Poppy study

One more poppy - trying to capture details of different blooming stages. A small study again, 7x5 inches.

The time I spend with painting...

One of the guys on WetCanvas was concerned about the time he has to practice watercolor, while trying hard to learn painting for many years now. This made me think how much time I actually spend these days with watercolor.

I started with my first pencil drawings back in 2000 (wow, it seems to be so long...), after a few years, on WetCanvas, I discovered watercolor and just love it! From time to time I try acrylics, watercolor pencils or pen and watercolor, but I am still learning watercolor. Each time I say about something "ok, I can master that now" I realize that there are so many other things I would love to be able to say I master them... so much more to learn! And the big problem is that painting is my hobby, so I spend about 50% of my time on the "bill paying job" (~8 to 9 hours a day, 6 days/week), another 40% with my kid and household tasks, about 10% with other obligations, about 5% on other things I like to do (e.g. reading, movies, etc), and it is only about 5% that is left for watercolor (maybe ~20 minutes/day). Out of these 20 minutes, I need to put together 2hours twice a month for the workshop that I volunteer to teach at the Community Center, about 1-2 hours per month which I spend to check WC (not much time to post anything), and in the end I have maybe about 2-3 hours per month which I use to actually practice and paint in watercolor - not that much, uh??? No surprise that I am so slow at finishing paintings...
The big questions is how can I change this, and find more time? Sleeping less is not really an option, because then I under-perform to all things, and I will need even more time for each... I need to figure this out!

9th edition of Patras Summer Art Exhibit

Every Summer there is a rather small (mainly amateur artists) Art Exhibit, which still manages to gather a few good works - from time to time some of the city's professional artists join upon invitation. This is the second year I joined the group exhibition, and I am glad I did, because meeting a few fellows is always a pleasure! It was also impressive that so many people were there at the opening night - which I did not really expect.
This year I entered three paintings, which you can see bellow

There were only few watercolors, and I think you would like to see those exposed by my friend Marsha Gouveros (she is attending 2 years now the workshop I teach at the Community Center):

There were many oil paintings, acrylics, zentangles in pen and watercolor, and a few sculptures and ceramics. To give you an idea, a few more photos bellow

Red poppy study

Spring colors always inspire me! Red poppies are one of my favorite subjects, and we had a session at the local Community Center dedicated to them, so I had to do a fast demo on small size paper (5x7 inches) while talking about how to simplify the background, while keeping color contrast.