Pick Me, watercolor, 8” x 8,” on Fabriano 140 lb soft press paper

Working on this painting was a walk down memory lane. When I was a kid we had a huge vegetable garden in our back yard. We planted it mostly by seed every year on Memorial Day weekend listening to the Indianapolis 500 on a transistor radio. Living in Indiana, the race was blocked out on television. If you didn’t go in person, radio was your only option. We always planted 2 or 3 rows of green beans, the bush variety. I enjoyed planting the garden, but my least favorite tasks were weeding and picking the green beans. They were hard to find camouflaged amongst the leaves. Hunched over rifling through rows of beans for an hour in the blazing sun, I couldn’t wait for it be over. Then, of course, I had to clean the things to be ready for dinner! Ironically, as much as hated doing these chores, they are still one of my favorite vegetables.

Maine Yellows, watercolor, 6” x 6,” on Fabriano soft press paper

Though, my childhood summers weren’t just spent working of course, they also mostly consisted of exploring outside, going on endless bike rides, and reading. With all the fun I had, of course I dreaded the inventible orders from my mom to do those gardening chores. However, now I’m grateful for the experience and love doing them now. My mom instilled a love of plants and gardening in me at an early age, something I treasure to this day. Working on this painting flooded me with memories, and time spent with my mom in and out of the garden.

Foraging Day, watercolor, 6” x 6,” on Fabriano soft press paper

I experimented again with another Fabriano paper, 140 lb soft press. I had previously completed three paintings from my mushroom series on this paper and really liked the results. (Foraging for mushrooms was also a part of my childhood.) If I were to describe this paper, I feel it is a cross between hot press and cold press paper, which is why I felt it would be good for my smaller works with a lot of details. This painting is 8” x 8” and my mushroom series are all 6” x 6.” The advantage of if it being like hot press paper is that it is smoother and it seems easier to draw and paint details. However the paint still soaks into the paper, not sitting on top like it would on a hot pressed surface. Thus, it behaves more like a cold press paper, which I prefer. Watercolors are vibrant when dry, and they were easy to mix on the paper, I was getting nice results in wet into wet areas. The paper has great lifting capabilities and edges were easy to soften with a synthetic brush. Staining colors do not lift out as easy as non staining colors. Because I used yellow in my mix of greens for the green beans, lifting out highlights in those areas was a bit more difficult because the yellow I use is a staining color.

Red Jewel, watercolor, 6” x 6,” on Fabriano soft press paper

This is not a paper to use, if you are used to scrubbing out passages or softening areas with a scrubber brush. I did try that in an area and the fibers lifted up pretty easily. It will not take much abuse in that respect. I did not try masking tape on this paper but I did use a little bit of masking fluid and didn’t have any fibers lift off the paper when removing the masking. After having used this paper on a few paintings. I am definitely adding this paper to my repertoire and would like to try the 300 lb soft press for larger works. That will be an experiment down the road.

Visit my You Tube Channel to see a time lapse video of this complete painting.

This painting was done as part of the Florida Watercolor Society’s “Creative Confinement Challenge.” Open to all of the nine hundred or so members, the submission fees will go toward The Healing Arts Award in the 2020 Annual Exhibition. Every year the Florida Watercolor Society donates a painting to a health or medical facility in the area where that year’s president resides. The president chooses which facility they would like to donate the painting to and invites a representative from there to choose the painting from the Annual Exhibition. I love this program. I feel art promotes healing whether you are creating it or looking at it.

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Calm Before the Storm

Watercolor Mounted on Board and Sealed

6" x 6"

SOLD

I created a few new mushroom paintings recently and a collector that owns two in that series contacted me to add to her collection to group four of them together. The more people that see this series, I learn that I am not the only mushroom fanatic out there! When I went to Montreal this summer I happened upon a shop that caters to nothing but mushrooms. They had dried to purchase for cooking, mushroom kits to grow your own, field guides and all sorts of accouterment for collecting while foraging for them. That was just the tip of the ice burg.

In the Thick of It

Watercolor Mounted on Board and Sealed

6" x 6"

As of this writing is currently available at the 6" Squared Show at the Randy Higbee Gallery, Costa Mesa, CA

McCoy's Mushrooms

Watercolor Mounted on Board and Sealed

6" x 6"

SOLD

On my birthday I was gifted a wonderful book, The Art of Beatrix Potter: Sketches, Paintings and Illustrations. It covers the history on how her famed Peter Rabbit series came to be, plus many tidbits about her art career and life. One of my most vivid childhood memories is when I had learned to read and started to check out books from my local public library. I devoured every tiny little green volume of Potter’s Peter Rabbit series and read them multiple times.

Mycoboutique in Montreal, Canada

Beatrix did so much more than write and illustrate these classic stories. Being from a wealthy family, the Potters took holidays every summer to various parts of the United Kingdom. The book is organized in sections geographically to give one the idea of what areas influenced her stories and art. Scotland played a significant role. It was there she became somewhat of a scientist and met Charles MacIntosh a well known amateur naturalist. Avoiding the strict formalities of Victorian society they established a long friendship and a study of Mycology (the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi).

Even after her return to London they would exchange notes on their observations of mushrooms. He would send her samples which resulted in beautifully rendered illustrations of mushrooms and her lengthy study of fungus. She spent many hours on location observing and creating stunning botanical illustrations in watercolor of the mushrooms and fungus she found and observed in their natural setting. She not only captured the mushroom itself but also it’s surrounding environment.

Between 1894 and 1895 in a period of just one year she produced, seventy-three fungi illustrations and the following year fifty-two microscopic illustrations. Through her extensive observations and studies she came away with some remarkable discoveries. She tried to present her findings to the principals at the exclusive Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, to only be dismissed because she was a woman. For another three years she would research spore germination, authoring a paper that was read to the male-dominated Linnean Society, they still refused to publish her findings. She had hoped that her illustrations and findings would be published as a book, to no avail she carefully stored all of her paintings and research.

Seventy years later, a former president of the British Mycological Society discovered Potter’s treasure trove of illustrations of mushrooms, plants and fossils, and selected fifty-nine drawings for the Wayside & Woodland series, Fungi volume. Ironically published by Warne, the same publisher as her Peter Rabbit series of books. Many of her findings on spore germination that were dismissed were found to be true.