Mother and Child Painting

Here is my latest attempt at portrait painting in watercolor.

Charlotte and Emily, 2015 by Jeanne Turner McBrayer

This is my granddaughter, Charlotte and her beautiful mother, Emily.  I worked from a reference photo from Christmas of 2014.  They were sitting in our John Deer "Gator" in the North Carolina mountains while we paused in a Christmas tree farm at the top of the mountain.

I meant for this to be a Christmas present for my son Dave, but he did not get it until last weekend.

It is much harder to paint faces than, say, trees!  But they liked this one, and I am encouraged to try some more.

Fealing Lin Workshop-Days 2, 3,and 4

This week took forever to get here, and now it is almost over.  This has been an intense week of learning about composition, style, and brushwork.  Fealing is a great teacher and a very nice person. Our class is relaxed and very friendly.  Each day Fealing teaches a lesson in some element of art, and does a painting demo.  She does not mind us taking photos while she is teaching.

We also do some critique of student work each day.  I learn as much from looking at other student work as from trying it on my own.

It has been very humbling to see the amazing work done by my classmates!  There is a high-quality camera that projects the artwork and the reference photo onto a large whiteboard. I really liked this one of a girl who is a professional model.

I have learned my lesson about having a good photo to work from.  It should be taken with no flash, either outside in the sun or with a single light source.  You need some good shadows on the face.

Every day we find a new surprise from Cheap Joe's Art Stuff at our workstations.  We have gotten towels for dabbing our paintbrushes, some Kilimanjaro watercolor paper samples, and some watercolor board.  Joe himself came in today and spoke to each of us.  Yesterday I ate lunch with his granddaughter, Megan, who works in the marketing department.  I am so impressed by the staff at this place of business.

Even though I have to drive 48 minutes each way to get to Boone,  almost the whole drive is on a scenic mountain byway.  The weather sometimes starts out golden, changes to threatening skies, maybe a little rain, and then back to beautiful skies.  I love it when the sun moves in golden shifts across the dark mountains.

I have almost finished two portraits.  I think they are okay, but I want to practice a lot more to get my paintings to the quality that I want.

Here is Lily. with a darker background.  Still has a lot of color!

Here is a smaller painting of my great-niece Holly when she was a baby.  She was wearing my straw sun hat and sitting on the table while I was eating lunch.  The sun light was pouring through the hat and reflecting on her head.

Today Fealing taught us about making loose paintings with groups of people forming interesting shapes.  You do these very quickly, with very few brushstrokes.  Here are two that I tried using her reference photos.

Now that it's dry, I think the first one needs some more darks for more contrast.

The next one looks almost tropical.

One more day tomorrow, a short day where we wrap up our projects and do a final critique.

Catching Up

It has been raining hard off and on for days now.  That actually has given me lots of extra time for my artsy projects!

On Thursday I went to Clayton to exercise my visitation rights on my Gammill machine.  I managed to quilt both my baby quilt and the flower challenge quilt while I was there.

The baby quilt just has loopy meanders with some flowers and maybe a butterfly for fun.  The baby's name is Holly, so I added her name and a holly leaf.

The backing is pieced from leftover fabrics in the quilt and some others that coordinate.

I made a label today, and will try to finish hand-sewing the binding and label tonight.  I'd like to give it to Holly when we are in the mountains for the Fourth of July.

Here is the flower challenge quilt, now that it is quilted.  I did not touch the flower or stem, only the background.  That makes the non-quilted areas pop.  I will be doing some stitching/beading in the flower area.

I did a lot of small, artistic freestyle quilting.  Near the base, feathery ferns. 

I added some quilted leaves along the stem.

Around the flower I just added some spiral swirls.

Next up for this project is to add beads, crystals, embroidery etc. to embellish the flower.

While I was at Maureen's, there was a severe thunderstorm with heavy rain and dark skies.  I finished quilting just as it started to storm, and by the time I traveled home the rain was over.

