Cone Flowers

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Working the cone flower: watercolor pencil and blue fountain pen

Working the cone flower: watercolor pencil and blue fountain pen

I need more cone flowers in the garden! They are so wonderful, they draw in the bees, the butterflies, the moth’s all the pollinators seem to love them. After some research it seems that they come in some really nice colors too! My mother tells me that I have cone flowers that are native to Maine…the droopy kind. Next year I think I will add some new varieties. In the meantime, it’s nice to have these around for a little while.

Quick sketch: flower journal

Quick sketch: flower journal

Really enjoying sketching a little plein air! This is the most perfect time in Maine, and great for sitting outside with your art supplies. Nice temperatures, mostly not too hot, not too cold. It will be gone soon, so good to take advantage. I took a lot of photos of the butterfly and the cone flowers to use as reference for the winter months.

Summer Variety

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Sea Urchin: 4x4 panel, watercolor, encaustic, oil stick

Sea Urchin: 4×4 panel, watercolor, encaustic, oil stick

It’s a surprisingly nice feeling when someone appreciates your work enough to actually buy it! The piece was donated to our local library fundraiser–I decided to donate my sale 100% to the library–somehow it seemed the best thing to do considering I don’t sell my work yet. It wasn’t a high ticket sale, but so nice none-the-less to have another person enjoy it.

I am working on a bunch of really tiny pieces…4×4 cradled panels. The square is an interesting challenge–so far the work all seems to go well together–sheerly by accident, but I think that they will look good hanging together. Because I can’t settle down and just keep going with one medium I am also trying out some oil paint on wood panel.

Cone Flower: 4x4 on wood panel, watercolor and colored pencil

Cone Flower: 4×4 on wood panel, watercolor and colored pencil

Still experimenting with the encaustic–maybe it’s always going to feel that way. This piece I decided to just have fun with. I am starting to get the hang of the layering of color–the main image I scraped out with an old dental instrument–I was pleased with the way that worked out.

Jack-in-the-pulpit: encaustic on wood panel, 11x14

Jack-in-the-pulpit: encaustic on wood panel, 11×14

I want to move on and do a series with the cone flowers that are blooming. I have discovered that working plein air is actually pretty wonderful…but they aren’t going to last as long as I need them to!

Afternoon Shadows at Fort Point Lighthouse: SOLD!!!

Afternoon Shadows at Fort Point Lighthouse: SOLD!!!

Mixing it up

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Super Moon!

Super Moon!

All of the sudden I decided to change it up! I think that I was inspired by this photo that I took of the super moon (I think it was July 7 or 8). The photo itself didn’t turn out, but the scene in person was pretty awesome. We had gone out on the boat with friends to watch the fireworks from the water…when I turned and looked back there was all this water churning up behind the boat and this really big moon with a super reflection. So, in order to keep the memory I did take a photo…which is working as a good reference. I think I will do several of these as paintings and drawings. The encaustic painting was really fun to do. It’s not my usual style…but I found it very liberating!

Cone Flower

Cone Flower

After that I decided to try a more impressionistic approach using encaustic…and the cone flower is the result. It’s a difficult medium to work with, so this is more of learning experience. I used casein to paint the ground and then worked on top of the wax medium with a combination of oil pastels and encaustic paint. I really like working on the birch panel.

I am keeping up pretty well with my 5 minutes sketches! Good warm ups.

coneflower5min