Year of the Tiger 2010

Year of the Tiger 2010,
originally uploaded by Donn2006.

Happy New Year everyone.

Thought I would try to start the new year off right by greeting it with this card.

Size: post card. Done on 90# watercolor paper.

Symbol in upper right corner is word for Tiger. Red seal/stamp says Good Luck. Symbol in lower right is my name in Chinese

Panda and bamboo in acrylics

Panda and bamboo in acrylics,
originally uploaded by Donn2006.

Here's my 2 pandas done in acrylics on 90 # watercolor paper. This paper is not really good for acrylics and was hard to work with. It seemed to soak into the paper and hard to blend.

May try it on acrylic or oil canvas next time. It was too difficult to get what I wanted.

Size 4 x 6 inches using Liquitex acrylics.

Pandas and bamboo 2

Pandas and bamboo 2,
originally uploaded by Donn2006.

My latest CBP done on 90# watercolor paper using watercolors. Size 4 x 6 inches.
Red seal says: Purpose is what gives life meaning.

Inspired by Lucy Wang in her book The Art of Chinese Brush Painting.

Pandas and bamboo 1

Pandas and bamboo 1,
originally uploaded by Donn2006.

This was done on 90# watercolor paper using watercolors. Size 4 x 6 inches.
Red seal says: Purpose is what gives life meaning.

Bamboo

Bamboo APC,
originally uploaded by Donn2006.

This was gone on 90% Fabriano watercolor studio paper. Size 4 x 6 inches, using Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils with the paint taken directly off the pencil. Used a new Chinese waterbrush similar to the Niji waterbrushes . The brush in the one I used are the regular length as normal Chinese brushes.

This was for a challenge for a monochrome painting in the APC group I belong.

Bird's eye view

Bird's eye view,
originally uploaded by Donn2006.

Decided to do a small painting using the new Daniel Smith Watercolor sticks that I just got.

This is ATC size on 140# watercolor paper.

Took the paint directly off the sticks and mixed several colors in a little palette. Didn't have any burnt sienna, so improvised with what I had. The are very strong colors.

Arizona Butte

Arizona Butte,
originally uploaded by Donn2006.

Here's my latest done on Yupo paper with Holbein Duo water soluble oils. Size 5 x 7. Not quite dry, but the mat lifts it far enough off the scanner glass.
This was a bit of a challenge with the oils. It's hard enough with watercolors. Next try will be acrylics.

Bottles and Jars

Bottles and Jars,
originally uploaded by Donn2006.

Here's my latest still life for Nel's on-line oil painting class. This was done with Holbein Duo watersoluble oils on 8 x 8 inch canvas paper.
I did one similar to this ATC size using watercolor pencils. The background was a bit different. This one was quite a challenge. I normally don't care to do still life's, but it was an assignment.

I'm taking an on-line acrylics course from Andy Walker at http://www.learntodo.co.uk . This is a self paced course with 6 sections and 24 parts to it.

The first lesson was doing a color wheel, which I have done many, so didn't put it up here.

In this exercise, we were to do a value drawing of a scene from the course. So, this is my attempt. In the next lesson, I will be adding color to this painting.

I'm also taking his watercolor course which is divided into 12 sections with 32 parts. Since I have done some watercolor in the past, I did not do any of the exercises in the first 2 lessons of this course. But will be adding paintings from the next lessons.

To the left is some more of our containers plants. The 2 left containers have tomatoes in them along with a hanging tomato plant above them.

To the right are 2 more containers of tomatoes. These are in Earthboxes. We've had these boxes for over 5 years and replant them each year.

On the left is our part of our container garden with a canopy over the top to block some of the hot sun rays here in northern Florida. In these boxes are beets, green beans, corn and red and yellow peppers in the white flower box. The 3 green boxes are Good Earth boxes, our first year in these boxes. The one terra cotta box with corn is a flower box. It has ears of corn on it already.

To the left is our square foot garden with some of the plants coming up.

To the right is the same garden with our protective screening to blot out some of the hot sun we have here in norther Florida.

This is the first time we have tried setting up a square foot garden. In it are beets, carrots, onions, lettuce, radishes and green beans.