Narrow Depth of Field: British Soldiers

Cladonia cristatella "British Soldiers" Fruticose Lichen

Creating bokeh background: masked off the page with painter's tape. 

Scribbled in a background with Derwent Art Bars. Then painted over the page with a waterbrush being careful not to blend all the colors away.

When dry, used a stencil to add circles. 

Lichens were painted with acrylics. Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media sketchbook.

Sketching in the Kitchen with Kay: Earth, Woman, Mountain

I was fascinated with a tiny plant arrangement that Kay had made. She called it "Heaven, Earth, and Man."  She explained "Ikebana" (ee - kay - bana) the Japanese art of flower arranging that brings humanity and nature together. (My second new word of the year!) The emphasis is on shape, line, and form. These attributes can refer to not just the flowers but the stem and the leaves of a plant.

So even though Kay had a lovely bouquet of roses and baby's breath, I wanted to sketch the plants because of their different heights, colors, textures, and interesting leaf forms!

I started with a really fun really blind contour sketch to loosen up. But I was soon to learn that it didn't help much! Maybe I was way to excited to use this set of Derwent Art Bars that had been tucked away in a drawer for a VERY long time. 

I was all agog and so focused on the texture that these water soluble waxy crayons produce that I was not "seeing" my sketch.

Kay looked up from her incredibly beautiful painting and was silent for a moment. She asked me what it was that I liked about what I was doing. Still focused on the media, I must have said something about the colors or the texture. Kay queried, "Is the picture about the paints or the plants?" (Below is the original sketch.)

Obviously, I was NOT in touch with nature. There was no FEELING in what I was doing. No CONNECTION to my subject. No SEEING in the true sense. So we went over the different dull and stiff aspects of the picture. Later on, while her lesson was still fresh in my mind, I made a second sketch. Here are a few comparisons between the first and second versions.

#1 The plant leaves stacked in a row. No feeling. Too stiff. No movement. Notice lower stems are bare and awkward.

#2 Plant leaves at varying angles. Livelier. Definitely more feeling. See below for lower stems.

#1 Kay said this plant looked liked "soldiers marching in a row".  Too uniform. Definitely too stiff.

#2 Dancers instead of soldiers! I also added some "ghost" leaves behind the dancers so the lower stem of the tall plant doesn't look so bare and awkward.

#1 Completely lost the form on this little plant!

#2 More shape and form.

#1 This flower stem is all wrong! Too stiff. Too few blooms.

#2 Closer to the real thing. More blooms on the stem.

#2 I added a second stem with flowers and put a touch of an bright aqua background. 

Happy with the final result that I named "Earth, Woman, Mountain."

Happy New Year 2017...

Wishing everyone a joyous New Year! 

My first new word of the new year is "Bokeh".

It's the cool aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image; also small background or foreground highlights.

I tried, on this page in my Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media sketchbook, to produce some "bokeh" on a background of black gesso using pan pastels, Derwent Art Bars (waxy watercolor sticks), and Sakura Soufle Pens.  

Not sure what these shapes are but they looked appropriate for celebrating!