The Alphabet Paintings: V

Here's the finished painting.
I hope you've enjoyed watching it come to life.

Valerie's Violin

alphabet in progress, 3

wet the violin body and added one last wash of wr/bs. Leave to dry.

 Wet the sound hole, drop in indanthrene and paynes grey. That fixed my "mistake" . Wet the top shadow of the fingerboard and painted it with an indanthrene/aliz crimson mix, dropping in some burnt sienna. Wet the lower plate and drop in the ib/ac mix only. That's because it is a plate, not a shadow! Let it dry.

 Paint the shadow to the bridge and the string shadows.
Wet the area of the shadow - but also the back of the bridge, then wash with a dark sticky mix of ib/ac and drop in some sticky mix of bs.
Drop in and walk away!
Leave the paint to mingle to produce interesting shadows. Use a few flicks for string shadows.
Let it dry

 Remove the masking on the strings.
From here there's a bit of tidying up to do to make the strings look neater. Some dry brush in sepia on the curve, then she'll be done!

 Next time you see the violin , it will be the finished picture. I hope you've enjoyed the step by step process.

alphabet in progress, 2

Here's the next stages:

wet the sound hole areas and drop in some indanthrene blue and paynes grey

These are the colour mixes I'll be using on the body of the violin. I find it useful to paint swatches on a strip before I start to put in large washes on the painting.

Mix up two washes in preparation. Raw umber and burnt sienna, then winsor red and burnt sienna.
Wet the violin body, leaving the finger plate dry. Wash the ru/bs mix all over the wet area, then drop in some of the wr/bs mix in places where the violin would naturally be darker. The bridge, the curve, the bottom mid of the painting. Leave to dry.

On the bridge and the lines of the curve,  paint in a  second wash of the wr/bs mix and leave to dry.

Paint a third and last wash of wr/bs mix on the bridge and this time on all of the curve and let these dry.

Now, those of you who know violins will probably have spotted that I've made a mistake here. For some unknown reason, I overlooked painting the mid section of the sound hole on the left. Probably because the crop split it in three and I wasn't paying enough attention as I worked out colours.

It enables me to give you a great lesson that I have learned  - and that is "never panic" 
Leave the area alone to dry and later on we can fix it.

I've seen many people who have made a mistake, seen it almost immediately and then straight away dive in and try to rectify it.
Don't do that!
Pound to a penny the painting will be ruined. Let it dry.  Fix it later. 

Which is just what I'll be doing -and hopefully you'll see a great painting still !

An alphabet painting, in progress

Its been such a long time since I've done a step by step post, that I thought I'd do another! Photo courtesy of Morguefile's copyright free photos.

You can follow along or even paint along if you like!
If you do that and finish it, post it on your blog and I'll link to it :)

Either way, I hope you enjoy the following.

First the pencil drawing of the violin

then mask out the strings. I use W&N Masking Fluid, but any rubber mask will do. Its just to resist the paint when you paint the body of the violin, without any fiddly paint all around the strings !

next I'm painting the bottom right corner, which is background to the violin.
Wet the curved corner first, then drop in some alizarin crimson, some burnt sienna and some payne's grey. Leave to dry.

Last for today, wet the whole violin and then drop in - in a random fashion - some new gamboge.  As you can see, I accidentally touched the corner of the background and it flared a little into the violin. Don't worry if that happens. blot it quickly with a dry brush and leave it be. Once overpainted, it will add character to the violin !
You can see I'm from the "don't panic" school of painters :)

Until next time...

The Alphabet Paintings: U

Here we go with another Alphabet Painting.
This is a "U" which means I am nearly at the end of the series, with only five more to go.

Hope you enjoy this latest offering :

Urban Nights

I'm on holiday now for two weeks. We're not going away, but I expect I shall be in the summerhouse and hope to have some paintings to show you!

The Alphabet Paintings: T

Continuing with my alphabet paintings, I'm up to T !

so here, another macro pic from my digital microscope, this time of a brass ornament -

Three Wise Monkeys

Each is approx 7x5 inches, on Arches 140 Rough.

