squwetchy If this looks familiar it’s either because you live in Canada on this -18C day, or because it’s the same painting I thought I finished yesterday and posted on Instagram… but with some #snow added into the scene. #watercolour

squwetchy dabbling in a simple #monochromatic #watercolour this morning inspired by the cold temperatures outside!

squwetchy I cannot quite put my finger on it, but something about that job I just quit was blocking me artistically. Hell, I didn’t even notice it happening until the other day, while out walking the dog, the kid mentioned that I hadn’t been painting much lately, and I realized—no, actually I have painted nothing at all, not one thing, since I started working part time. It’s as if the two things occupied the same processing register in my brain and could not exist simultaneously.

Having quit the job and finished work yesterday, and having noticed the pattern, I decided to spend an hour in the basement with my paints this afternoon. The result is a bit derivative of my work from last winter, but since it is the first thing I have painted in four months I will give myself a break on that.

squwetchy I sat atop a waterfall and painted this plein air #watercolour with water from the creek.

squwetchy A plein air #watercolour painted atop a mountain. #waterfall

Now that I’m back home and actually have decent paints… a proper brush … few mosquitoes buzzing in my face.. and less rush, I want to try this screen again.

squwetchy A theme park might literally be among the worst places in the world to try urban sketching.

There is nowhere to get more than five minutes of peace to draw. So I embraced that: I went with the intention of seeing what I could accomplish in the least amount of time possible. I adopted a loose af sketching style and a sloppy/abstract watercolour style and spent literally no more than 5 minutes sketching— standing in a queue, waiting outside a bathroom for my fam, after lunch—and then painting with super-limited time and supplies back at the hotel.

The result was 28 sketches over the week (i filled a sketch book!) and about 6 hours total invested in drawing and painting. They are not neat nor tidy. They are not photo perfect by any stretch. They are vibes. Impressions. And the whole collection, despite a few flops and a leaky sketchbook seam, is an awesome souvenir.

squwetchy For our penultimate #watercolour #flower class we did this little red rose. Given that a) this week is our last class and b) I usually only do my homework to show off in the next class, this might have been my last at home assignment painting for a while. That said, I’ve been snapping pics of flowers for a couple weeks now and I bought a pass to the local botanic garden so hopefully it will be a summer of painting plein aire in the park.

squwetchy #watercolour #flower at the the #botanicgarden

squwetchy A practice rose by any other name? #watercolour class number 7 means that I really only have one more homework assignment, huh? [read more...]

squwetchy About six hours later I decided this #dandelion #watercolour was a little lacking in depth, so I spent another hour or so adding lots of shading, some subtle some not, and now I think it has a lot more oomph. What say you? [read more...]

squwetchy #dandelion #flower in #watercolour

squwetchy Week 6 of my painting class and we’re onto orchids Can you see the lovely purple gradients that make up every surface of these petals? There is so much going on here from a technique perspective that it’s no wonder we barely got through it all in our 3 hour class.