Day 12 Firefly Challenge #TBT A. J. Casson and World Watercolor DayChallenge--Fast and Loose

I am hoping that the spirit of the challenge today is what is important. We have an appointment to take my husband's iPhone in for battery replacement at the University Village Apple computer store today;

Since my personal goal is to do all the Firefly challenges that I can from life or on location, it would not work for us to take a side trip to Lime Kiln Lighthouse on the same day. (I have sketched it on location in the past, but can't find the artwork now. Possibly it was sold.)

"Fast and Loose" and a "lighthouse" shape near the Apple Store, with customer

I did, however, find a metaphor for the lighthouse; the Information Post at the mall. It has a "lighthouse" like shape and I could sit and sketch it at a nearby shady table while waiting for our iPhone battery. So this is my result on a hot day in Seattle.

Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook, Altoids DIY travel palette, Sharpie pen

Even though I was standing on the shady side of Ravenna Gardens, it truly was necessary to paint the hanging petunias and purple stocks as fast and loose as possible. The good thing is that it takes no time at all for the washes to dry! That satisfies the challenge for today on WorldWatercolorMonth as well! What a relief to slip into the cool, air conditioned shop from the 85°F heat outside.

The beautiful flowers at Ravenna Gardens Shop

Since I painted the flowers with no preliminary drawing, I can check off another of my missing days for the 30x30DirectWatercolor2018 challenge as well!

For the Birds...in a good way!

Circumstances prevented me from sketching with USk Seattle this morning. It was a perfect location and perfect summer weather. There is a saying, "It's for the birds!", meaning completely undesirable. That's how I felt about having to stay home and missing out on one of my very favorite activities.

This morning, I painted the bird bath in my garden as a nod to some of my sketch buddies who are at the Georgetown Garden Walk

Wait, birds? I remembered the time a Stellar's Jay recently took a bath in our pond....and I captured it on video. Good thing, because I tried to lure it back, but was unsuccessful. No problem. I just watched my video about a gazillion times and painted from that.

Bird Bathing

I have two challenges in mind to which I owe a few more entries: 30x30DirectWatercolor2018 for last month and MomentSketchers. Happily, both my pieces for the weekend fit the rules. See links for more.

Bird Bath

I painted both of these small direct watercolors on the same page of my Kilimanjaro Paint Book. They were done on location, except for the bird video, with no preliminary drawing.

I'm almost there as far as the 30x30 challenge goes. Four more paintings to fill the entire calendar of June. I will post the whole month in an upcoming article. So stay tuned!

Hey! Today's World Watercolor Month prompt is flying things! So three in one blow!
Oh yeah, then the bird bathing one fits the prompt for Day 7 - spattering - on the #fireflywatercolorchallenge list. So today, watercolor, tomorrow the world!

A Canadian Online Watercolor Challenge, Eh?

Looking for something to do with the extra hours of daylight this summer? Guess what? There are
TWO great online watercolor challenges for July:

1. I’ve already posted the July list for Doodlewash here. I enjoy participating on IG with Charlie O'Shields and his watercolor friends every year. Great stories he has to go with the fantastic watercolors that he does.

2. July is National Watercolor Month in Canada, too! Firefly Books is running an online challenge to do daily watercolours throughout the month of July. (Did you get that spelling?) I found out about this from Marc Taro Holmes. See the wrap up of his recent Direct Watercolor challenge on his blog. Enjoy the guest artists' take on their experiences.

In some ways the two have quite different prompts and yet now and then the prompts for some days are quite similar.  Check out both and compare.

#FireflyWatercolorChallenge on Instagram

The Firefly Challenge--How it works:
Use the daily prompts to spark your creativity. Take a photo of your work every day for 31 days and upload it to Instagram. Tag your photos with #FireflyWatercolorChallenge. It’s that simple.
All you have to do is show up with some painting supplies and your creative spirit. Good luck!

Each daily Firefly challenge has a directive listed on the blog; a quote, a book reference, a creative nudge. Here are the first three examples.

Day 1: Show Us Your Palette
It’s Day 1 of the #FireflyWatercolorChallenge and we want you to show us the tools you’ll be using for the challenge. Snap a photo or paint a still life of your kit.

