Watercolor - Zilker Botanical Gardens Gazebo

Austin weather is absolutely gorgeous right ow, and so is Zilker Botanical Gardens!

Watercolor Tutorial or Demo Video

Now Available on YouTube. Here is Part 1 and Part 2

Putting this tutorial together was laborious and time consuming, but if you learn a few things, then it was worth it. I hope you like it. I tried to cram as much info as I can into the video, and yet there are still so many things about watercolor that I left out. Maybe I will do more tutorials in the future. There are several places in the video where I make mistakes while painting. I think this is ok to show the viewer how I deal with problems I encounter. Anyway, I really really really really hope you like it!

Tiffanny

Short Pose Session, AVAA, Michelle

I was really really really trying that Reilly Method I read about. It's especially apparent on the 5 minute poses. I really enjoy trying something new.  I THINK that it's helping my drawings look more rhythmic, but who knows! :)

15 minutes...

 5 minutes each figure...

 1 minute poses

Oh yes, about that tutorial. Cutting the dialogue together right now. My weekend was completely booked with my Bro-in-law in town plus a B-day party for a dear friend. Today I got a very short-term freelance job, so I put my time into that instead. Sigh. It's coming though!

Tiffanny
ps. HI PENNY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Watercolor - Jennifer Anastasia and Tennyson

My friend Jen and her cat Tennyson.

Well, I've been working on a video tutorial for my watercolor techniques and philosophies. Unfortunately AfterEffects doesn't accept the format that my camera spits out. So I have to import the files into 3DSMAX and render it to a file that AfterEffects recognizes before I can cut the video together. But rest assured it will be up soon! I've always liked teaching. I took advantage of my little sisters when they were kids, sitting them down and lecturing at them. Poor dears. :) Now that I'm somewhat acclimated with watercolors, I feel that I have a few things I can teach. I guess we'll see how it goes. I've never been taught watercolors OR how to teach. This is allllll going to be new.

Until tomorrow,
Tiffanny

Short Pose Session, AVAA, drawings of Emily, Reilly Method

 25 minute pose:

 15 minute pose:

10:

5:

You may notice the lack of 1-minute gesture drawings this time. That's because I totally blew it. I don't know where my head was, but the harder I tried, the worse it looked! 1-minute poses get my adrenalin going. There's so much to draw and so little time. Anyway, I calmed down when we hit 10 minute poses. For the 10-minutes and up poses, I kept the Reilly Method in my mind the whole time. (The Reilly Method is described in the Anatomy issue of Imagine FX, page 18. It's an incredibly elegant method, but I still need to practice more, more, more.)
Anyway, I do have some bad tendencies when I draw. One is to break the hands and feet into components, rather than having them flow from the arms/legs. I'm working to fix that. Can you spot any other bad tendencies? Mistakes I keep repeating over and over? Symbol drawings to note? (For the non-artistic, a symbol drawing is like drawing what you know, not what you see, which appear again and again in your drawing.)
OK, time to hit the spin bike. I engorged myself like a tick this weekend with ice cream, brownies, and a chocolate cheesecake from Kerby Lane Cafe.

Tiffanny
Ps. OMG! Sold my first print ! Completely unexpected.

Still Missing You

Short Pose Session, AVAA, drawings of Reina

15 minutes...

30 minutes...

5 minutes...

1 minute...

Why are my gesture drawings nice and fluid and my longer poses so dang stiff-feeling?? (especially the 2nd drawing). I mean, I know the model isn't being as dynamic, but still, shouldn't I be able to make her less robotic-looking? If you have any tips, please help!!
Tiffanny

Watercolor - Laguna Gloria

Another perfect day in Austin, TX. I will do plein air at every possible opportunity from now until it gets too cold. This is the building at Laguna Gloria. It's not real extravagant, but it does have an elegant simplicity to it. The grounds are beautiful. I will go back and paint the area again and again.

I used to be the girl who would miss the beautiful weather outside to play hours of video games indoors. But since I began painting in watercolor, there is nothing I would rather do than be outside painting. I don't miss video games one iota. I have "found" myself as an artist, here in Austin, TX. I don't know what kept me from growing as an artist when I lived in Shrewsbury, PA. I blame myself for not having the drive I have now. I'm sure it set me back many years of growth. But now I live here, and I am creating all the time. It also really helps to have my two best painting buds Stephen and Jay who will go out painting with me at the drop of a hat and to keep me company . Painting with friends allows me to really relax and enjoy the moment. Thank you!!

Tiffanny
ps. And thanks, Jen for letting me borrow your guy for our painting excursions all the time!

