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I almost called this "Lucky Blossom" because under several layers there are koi fish swimming around.  But I figured only a few people would get the joke and I didn't want to air my dirty laundry to the whole world, just you guys dear readers know the actual truth.  So instead I went with Georgia Blossom as we get magnolias blooming both in Spring and Fall here in Georgia.  They are such beautiful flowers.  Another one I think I could paint again and again and not get tired of them.  Love that white really isn't white with this flower.   I had done a magnolia before in color pencil in a 12"x12" size, but altered this one a bit (not using grays for the shadows, but violet and blues) and did it on a 6"x6" boxed canvas.  Again working on getting the sides to participate as part of the composition.  I did a couple of things here:  1) I covered the koi with several coats of gesso and realize that gesso doesn't allow the pa...

I am pretty sure that the folks who do beautiful flower paintings are no in trouble - that's you Rita and Janina.   But I had a great time doing this picture and absolutely love the color in the petals.  While my yellow solvent added some extra issues, especially in the white areas, this is untouched with no gouache in the white areas.  Will leave it on the board and determine down the road if I want to add that in. This is taken indoors, and I definitely want to get a pic of it outside, but raining and cloudy today so ...  I may try this again with pastels as I think I'd like the soft texture on this as well and since I have a thing about hard edges, the blendability of pastels would give smoother transitions I think.    Again I tried to create a self-mat by leaving 1" around the edges and even though I used tape to mask it I still ended up, due to the tooth of the paper, with little seepages - so I did use some of the white gel pen to try to...

TGIF!!!!   Yep, it is Friday...... One of the things about experimenting is that you always learn things after the fact: - I know that if I continue to do this type of process in the future I need to get some new solvent.  Mine is lots of years old and has a definite yellow cast to it, so just by itself tends to color the paper yellow tone.  - I also need to figure out how to do this technique if you don't have a lot of pencil on the paper - might work better if I had a smoother tooth - but want to keep the colors light, because it is white, and it leaves me with streaks.   Maybe do the light tones with watercolor where I can just use water and it might fill the tooth more - back to more experimenting I guess. - Am going to finish the last of the petals and then determine if I am going to need to hit the pure whites with gauche to brighten them up - won't be able to pull it out with just white pencil alone. See that I still will have some c...

This year has been all about exploring, experimentation, reading, Youtube videos and trying to do the things I have read/seen about.  It is scary to think that I am within sight of this first art year of being really serious just flying by.  Way to much to learn, try and do.  This is color pencil, but I don't think it really looks like color pencil, do you?  Think it has more of an intense watercolor feel to it.  In Georgia we have magnolias, the king of flowers, some right in our housing development and I always love them when they bloom.  Also the other thing I love about them is the fuschias (did I tell you I LOVE color), lavendars, yellows and olive greens  that are in the shadows of the petals.   Again this is regular color pencils, Prismacolor, Karat, Faber Castells, just a mixture of types of pencils, polychromos and wax based put onto the paper, dry as usual.  Then I am hitting it with solvent.  Supposed to be able...