Color in the hills

June 9, 2024June 1, 2025 | Susan

Our wet Winter brought brilliant wildflowers to California in the Spring and I was delighted. While on my walks, I photographed the variety of colorful blooms and then went to the studio to paint.

Sometimes it’s hard to identify the species, even with the Seek app.

Spotlight on Pride of Madiera

Pride of Madiera is an invasive species that thrives in NorCal coastal areas. The blossoms on this bush start as cone-headed shoots, which grow into a plethora of tiny purplish blue flowers, some with fuchsia hairs . The bushes can grow to be 20 feet tall.

This year, I pulled off one of the little buds to find that it was its own gem: an incredible curl of plant with tiny periwinkle colored flowers along with that fuchsia hair and buds. I was mesmerized and drew numerous studies of the flowers.

Pride of Madiera from a variety of distances and angles

Here are some photos of Pride of Madiera in action

Some of the blossoms are pink, some are more on the white side

Hillside surrounding the Robin Williams tunnel entry going into Marin County from the Golden Gate Bridge

Flowers and Pods: finals

August 20, 2020June 1, 2025 | Susan

More drawings/paintings of imaginary flowers and seed pods. I really got into these!

This one was the final assignment, a mid-century inspired design. I used watercolor and dip pen. Also used a little masking fluid but it dries up so fast, I didn’t love using it.

Weirdo Seed Pods

August 19, 2020June 1, 2025 | Susan

After the flowers A – Z, I created drawings of fantastical seed pods. These were really fun because there are so many weirdo seed pods—I didn’t even need to make them up!

Flowers A – Z

August 19, 2020June 1, 2025 | Susan

I loved my class with the incredible Este MacLeod and decided to take another one. I’m so inspired by the new techniques she introduced me to. This time, it was acrylic inks with the dip pen. I love the line that it makes and the bright colors.

In this exercise, I took my lower case letters and turned them into imaginary flowers. I tried to push myself to use new shapes.

More Watercolor stamping and details

June 6, 2020June 1, 2025 | Susan

Here are some more pieces that I created during April of Covid time—May 2020. I was obsessed with watercolor stamping with cut potato pieces and carrots which I was taught in the #explorecolour class. So much fun!

I posted other pieces that were either assignments from the course here or inspired by them here. Thank you, Este Macleod!

Bouquet1 WeirdOne Sailboats

CleanedUp — This was a sheet of elements that I could use for the other pieces.

King Protea in the ‘hood

May 28, 2020June 1, 2025 | Susan

I’ve been captivated by a neighbor’s garden where king protea are blooming. Whenever I pass by, I am drawn to the flowers like a bee to honey and I just gape at them. This has brought me to paint them, of course. Here’s the series I completed.

Most of these were created with potato and carrots to stamp shapes in watercolor, with brush embellishments. I got really into the stamping technique.

SketchbookProtea — This was the first one I did. Pent up desire to draw/paint these flowers just came out in one go.

Playing with colors and shapes

May 10, 2020June 1, 2025 | Susan

When I can’t go out, I go in. And usually, that means making art.

I discovered the fabulous Esté MacLeod on Instagram and she quickly became my favorite artist on the platform. She starts with letters or numbers and turns them into beautiful paintings. When I saw that she was offering a free course on playing with shape and color, I was all over it.

The first part was to draw numbers 1 – 9 and turn those digits into leaves, real or imagined.

When I tried to think of ways to do this, I got stuck. But when I just let my pen move and got my head out of it, I ended up with some interesting patterns and shapes.

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The next step was to put them into more plant-like formations and paint them with watercolor. She encouraged the class to use a dip pen with the watercolor applied by using a brush as well as brush painting. I’d never used this method before and was delighted by the effect.

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The next step was to employ potato, carrot, toilet paper roll and other items found in the house, to create flower shapes and then embellish them. Once again, I had trouble because at first they all turned out looking the same and I kept thinking about how I could do it. But when I tried not to think and just moved my hand to draw and paint lines, curves and shapes, the results surprised and delighted me.

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