The Iris, or Fleur-de-Lis

This flower holds a special meaning for me, not just because of its beauty but also because of its symbolism as the flower of my college sorority, KKG. I was very excited to see that the instructor had brought in a bunch for us to paint. Again this is from my pure water color class. Rather than paint the whole lot of iris' in the vase, I decided to focus on just one iris, or fleur-de-lis. This is mainly because I seem to be a rather slow painter and like to focus on one thing at a time. I didn't finish the painting during the class (surprise!), but learned about its form and colors in the process of drawing and painting it. Off with their heads!

The Pear

I fondly refer to this piece as my 'turbo pear'. It's another work created in my pure watercolor class at the SMFA. As with the other pieces I am posting, I like to include my pencil sketches to see the process and progress. The pear started out being a bit delicate and subtle and then I added too dark (Payne's gray I believe) shadowing which gave it a beefy/muscular and dramatic look. Hungry?

Apples

Well, this certainly is the longest I've been away. I have since finished my last class at the SMFA in the illustration certificate program and am working on my portfolio (slowly, admittedly). The class and instructor were great and I would love to take another class with her since I feel I need much practice in this method of watercolor painting. I am going to explore mixed media and collage art over the coming months as I create a portfolio, and also rework my children's book concept/dummy that I started in last spring's children's book illustration class.

I am posting the pieces I worked on this summer in the pure watercolor class and will try to post all of them over the coming weeks. Here I selected a New Zealand apple that was very stripey (too much so). The task at hand: sketch in pencil your subject (always), paint the subject in a monotone color (in this case blue), and then paint the subject using the pure watercolor method (yellow-red-blue-green-etc ... one color at a time, as appropriate for the subject). This was a learning experience and I will go back to this striped subject again in the future and try to make it softer.

I am always looking for inspiration from established illustrators and recently discovered this children's book illustrator who has a beautiful hand at creating whimsical and interesting children's book art. Check him out: Rob Scotton. See you soon!