Watercolor Sketching at the Kitchen Counter (and Art Links for you)

This is a post from Belinda Del Pesco’s Art Blog Belinda Del Pesco.

Consider Brevity – Short Painting Sessions After Dinner

I’m much obliged this week so this is brief; I have a watercolor sketch, a few great links for you, and a question too.

This is a kitchen counter watercolor sketch (above). I painted incrementally, after dinner, over a few nights, at the kitchen counter. Have you tried working small, in bite-sized sessions after dinner? It’s the BEST way to wind down a day.

The scene is a corner in my kitchen, with alstroemeria in the sunshine, and my neighbor’s adorable red house playing hide and seek with the flowers around the window-frame.

Press the Refresh Button

It’s April already, and by now, resolutions for your increased creative output may have rolled into next week and next month by encroaching events on the calendar. Yes? I feel your pain(t).

But really, let’s yank that goal back into focus, because painting watercolors is important. We need the practice, and the respite that comes with making art. It’s not too late.

Have you tried painting small, and in mini-sessions? That’s what this painting is – an incremental watercolor. Small scale, on a watercolor block, with a tiny travel palette and a plastic rinse cup, at the kitchen counter. I worked for about thirty minutes over a couple of evenings after dinner.

Feast Your Eyes – Start Your Engines

• If you enjoy classical realism, and you’re interested in the art emerging from new painters around the world, the Art Renewal Center is a place to browse. Their Annual Salon is a Who’s Who of exceptional artists. Browse all the categories – Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Figurative, Landscape, Plien Air, and Still Life. You’ll find a comprehensive list in the side bar. It’s a feast for your eyes.

• Textile artist Joseph Pitcher has written tips to start your engine, and his message is spot on. If you need a dose of Refresh on your creative endeavor plans, read this.

Get Back to Making Watercolors

If this year of staying home has been a fender-bender in your art-making process, here is some reading to jump-start you back to making watercolors again.

• Getting ideas for watercolor painting subjects can be a challenge, so this post is about collecting and storing art reference images with a cell phone, for still life, succulents and flowers as still life resources.

• Artist Mindset is a squirrely little creature – always skittering to and fro, sometimes hibernating, other times carrying it’s own private rain cloud. This post is about strategies to re-set your artist’s mindset, make art more often, quit comparing your furtive beginnings to seasoned artist’s highlight reels, and get unstuck in the art studio.

• If staying-in has scuppered plans to show your work at an art exhibit or festival, this post offers five tips to alternative ways to show your art when everyone is being told to stay home. There’s also a bonus list of printable practice questions and answers every artist should review before attending an exhibit of your work.

• If you’re feeling adventurous, and you enjoy recycling the plastic produce and baked goods containers your food comes packages in, here is a series of posts on how to make drypoint etching prints from household plastic. No press required.

A Watercolor Painting Question

If you paint with watercolor, would a video course on using a grid system to get your drawing done more accuratley as a map underneath your painting be helpful to you?

I’d like to build a course on how to use a simplified grid system, to show the way it helps structure a watercolor painting from the beginning.

Using a grid also helps organize the painting part of the process by fencing out distractions, and I can demonstrates that in a still life painting in a video course. Please share your ideas and insights about a new course in the comments.

Thanks for visiting today, and I’ll see you in the next post,

Belinda

P.S. Watercolor painter Shari Blaukopf has a series of courses available at very reasonable prices, and this one is about Sketching with Luminous Color in Watercolors.

Art Quote

Every hour spent in drawing was an hour given to a sacred task. An artist knows he must give his whole self to his art. This is his morality, and though in sinning against it, he may appear virtuous in the world’s eyes, he knows better. ‘He was too lazy to write a sonnet, so he made a revolution.’ Happily a full day’s work brings back self-respect.

William Rothenstein

The post Watercolor Sketching at the Kitchen Counter (and Art Links for you) appeared first on Belinda Del Pesco’s Art Blog Belinda Del Pesco.