Multitasking the May 2019 Prompts

On this first day of the Every Day in May challenge, I realize my schedule for the coming days is going to be more than full. Aside from classes to teach today through Friday, we have our daughter, granddaughter and new great grandson coming to visit on Friday! As soon as family comes over, all other plans take a backseat!

With that in mind, I am going to try to get a little ahead on this year's commitment to sketching, drawing and painting on a daily basis. I'll do my best to go with the prompts, but daily sketching, no matter what the subject, is priority. So here goes:

“Some fruit, blueberries”—-“True Blue”

Many of these prompts overlap, so I can post to EDiM, Doodlewash and this weekend, to Moment sketchers. Check them all out and see which list appeals to you!

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!

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.