With A Little Help From My Friends

"With A Little Help From My Friends"  (Watercolor)  © C. Eastwood, 2010

Don't these guys just make you smile!  This was the other painting left for display last year (see explanation under "Koi").  I got to thinking.  If you're a bird, you really need to have friends because there are always going to be things that you just can't do on your own.  Not a bad lesson for the rest of us--bird or otherwise.

Koi

"Koi"  (Watercolor)  © C. Eastwood, 2010

Wow -- I'd forgotten what this one looked like it was painted so long ago.   Last December, when class ended, a group of us left behind paintings of birds and fish for a gallery display that was going to happen in January 2011 in the art building.  Then the paintings took a little trip to another location for a showing, and I just got mine back.  This is part of the "paint a fish" assignment last year.  As you can see, it also received an incredibly clever title.  Oh, well.  The funny little "sparkle" effects (whatever you want to call them) in the water are from adding salt to the paint while it's wet.  It's a cool technique and you never really know exactly what's going to happen.  So that's exciting! 

Autumn River

"Autumn River" (Watercolor)  ©  C. Eastwood, 2011

When my teacher saw what I was attempting to paint, she was actually quite polite about the way she questioned my sanity.  I believe it was something like, "Oh my.  Really?"  The subtext being -- "Are you nuts?"  But I have to say I learned quite a lot during this exercise.  I wanted to learn about painting moving water -- never dreaming that long before I got to the painting of it, I would be running the top half of my work under a faucet and scrubbing it with a sponge to lighten things up and start over.  So I guess you could say it's a moving water exercise in every sense of the word!

Tackling Another Winslow Homer

Based on the Work of Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was a genius, period.  No amount of practicing will ever make my work look exactly like his.  (Of course, I'd already established the fact that my next career was not going to be as an art forger.)  So this exercise became about painting moving water and, in this instance, spray.  This is somewhat different than the original, but I'm happy with it.  And I'm grateful to Mr. Homer for painting such a beautiful piece to begin with.  You might want to check it out -- his original is called "Incoming Tide."

The Elusive Exercise #2

Exercise Based on the Work of Ray Campbell Smith

It's the missing exercise #2!  This had several challenges in addition to the "still water" aspect -- namely those rather pesky building reflections that merged into the hill reflection.  But all-in-all, this has been a terrific set of exercises that have provided a lot of new skills.  So that's a good thing!