Here's mine for Firefly Day 1.

My Prima Tropicals with custom colors and favorite brushes

The Prima tin comes arranged as you see in the layout on the right, as complementary colors across from each other. I prefer to put mine in spectrum order. I found a green in the studio hoard that is thankfully different than the ones in the set, but it's a mystery to me. I think it's Sennelier, but not sure.  
Day 2: Favorite Colors
What are your favorite colors to use in your work? Paint a color wheel using all your favorite shades.

Day 3: Start Simple
In the wise words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Every artist was first an amateur.” Emulate 5-Minute Watercolor author Samantha Nielsen and start simple with a sketch of a house plant or other household item.

(from what I've seen in the preview, I like this book a lot for beginners.)

So, if you're interested, hop on over to the Firefly page and see if you're up for a fun month of watercolor. But don't tell me to stay in the lines! (Challenge #6)



 

Meridian Playground

On July 31, 1907 the Sisters of the Good Shepherd opened “The Home of the Good Shepherd” in north Seattle to provide shelter, education, and guidance to girls and young women in crisis. The Sisters planted and maintained a fruit orchard and vegetable garden on the eleven acre property. Part of the original grounds has become Meridian Park and includes many of the 100-year old trees the Sisters planted.

The  Playground is themed after children's books.

I used direct painting with watercolor and a waterbrush for the hand hewn look of the water faucet post. The naturalistic part of the spread was done with line and wash, using permanent ink and Prima Watercolors. My sketch buddy, Tina, uses tinted pages for many of her sketches. Scroll down her IG account to see them.

Meridian Playground is one of the few public parks in the city that remains unsprayed. The nets are an organic method of protecting the fruit from disease and insects. Volunteers maintain and harvest the fruit which is given to charities for people in need.

 

I couldn't resist going back for a quick pencil sketch of the little tugboat. Finished later with ink and markers.

The property is owned by the City of Seattle and much of the orchard is maintained by Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  The Good Shepherd Center, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is managed by Historic Seattle. Its adjacent parking lot contains 26 fruit trees which are maintained by Historic Seattle. The Seattle P-Patch Program and Seattle Tilth manage fruit trees within the learning and community garden areas.

The apples are now about the size of ping pong balls.

Cedar picnic tables make a great place to lay down your sketches while taking photos, but it's about 90°F in direct sun, and 85°F in the shade right now.

I had fun being playful with my headline and text. I felt that the bright colors of my Arteza brush markers were just the touch needed for the children's themed sketches.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING: Update

Art abandonment postponed. Look for updates on my Instagram feed for the next opportunity to catch this abandoned art.

I posted this on my Instagram feed for the June monthly SeattleUSk outing. I had everything packed up in

my sketch bag the night before, but life interrupted. 

We got a surprise visit from our grandson and two little great grandchildren and just had to spend the day with them. Grilled salmon, salad, ice cold beer,  the sprinkler running in the back yard for the kids to run through, animal crackers, easy chat, relaxing on the deck; it was a great day!

Day Nine and Ten of 30x30 Direct Watercolor

I just got these finished for Day 9 and 10 of the #30x30DirectWatercolor2018 challenge and stepped quickly inside as it started to rain. I should have waited, because a beautiful sun break happened after the rain. On the other hand, you just have to know how to paint in diffused light if you're going to make watercolors in the PNW.

Working on Timing and expressive Brushstrokes

I feel fortunate that I have so many choices from my garden right now. I love Delphiniums for their unusual blue colors and interesting shapes all along the stem. You get to see every stage of the flower as it blooms from bottom to top.

Definitely wet on wet. Still wet while snapping a photo.

I tend to take a photo almost the instant I finish signing the painting. I sign the painting while the last brushstrokes are still wet.  There's a reflection from the sky in a bubble of wet paint, which you can probably see if you look closely at the center of the right hand stem.

Some watercolor effects after completely dry

Some watercolor effects take place while the painting is drying and aren't recorded in the snapshots that I take for social media. The Kilimanjaro paper takes much longer to dry than some other papers I use and causes a variety of surprise effects in the process. You can see this above, where I took another photo before posting this article.

Day Six of 30x30 Direct Watercolor

I think I'm catching the last of my Siberian Iris before they go to seed! Why do all my favorite flowers bloom at the same time!