The Alphabet Paintings: S

I'm back to my alphabet paintings and for S I chose "Still Life"
There were plenty of options around my house to choose from and this lucky plant got the vote :)

So here for  you to enjoy:

Still Life

The Alphabet Paintings: R

The alphabet paintings continue with the letter R and a memory from childhood...

When I was growing up, I remember reading a whimsical tale of how God named all the flowers. When He was walking in the garden one day, he came across this pretty blue flower and asked for its name. The blue flower bashfully replied that he couldn't remember. So God whispered to the flower, "remember that I love you, forget-me-not"

Remember that I love you

The Alphabet Paintings: Q

Did some of you wonder what I would paint for Q?
It was never going to be hard for me. Tell you why, I have another little hobby. One I haven't spoken of much here, but I love gemstones, minerals and fossils.
Not a huge collection, but ones with patterns that fascinate me.
So all I did was pick out a piece from my collection, stand it on my glass computer table and paint away.

Q is for Quartz...

Sweetheart Quartz

This painting can be viewed along with all my others, at my gallery site, click HERE

The Alphabet Paintings: P

Time for  another Alphabet Painting and if you've been paying attention, you know I'm up to P.
Thoroughly enjoyed painting this one - its on a quarter sheet - 15" x 11" - and the paper is Arches 140lb Rough

Where Poppies Grow

The Alphabet Paintings: O

After all the emotion  invested in V: The Other Side of the River, I decided to do a painting that made me laugh.
Also, having neglected the Alphabet paintings,  decided it was time to start again and not lose them.

What on earth could make me laugh in a painting that began with O?
I have just the thing at home.
He's a lovely little animal, all shades of green and he's always cheerful.
When I first saw him many years ago, it was love at first sight.

Here he is, in watercolour, hope he makes you smile too :)

Oscar, the Ornamental Pig

The Alphabet Paintings: J

J is for Jellyfish..

originally I was going to count the pencil as the J painting, but then I decided to paint the jellyfish using a limited palette .. French ultramarine, indigo and cadmium orange

Jellyfish II : the colours of my life

The Alphabet Paintings: I

This painting was inspired by this poem:

On Silent Paws.

On silent paws I will walk with you, through life every day
Did you think I would leave you alone and unloved, when there is another way?
Just close your eyes and you will see me, standing by your side
Just open your ears and listen, as through life's storms you ride

I am ever present, only a prayer away
Did you think I would leave you alone and unloved, when there is another way?
Just hold the love you held for me tightly to your heart
I shall never leave you, we will never be apart

I'm here just out of sight, I will never go astray
Did you think I would leave you alone and unloved, when there is another way?
There is no death when love is the link that bound your life to mine
Just close your eyes and think of me. Smile, and all will be fine.

On Silent Paws, I will walk with you, through life every day
Did you think I would leave you alone and unloved, when there is another way?
(author unknown)

Invisible Friend

The Alphabet Paintings: H

Morning everyone! Been a little busy round here, so I've fallen behind with reading blogs! Hope to catch up soon.
In the meantime, onwards with the alphabet paintings.
I'm finding a lot of inspiration in things around me.. this was a photo taken of my Hibiscus "Bluebird"  from my garden.

Hibiscus

The Alphabet Paintings: F

F is for ...................

Fluke

When I first saw this photo, it struck me exactly HOW large a whale's fluke is. That was because the seagulls seemed so tiny in relation to it. Having seen many seagulls - they are not small!
I must also tell you, watercolour is just the best medium - things happen and you think wow! I had one of these moments with this painting. The background was a wall of rock in the photo and I was going to paint an under wash to help give texture to the rock - but when this under wash dried, I was amazed by it and left it - as the background you see now. My wow moment!
I hope you like it too :)

The Alphabet Paintings: C

we're onto C.


C .... is for Canoe

Paddling my own Canoe

I love the serene feel to this . Water in paintings can be so calm and restful.  Unless of course, you're painting a storm at sea :) 

What about you? Do you like to see paintings with calm waters in them?

The Alphabet Paintings: B

The Alphabet Paintings from the Painting Friends forum continue..

with:  B is for....

Butterfly on a Buddleia Bush