Watercolor – Two quick paintings

Since long time I haven’t had the time to paint. Yesterday, finally I found an hour and relaxed doing the following two small paintings.

Summer Landscape, Watercolor 20cm x 30cm

Summer Landscape 2, Watercolor 20cm x 20cm

Linocut – Fairy (Testprint)

Presently, we have a lot of fairies in our house. Eva Lotte is a big fan of fairy stories and is planning to have a fairy birthday party in July. Therefore I picked up this theme and did a linocut of a fairy today. Here is a first testprint of it. It is not ready yet as it will get some more elements like trees of clouds or flowers in the final version.

Fairy, Linocut ca. 15 cm x 15cm

Iris Watercolor – Thanks for the Comments !

Thank you for your comments on the Iris watercolor from last week.  As promised, I show you some steps of how I did the painting.

I used a rather large format single sheet watercolor paper for this painting (50cm x 60cm, Hahnemühle Torchon). This I fixed with fixing tape on a wooden plate (3mm thick).

Then I started to draw the main structure of the Blossom and the leaves on this sheet using a pencil. Prior to that I had done a smaller sketch to find out about the position of the flower on the sheet.

Then, I used indian ink (in a bottle, not water soluble) and a thick strong brush to sketch the main structures on the paper. Then I painted a very weak background over the ink drawing.

Iris, Step 1

After this, I did the Blossom of the Flower in Ultramarine and Red. While still wet, I started to paint the stem and leaves in yellow. Where it met the blue, it became a greenish color.

Iris, Step 2

After this I continued painting leaves in Yellow. Then gave them a wash in blue (ultramarine and in the shadows indigo) and ochre and green tones.

Iris, Step 3

Finally, I added some blue and brown areas and lines into the background to give it more structure.

Iris, Final Step

Watercolor – Peonies

Today, the peonies in our garden started to bloom. So, I  was motivated to paint these beautiful flowers. I did it in a very fast way. First wet in wet and after that in a more detailled manner. For this painting I used a rough pencil drawing as a basis. Then I did the yellow background and after that a rough ink drawing. Finally, I did the colors in water color and gouache.

Peonies, Watercolor, Gouache and Ink 30cm x 40cm

Poll – Making of a Watercolor ?

Last week, I did the following watercolor painting of an iris in our garden. I have documented the making of in three photos. If you would like to see them, please leave a comment. Thank you !

Iris, Watercolor and Ink 40cm x 60cm

Watercolor – Flowers

Here is one of my few flower paintings. I saw these flowers at the wayside last week and had to paint them today. So, here is the result.

Flowers, Watercolor 20cm x 20cm

Watercolor – Allendorf

Today, I took the small watercolor sketch from our bicycle tour to paint a larger watercolor. It is about 30cm by 40cm in size, painted on Arches Torchon paper.

Trees in Spring, Watercolor 30 cm x 40cm

Trees in Spring (Detail)

Watercolors – Bicycle Tour

Today I went on a bicycle tour with Eva Lotte. For that purpose we have bought a so called Tandemstange from Trail Gator. With this, it is possible to connect a childrens bicycle with the parents bicycle an trailer it behind. I was a little bit sceptical in the beginning, but it works very well. It wasn’t even very expensive at amazon. On our todays tour where we went from Allendorf to Staufenberg we made a painting break on the hill above Treis. Eva Lotte did a nice small watercolor called Buntland (Colorland) and I did a small landscape.

Colorland, Watercolor 20cm x 10cm (Childrens Art)

Lumdatal Landscape, Watercolor and Ink 20 cm x 30cm