pretty gray and dreary. The sun flowers were just the trick to brighten the room and the day.  I drew them with ink, added some watercolor pencil; my new Derwent Inktense and some older Derwent watercolor pencils to layer up the color. I like the pencils, because you can use them dry, add water, layer more pencil over the top which creates a variety of color and texture.  Then I added some Chinese White pastel

pencil to the background for some interest.  This is my 104th daily drawing.  Thank you for your continued interest.  

"August Garden" 9 x 6 mixed

Scrolling through my old photos, I found this one of a sunflower garden taken from under the cooling leaves of a tree.  I remember it was a hot day out in the sun, but the tree was accompanied by a small water feature which provided cooling through sound and temperature.  Nice spot over on the corner of the Marshfield Fair Grounds here in town.  I drew it in pen and ink, then added some warm gray marker, colored pencil, crayon and then white conte pencil.  This is my sixty-eighth daily drawing.  Thank you for looking.

"Sunny Bunch" 11 x 14 oil

Unexpected four day weekend due to the blizzard of 2013.  I was surprised to see all the Nemo references, had somehow missed that we name blizzards now, not leaving the honor only to tropical storms and hurricanes.  We were fortunate, no big trees came down, house intact, though we did lose power on Friday night, and spent three cool days without.  We shoveled out, scraped snow from the roof, kept the wood stoves going to keep the house tolerable. It was cold, and quiet, and we played games and read by oil lamps.  Happy to have the power back. Didn't paint, but did a lot of drawing.  "Sunny Bunch" is from a while back, but is certainly the weather I've been thinking about.  Glad everyone is safe, and digging out.  Thanks to the crews of tree guys, and electric guys... long, long days.