Completed Teapots

More color has been added to the teapot shadow painting.

I was thinking about keeping the background rather plain. But my instructor liked the pattern on the cutting mat that was sitting behind the still life in the reference photo. Square tiles seemed boring. So I considered what kind of pattern I might quilt if I were designing a quilt, then invented a wallpaper pattern.

The foreground seemed week after I painted the back, so I added a wood grain tabletop.

Upcoming Shows

My work will be in two upcoming shows.

The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles will hold its 5th Annual High Fiber Exhibit October 20 – November 4, 2012. All of the art in this exhibition is for sale at $500 or less, with a designated percentage of the proceeds donated to the Museum. Four of my quilts along with many other quilted and fiber works were selected for this exhibit.

The Cinema Place Gallery in Hayward will be showing Driven to Abstraction November 1 – November 25 2012. All of the work in this show will be abstract work. Two of my quilted wall pieces, plus my quilted rock, will be in the show. Mine may be the only textile work in the show. I expect to see a lot of paintings and mixed media work.

Shadow Shapes

My instructor liked the second Echeveria painting that I brought to class last week. His only suggestion was to darken the lower right corner a little more to keep the eye from wandering off the bottom of the painting.

The first Echeveria turned into my gesso experiment. The experiment wasn’t very successful in its outcome, but now I know how watercolor will combine with gesso. It is difficult to get even washes or dark colors. It might be useful to add texture to part of a painting, especially in a collage. It doesn’t seem to be a good technique for covering large areas intended for watercolor.

I picked a photo I took of teapots a few years ago for the next watercolor assignment. I chose it for the shadows, because for this assignment we are supposed to paint the shadows first, and then lay the color of the objects on top of the shadow painting.

I thought I was done with the shadow painting, but looking at it now on the computer, I see several areas I need to make darker. I can also see now that the pots have changed shape somewhat from the original. Oh well, they still look like pots.

I’m a bit worried about getting muddy looking colors when I lay down the yellow on the front pot. I should do a test to see if I want to change its color before I paint it.

A second Echeveria

Here is the second attempt at painting this Echeveria. I don’t know if this is looser than the original painting, but I have managed to float more color into the washes.

I’ve been thinking about trying to combine watercolor with quilted fabric, and bought some gesso yesterday with that thought in mind.

Having two paintings that meet the requirements for the current assignment, I thought I might add gesso to parts of the original painting, and give myself permission to play. Now where is the gesso? I have misplaced it somewhere since yesterday afternoon. I have looked through the house. Perhaps it fell out of the bag in the car? Or perhaps it never got put in the bag at the store? I will likely find it the minute I give up on finding it, and go buy a second jar.

Echeveria Watercolor

My second succulent is complete. I fussed with the colors and values so much trying to get it just so. It turned out reasonably like the photo, but the finished painting seams overworked to me.


I admire watercolors with looser strokes and broad washes, and so I decided to try the same composition again.

I had trouble in the first painting with a large orange area that seemed out of place. I spent a fair amount of time trying to tone it down, and fit in other smaller orange tinted areas. So I started with yellow this time, so I could distribute it early on. The yellow seems a little prominent right now. I think it will become a little less noticeable after I go back in with darker pinks and purples.

Self Portrait Workshop

Caroline Ogg and Bron McInerney led a mini Self Portrait workshop at our CQFA meeting this morning. There was a lot of nice work this morning. I just took a few photos.

This is a sample Caroline did in a previous class. Can you tell she adores cats? I especially like her creative use of fabric for the eyes on her portrait.

Bron did a portrait of her friend. She traced the major shapes from a previously done watercolor, and used the tracing as templates to cut the fabric pieces. The necklace is bits of shell on a string.



Julie’s portrait is all in blues and greens. The fabric outlining her eyes is peacock feathers, and the white of her eyes are clouds.

I was afraid to start cutting directly into my fabric, so I spent the time sketching from a photo. My plan was to trace pattern pieces following the outline of the shaded area. It was good to get some drawing practice in, but I think I may start over by tracing over the actual photo to get a more accurate image.

Completed Watercolor

The first of my completed paintings for a watercolor class at the community college:

This is an Aeonium hathorii. The assignment was to complete a painting using isolated wet washes in each shape. I have a second succulent close-up picked out for a second painting done with a different technique.