No preliminary drawing, just direct watercolor with my Rosemary dagger brush.

I'm still getting used to the long wait time while the Kilimanjaro paper in my Cheap Joes Paintbook takes its time drying. Either that or it's a lot more humid around here today than I thought. But at last it's a day full of sunshine!

Getting the most out of my little bouquet.

Day Four and Five of 30x30 Direct Watercolor

DAY FOUR

I'm still frantically trying to keep up with the roses and the challenge of one direct waterccolor painting a day at the same time. I want to do several different sketches before they have to be pruned. There won't be another bloom until late August.

Just a few steps out the door from my studio.

I still need to post my Day Two sketch of the roses arched over my studio window. It's on different paper and not in this sketchbook.

After cutting a bouquet of Siberian Iris, Mock Orange and Ceanothus, I brought my sketch in to dry.

I left some room, albeit to the left of my sketch today, for tomorrow. I doubt I will have time to post these until then. (What can I say? Time is not really linear for me.) It's hard to keep up with the FaceBook group, Instagram and other social media during a marathon of sketching and painting.


DAY FIVE

Bees and Ceanothus (California Lilac)

See my post on the official 30x30 Direct Watercolor Facebook Group page for some compositional notes on why I arranged this sketch the way I did. #30x30DirectWatercolor2018

I think I saw at least 4 different types of  bees all over this ceanothus bush.

I posted the above photos plus a short little video of happy bees on my Instagram feed.
And here's what they look like together in my sketchbook.

Day 4 on the right and Day 5 on the left. :-)

Day Three of 30x30 Direct Watercolor

From under the patio umbrella in my back garden.

This was truly a day for "wet in wet" watercolor. As you can see, I checked about halfway through and it was 52°F with 88% humidity. I am literally "zooming in" by foot, between raindrops and then retreating to paint under the patio umbrella.

Work in Progress

I used my Rosemary 1/2" dagger brush and my Kilimanjaro Paint Book, vertically this time, and marked off an approximate 5x7" area with my blue painters' tape to keep the whole thing from running off the edges. I'm realizing this paper is great for wet lifting, but the wet stage lasts quite a bit longer than I'm used to with Arches 140lb CP.

Occasionally I had to run over to my subject for a few details.

No need for squinting to eliminate extraneous detail. My painting spot gave me just the right blur for the big shapes.

Day One of 30x30 Direct Watercolor

I’ll be posting my daily practice for better or worse during this challenge 

I thought I would just step out my studio door and paint the roses covering the corner trellis. But you need sunshine and shadows for that. AND it was National Donut Day so I had important business to take care of in town as well.

So I piled a bunch of watercolor supplies in the car and found a view I like. An important part of plein air painting from the mobile studio is safe and easy parking. This spot is across from a soccer field with a wide gravel roadside entrance. 

Waiting for washes to dry.

I’m using one of my Cheap Joes sketchbooks for the first half of the month. I haven’t painted in one of these for quite a while, so I’m not surprised that there’s a bit of an adjustment to make.


Then there’s the extreme humidity today and the distraction of horses wandering around the pasture!
Oh, and apologies to the Palomino for making you look like a mule.

The 30x30 Watercolor Challenge for June

Since 2007, the subtitle of my blog has been Daily Painting Practice to Grow as a Painter. The masthead artwork of my blog is from a 15x22” watercolor that I painted directly without preliminary drawing. As you can see, from the beginning I have included many of my watercolors that were “direct paintings”.

I’ve been painting a majority of my watercolors  directly without preliminary drawing.for years. When it comes to architecture or portraits I generally depend on a light pencil drawing or even a sketch in pen for line and wash.

All this took place before I ever became aware of the urban sketching international group or any of the pivotal people involved. Fast forward to the present and I am pleased to be a blog correspondent for Seattle USK and a faculty member for the Urban Sketchers 10x10 Workshop Program. In fact, I just finished my Spring Workshop, First Steps into Visual Journaling.

Imagine my excitement when Marc Taro Holmes announced a new online watercolor challenge and Facebook group just for this event!

Naturally, I’m in! Are you?

Looking for the FAQ/Announcement < click here!