On my design wall is the beginning of another child's quilt.  I can't really call this a baby quilt because the baby is already three years old.  This one is for our friends, Ricky and Mary's granddaughter Shelby.  I made  quilts for both of her older brothers, but got in a slump on baby quilts a few years ago and could not keep up!  

This one is going to be a sort of I Spy quilt with pairs of blocks with the same center fabric.  Two mermaids, two butterflies, etc.  Hopefully she can make a game of finding the matching pairs.  

All of the center patches have an animal or other novelty print fabric.  Many are left over from the last three quilts I have made for Charlotte, Lucas, and Holly.

In fact, I have so many leftover scraps that I am piecing together scrap quilts for yet another baby quilt.  I have two more to go before I have made one for all the great-nieces and great-nephews.

I keep a basket of scraps by the sewing machine, and when I am in the mood for some mindless sewing, I just stitch the scraps together randomly until I can cut an eight-and-a-half-inch square.  Very relaxing!

I also have been working on two watercolor paintings.  One is another view of the dam at our mountain place, this time from the bridge with dogwood branches reaching over the creek.  

Before, I had a lot of heavy branches above the dam, and did not like the way they looked.  So, I lifted the out by using a "thirsty" brush and going over the areas to remove the paint.  This left a kind of ghostly effect, not unlike when the mists rise off the water.  But I am filling back in with some color.

I want to have this one ready to take to Michael's to frame when I pick up the one that is there now.

The other painting is a practice portrait of my granddaughter Lily.  I had a good closeup of her face, so I used her as the subject even though she was in my last portrait, as well.  I want to work on the eyes and the shading a little more, and decide if I want to add some background color.  I already have the same face drawn on another paper, so I will try some different color tones for that one.  

Tomorrow we are going back to the mountains for the Fourth of July.  We have a big group gathering there. Lots of children, grandchildren, and friends.  We are looking forward to it...and hope that the BIG RAINS will be over by then.  Charlie and I went up last weekend to do some preparations since we had not been up there in a month.  It was lovely and cool.  We enjoyed watching my sister Katy and her husband Kenny feed the fish in the pond, the pigs, the chickens, and the goats. 

 And of course, the ride over the Christmas tree farms in the Gator is always a highlight.

After running up there, my dog Kasey looks like a lion lying in the savanna of Africa.

Guess that's it for now!  My art quilt bee met yesterday, but I will save that report for another post.

Watercolor Portraits

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I have signed up for a watercolor portrait workshop with Fealing Lin to be held in Boone, N.C., this fall.  I couldn't wait to get started, so I spent the afternoon experimenting.

There are very brief instructions in her June 2012 Watercolor Artist article, along with lots of examples of her portraits.  Using two of my favorite photographs, I traced the outlines and got started.

This one of my dog, Kasey, with her paw on my lap, is just about finished.

 

You build up layers of transparent color until you achieve the desired effect.

 

Here is the sketch, with some masked areas to preserve the white paper, and a light watercolor wash for the background.

 

 

Then you start adding your darker backgrounds and the shadows.  Pretty scary-looking at this point.  Can you say Cujo?

 

 

You keep building up the background, then remove the mask and start working on the details of the face.

 

 

Here it is, maybe finished, maybe needs a little more work.  Charlie says the right ear doesn't look right. It might be too late to fix that!

 

 

I found the other project much more difficult.  It is a picture of my granddaughter, Lily, playing in a field of daisies up in the mountains.

 

 

I think it's okay, but see some things I would do differently.  This one definitely is not finished.  But I don't think it's too bad for a first attempt.

 

 

Both of these are very small in size, about 6" x 9", so maybe they are "studies."

 

Tomorrow is my day to go to Cary and see the new baby.  I have been going at least once a week.  I always offer to stay and let Emily get out of the house.  So far she has never been gone more than about 45 minutes.  The last time I went, a friend of my son's came over to do some baby photography for her professional portfolio.  This is the only one I have seen so far.

 

Baby Charlotte, photo by Anna Sledge

 

 

What an angel!