©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Blue Sea. Watercolor and colored pencil, 4.5 x 10.5 inches.
This scene is based on a photo I took on a small private beach in Maine that I found while taking a walk along the coast. I made one sketch beforehand, rearranged the rocks just a bit, and changed the colors. Blue is my favorite color, can you tell?
I haven’t been using anything besides pencil in my sketchbooks lately. This is a forty minute sketch of a detail of a glass plade with its shadow.
©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Glass Plate. Graphite in sketchbook, apx 3 x 4 inches.
©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Mini Roses. Graphite and watercolor in 8 x 5.5 inch sketchbook.
©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Melting in the Woods. Sanguine Pitt pens,
4.5 x 4 inches in handbook sketchbook.
Yesterday, I did some cleaning up of my work online by deleting two of my old blogs dating back to 2005. I know that nothing is gone forever once posted online, but it felt good to purge some things from the past that I don’t necessarily want to revisit. Plus, most of the traffic was from bots and Google image searches. I also had a number of images ripped off or used for hot-linking. I am not planning on deleting anything on this blog, but I am also more thoughtful about what I post these days.
I still have my work archived on flickr, but I am considering making some of those images private. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I am representing myself and I don’t see the value of having a lot of older and lower quality work available for public viewing.
Do you edit your portfolio from time to time to remove work that doesn’t represent you any longer? I would love to hear what you think.
I had fun making this little sketch of a chickadee for the Wilderness Art Challenge, which is a monthly art challenge hosted by Gary Keimig. He has some really lovely nature art and photography, so I would check him out. The scan didn’t come in that great because of the buckling of the paper, but I wasn’t aiming for perfection.
©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Chickadee. Graphite and watercolor, apx 5.5 x 4 inches in watercolor sketchbook.
A bit of trivia for you: I have only used birds as a subject three other times in my life before, when I was a preteen. I painted a bluebird for my grandmother, a parakeet for my grandfather and a cardinal for someone in my church who collected them.
Since then I haven’t drawn birds at all, mostly because I felt that the Internet was becoming too saturated with them, especially owls and peacocks. Birds seem to be a good “self-contained” subject and I have noticed that they are a favorite subject for illustrators and artists who like to stylize their work more. For more bird themed art, check out Geninne Zlatkis and Natasha Newton, who have made a name for themselves by painting birds almost exclusively.
Do you know of an artist who paints birds? Let me know in the comments!
©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Sketches of Zoe. Ink in large handbook sketchbook.
©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Rose Sketch. Graphite in sketchbook, apx 7.5 x 5 inches.
In the past few days sketching has taken a backseat as I’ve been concentrating more on filing paperwork and organizing my house. It is preferable for me to stay on top of things, especially during tax season, or else I will be too distracted to be creative. Today I am excited to get started on some new projects though.
Right now we are having winter mix and chunks of ice are pelting against my windows. Punxsutawney Phil predicted today that spring is near, but I have a hard time believing it!
Here are some roses from my sketchbooks, which were a sort of early Valentine’s Day present:
©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Mini Rose Sketches. Ink and Graphite in sketchbooks.
©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Seaside Dahlias. Watercolor, 7 x 8 inches.
Here is the final image of my work in progress painting. It was a challenge to paint, but a lot of fun and excellent practice in watercolor. The most challenging was not having a drawing to rely on and improvising as I went along. If I had done a detailed drawing first, I know that I would have made it much too detailed and labored, trying to paint all the veins in the leaves for instance. Next time I am going to make a basic contour drawing first, to work out the composition in advance, but I’m going to leave out all the details.
I called it Seaside Dahlias because the reference photo was from my Maine trip last summer. There is a lovely garden directly outside Barnacle Billy’s seafood restaurant where I took this photo. My husband was in a rush to get into the restaurant and order his steamers, and was trying to rush me along when I was snapping away. This was one of the last ones I took so I’m glad I persisted.
©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Work in Progress. Watercolor, 7 x 8 inches.
Here are two more photos of my painting in progress. I’ve added more of the leaves and background. I’ve been working on this a little bit each day, trying not to rush myself. I’ve never attempted a watercolor this ambitious before, so I’m trying not to worry so much when things don’t come out perfectly. I’ve also decided that I am going to just stick with watercolor and not turn it into anything mixed media.
For some reason, the bottom photo turned out grainy. I should have checked if it came out okay before I continued painting! Tomorrow I’ll post the finished piece.
©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Work in Progress. Watercolor, 7 x 8 inches.