Watercolor - SnoCone Stand on Fm 1327, South Austin, TX

I have been eying this adorable little snow cone stand on fm1327 near my house. I was a bit afraid to paint it at first because I wasn't sure if I would be welcome there, being non-hispanic. I know this sounds crazy, right? But when I lived in Shrewsbury, PA, my husband and I walked into The Coach Light restaurant, and we were the only people under 50 there. We got some stares. The waitress was lovely, but it was awkward. Being vegetarian, there was nothing we could have on the menu. So the waitress had to uncomfortably offer us some side dishes. She did her best, but we got the overall feeling of being odd and different.. Anyway, I was afraid to paint this snow cone stand because I didn't know how the mom-and-pop business would feel about me sitting there painting their stand. I wasn't even sure how well I could communicate because my Spanish sucks, and I wasn't sure how fluent they were. Well I did love every minute of it. The service was great, the people were friendly, English was spoken, thankfully. There were kids playing in a playground area. A friendly dog came to say hello. The weather was spectacular, there was a horse in a pen in their property who I petted on the nose, and the snow cones were AWESOME! I got blue coconut, my husband got mango. Both were really good! And cheap too! Incidentally, you can also just drive through if you are in a rush, but honestly, there are a lot of trees shading outdoor seating. It makes for a nice break! Eating blue snow cones made my teeth blue! I felt like a kid again.

Well, if you are ever on 1327, give these nice folks some business!

Tiffanny

Mother-in-Law's Roses

With watercolors, I tend to try and receed everything into a light background because the white of the paper is really hard to overpower. In my way of watercoloring, I try to do everything in one or two washes only because most of my paintings are done alla prima, on the spot. I don't have time to wait for things to dry, add another layer, wait for it to dry again, etc. Well, this painting is an exception. I had to make the background dark in order for the white flowers to pop. I hope it worked!

Tiffannny

My Ohio Vacation, RIP Skinny - My Singing Kitty.

Dear Readers,
My last post was a while while while back ago. I am usually a regular poster, but I have been at my in-law's and they have no internet access! So, sorry for not posting. Hopefully you will still come and visit me because I'm back in town, and I DO have internet :)

Well, the art party was a success, I think. I sold a painting! Unfortunately the painting just almost covers the cost of framing and matting the 12 featured paintings. Oh well. The host of the art party did specifically tell me that people aren't there to buy, just to party and look. At least now my art is all framed. They used to sit in a manila folder under my couch. Now I can actually hang it! That, and I can actually say it out loud that I have sold a painting (2 if you count commissions!). The experience was, for me, educational. I could observe people's faces as they scanned my work to see what sort of work they liked the most. I had to research pricing, and had to think about how to price my art. These are things I never thought of before, so it was a good learning experience!

So now, on to my trip. The purpose of the trip was to meet my new neice-in-law. My financial circumstances are getting pretty dire at this point. I am working, I have a full time job, full insurance coverage and all that, but our pay schedule has been erratic due to several cash flow issues within the company. The trip from Austin, TX to Cleveland, OH was made in our 2003 Nissan Sentra because we couldn't afford the plane tickets and dog boarding. My dogs are insanely well behaved though. And they weren't a problem at all.

On our way to Ohio, we stopped at Falls Creek Falls, TN, where I painted this overlook. The Falls themselves weren't so magnificent at that particular time. It was just a trickle. Maybe it hasn't been raining there too much. Either way, it was still pretty. The leaves have started to turn in Tennessee, so it was a beautiful drive. Pretty state. I would love to visit again.

 

 It rained non-stop in Ohio. Very troubling, because I wanted to get a lot of Plein Air painting done. This is the only landscape painting I got out of Ohio, and it was painted indoors looking outside the window. It was overcast the entire time, windy, drizzly.

So I did a lot of still life, my least favorite subject compared to figure and landscape. Waiting for inspiration to do work can be a bad thing. It's better to just keep the brush moving and get your skills and practice up for when something DOES inspire you. This is a lantern and gardening tools my mother-in-law owns. The tiny red plant is an Air Plant. Very little soil in there, mostly pebbles to let air in. Anyway, thankfully, unlike me, my MIL has lots of neat objects to paint. I don't collect knick knacks, which makes it hard to me to put together a still life at my house.

My MIL has a lot of bottles.... The blue one is my favorite. Such a gorgeous color.

These are my baby neice-in-law's baby toys. I liked their colors so I painted them.

My trip ended very very tragically. On our last day in Ohio, my pet-sitter notified me that he found Skinny dead in the kitchen. We still dont know how or why because the vet said it was too late to do a necropsy. He was too young! At most, he was only 9 years old. I will miss my dear cat. We found him many years ago without fur on his head, neck, and belly. He had open wounds. Flies were following him around. We took him in. He was so weak, he couldn't jump on our futton, which was already kind of low. With the help of the vet, we turned him around. He grew healthy, and beautiful. I rarely talk about Skinny because he's a quiet, reclusive cat. He doesn't have the antics of Friendly or Poco. But as with all my animals he was very very loved and appreciated. He's the only cat I have that sings in the bathtub at night. How cute is that? RIP Skinny. Mommy loves you.

this was painted in 2009, my favorite painting of Skinny.