More tropical fish ACEOs

These little guys are so funny to paint! Because of a request (kind of commission) to paint one more in horizontal format, I took the chance to do a few more of them. I had 3 ACEO paintings done at the beginning of the year, and since then I was thinking I would like to do some more, but always something else appeared. These ACEOs (3.5x2.5 inches) are done with Winsor & Newton and Daniel Smith watercolor paints on Waterford 140 lb R paper. I hope you enjoy these two little ones!

Everyday Beach Treasures - seashells ACEOs

Since the weather has started to be much better, in the afternoons we are usually getting out for a walk, most of the times on the beach (unless my son asks for some specific activity). And the usual thing for me is to bring back at home some of the little treasures I collect - colorful and strange shape stones, seashell fragments, little branches which have been in the sea for a longtime and got interesting shapes and textures, colorful glass pieces, etc. One of the previous days I started sketching some of the shell fragments, and further painted some ACEOs. I am thinking about a bigger painting, with a combination of these shells, but I haven't decided yet on the composition. I hope you will enjoy my little treasures!

Daisy - little spring ACEO

Not having much time to work on bigger paintings at the moment, and at the same time feeling overwhelmed with Spring colors, beauty and emotions, and wishing to keep exercise my watercolor painting, I am doing some small size (ACEO, about 2.5x3.5 inches) paintings and I am sketching more.

Spring inspiration - Purple Crocuses (Crocus vernus)

The feeling of spring made me decide to chose a floral for the previous weekend WDE at WetCanvas. The selection of reference photos shared with us by katju was great, including blue pansies, yellow daffodils and purple crocuses (croci). I selected the purple crocuses photo, as for long time now I wished to paint some of them. Although this is not a wild species that is usually encountered in the Mediterranean area (Crocus sativus is well known in Greece, as it is documented by frescos found in Knossos - Crete), I still like them very much. I changed a bit the composition and worked differently the foliage and background compared to the original reference photo. The painting is done with my usual palette (combination of W&N, Daniel Smith and American Journey watercolor paints) on Waterford 140 lb CP paper, and has a size of approximately 7x10 inches. I wish you a sunny and happy Spring!!!

Crockery Shop watercolor painting, with step-by-step progress demonstration

For the March 28 WDE our host, KreativeK, shared with us a great collection of reference photos, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank her again! Among the photos, I was attracted by the variation of shapes of a photo showing some crockery (pottery) in a shop window. Although the lighting was poor, and the reference photo had a rather poor composition, I decided to give it a try. After a couple of sketches on paper, trying to move the pots around and change shapes to get an attractive composition, I decided to also change colors (in the reference all the crockery were white with blue details). I took many liberties with this one, and I do like many of the achievements very much, but there are still a few things that if I were to do it again I would probably change them. The final painting has a size of approximately 10x14 inches, and it is watercolor (W&N and Daniel Smith) on Waterford 140 lb CP paper.

Bellow, I will show you a few of the step-by-step images I have taken, as this painting took me many days to finish it, and I managed to take intermediary scans.



The initial drawing on the watercolor paper, which however has been suffered a few changes in the next steps, as while working on the painting I figured out a few things would be better if changed (i.e. perspective of the table was off in the initial drawing).

Initial washes applied to the background with Antwerp blue and foreground with Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna.

Next washes applied to background to get more color variation, more burnt Sienna and Payne's Gray in the foreground, and I started to work on the underpainting of the pots.

Working out the pots from the most far, and adding colors

Color on the blue pots and a few details fixed in the background/foreground and additional washes. Also some of the initial washes on the red pot.

And the red pot worked with the final washes, plus minor details on the rest. You have already seen this at the beginning of this post.

I did enjoy pulling this one out very much, as the reference photo was very far from what I was looking for, and had many things to do from imagination.