paint party friday

I've finally gotten around to some more painting this week. First time this year. Even though it's already the 20th of January, I'm still thinking that it "just" turned 2012. I guess that means that already this year is flying by.

Only watercolors this week. And I worked on them on the dining room table, not in my studio. For some reason I like painting with watercolors in the dining room.

This time I think I just wanted to be close to these guys.

Enough greyhounds and Instagram, already! On to the painting!

I was determined to finish the painting of my trachelospermum plant. I started it way back in October and really needed to finish it.

I like how it turned out. And although I could allow myself to tinker with it some more, I'm not going to. It's time to work on something else. Like the pomegranate I started last time. I was not really thrilled with how that first one was going, so I added a couple more on my paper. I think that was what I had been planning because there was a lot of room on the page.

I've found pomegranates hard to draw and hard to paint, but I don't want to give up. The one at the top is the first one I tried. I keep giving it more coats of paint. Not sure if it's helping it or hurting it. I'll take another look when it's fully dry. I'm liking the one on the bottom left the most so far. I love the way the paint spreads when it's wet. It doesn't always dry as beautifully, but when it's wet it feels like magic.

I also gave in to a crazy desire to paint my yellow narcissus bulbs. I say crazy because between the glass vase, the rocks and all those leaves and stems and flowers, it's going to be a very detailed painting. But I liked how my sketch turned out.

And when I started adding some color, I was happy with that, too.

I even have ideas about how I'm going to do the rocks and am excited about using masking fluid for the squiggly roots.

I'm also excited about another painting that, right now, is only in my head. I'm prepping the paper (first time I've ever done that) and have been working it out in my mind (shouldn't I be using my sketchbook for that??). It's different than what I've done before so we'll see how it goes.

Don't forget to stop by the Paint Party Friday blog, and if you're doing any painting, won't you join the party?