Driving Towards a Rainstorm

Hallelujah! It finally rained today. I was driving back home from the dentist's office on the northwest side of town, dark clouds pouring down rain, and I could see a line of white sky on the horizon. I prayed that the rain had made it all the way east to my house. The rain got lighter and lighter the further east I went. When I got home, as I sat parked in the driveway doing a little sketch of the inside of my car, the rain finally made it east. Not as heavy as west, but at least we got some. The most we've had in 6 weeks.

Hyde Park House #2

Another Hyde Park house, this time on the 4100 block of Avenue F. I sketched it from across the street in ink, then used my portable watercolors to give it a sketchy wash.

By the way, it was 102 degrees F out today. I'll vouch for the thermometer.

Hyde Park House

I love so many of the older bungalows in Austin. This one is at the corner of 42nd and Avenue F in Hyde Park, a northeast central neighborhood. I stood on the curb across the street to sketch this.

Publish Post

Sunflowers

Rock Garden

I planted this garden in my back yard a couple of years ago when the ground had cracked and left gaping holes because of how dry the soil had gotten. I put in plants that need little water, such as Aloe Vera and Yucca. The Plumbago has blue flowers and looks great even in this deadly heat.

I did the one on the bottom first in my sketchbook. The one on the top is on watercolor paper.

Tiny Flowered Tea Cup

A tiny painting in gouache I did this summer. I started doing some of these tiny pictures last December after attending a local art fair where I saw some tiny acrylic still lives in fancy frames.

Yesterday my new watercolor palette arrived in the mail. This new one is a Fusion 18, and has wells for each color and an airtight lid. I just started reading Charles Reid's book Painting Flowers in Watercolor and am excited about trying a more organized use of color.

Visit to Genuine Joe's

After yoga today, I went to Genuine Joe's for a latte and a scone. I sketched in a moleskine I had never used before. I like the off-white color of the paper. I wonder how it will handle a wash. There were also plenty of people with laptops to sketch.

My Desk

My desk is the first thing you see when you walk in my front door. I got it at the Austin City Wide Garage Sale not long after my husband and I got married seven years ago.

I drew this in my sketchbook with a fine line sepia Faber-Castell drawing pen and colored it with a watercolor wash. The paper is not watercolor paper.

Juana at Mr. Natural's

Today I attended day two of a teacher's workshop on Questioning the Author. Juana, another teacher at my school whom I worked with quite a bit this year, also attended, so we went to lunch together at Mr. Natural's. The original (and my favorite) Mr. Natural's on Cesar Chavez. Afterwards I had a few extra minutes to do a quick sketch in my drawing book before we went back to the rest of the workshop.

Lemons on Pink

Some more tiny art gouache lemons. I was trying a warmer background rather than the blue I had been using.

Window Fern

This little plant is sitting in my living room window. I started it last night, then worked on it today while my son was having some "quiet time", and finished it while he built a castle out of wooden Russian blocks.

Mama

This is a picture my 3 1/2 year old son, Eamonn (pronounced AY-man), drew with marker yesterday. I was impressed by the ears he gave me. I think it is the first time I have seen him draw ears on a head. I was wearing my hair in a bun, so maybe my ears were very prominent. That is an upside down car above my head.

Our family recently took a two week trip to Ohio to visit grandparents and my sister's family. Eamonn made huge leaps as far as fine motor skill and ability to draw and write. Until then, he had mainly been drawing abstract pictures to illustrate stories he narrated. On this trip he drew for sustained periods as if on a mission, and he began drawing recognizable people and cars. He also wanted to know how to write words, such as car. He wrote this word Mama with no help from me except that I did remind him to start the word off to the left so he wouldn't run out of room.

You can see that on the back of the paper he was practicing the number 8.

Back Porch Papasan

This is an ink line drawing in a sketch book that I filled in with watercolor. The papasan chair is on my back porch. Even in 100 degree Austin weather, looking at or sitting in the big blue pillow makes me feel cool.

This is a painting done en plein air, meaning I actually sat on the back porch, braving mosquitos to sketch and paint it. Now that I have the basic shapes, I might paint it again on watercolor paper with a smaller floor and maybe a striped rug.

Summer Lemons

I am starting this blog with the intent of posting a painting a day all summer. My 3 1/2 year old son loves to draw and paint, so we sometimes do it together. If I don't have anything to post, he always will.

These tiny lemons (3 1/2" x 2 3/4") are done in gouache. I enjoy gouache because it is thicker and more opaque than watercolor. I have a small house and paint on my kitchen table, which means I have to clean up every day, so acrylic or oil are not very practical. Sometimes I just want to feel like I am frosting a cake when I am painting.