Tropical Hibiscus

12x9 acrylics and ink on Canson for mixed media paper done last week for another exercise in abstract online tutorials by Yvette St. Amant. These are hibiscus flower shapes. COPYRIGHT 2022 Kay Smith

Tropical Trees - negative painting

12x9 watercolor on 140 lb cold press Canson paper, a negative painting exercise I began to demo last week at the Florida workshop. First lay in light value wash of varied colors, let dry, then take the next value and paint behind in between spaces to form tree shapes, going darker each time.  No pencil drawing was done.  With this imaginary scene, I've put the setting sun on bottom left with water.
Image is COPYRIGHT 2014 Kay Smith.

Beach Umbrellas

12x18 watercolor of various colorful beach 'brellas on a sandy beach complete with palm trees and warm temps.  I drew this with Pigma Micron 01 pen.

Baby Tree Frog

8.5x11 cute tree frog sketched with Micron 01 pen, then watersoluble colored pencils added then washes with water.

Coconut Crazy

20x22 watercolor on Kilimanjaro 140 lb rough paper, done today in under 2 hours, spritzing color, splatters, and water as I was adding paint.  Coconuts are negatively painted as are most of the palm fronds.  Now I want a pina colada and a trip back to Florida!

Cay Island Woman Kaye - finished

15x22 gouache and charcoal over hot press watercolor paper (Fabriano) with a few finishing touches sorted for the final version from yesterday's post.  I smoothed out the dog image that appeared on her cheek under her left eye by adding a gouache mix of white, orange, and fuchsia.  Hopefully it reads better now.

Female Figure on Collaged Paper

15x22 Fabriano 140 lb hot press paper that has 4 large phone book yellow pages collaged on then peeled off as you can see in the top image.  When dry I drew charcoal line drawing of a woman named Kaye who lives in Rum Cay, Bahamas (photo courtesy Li Newton).  This is one of 16 images featured in this weekend drawing event on WetCanvas!  Gouache used as the painting medium and total time was 15 minutes to draw and 1.5 hours to paint.    I had to paint Kaye since we have the same name Look closely and you can see a black and white dog in one of the phone pages that is on her left cheek or eye area.  I will be teaching this method next Saturday, 7 April, in a class at my studio in Big Spring, TX.  The title of this painting is "Rum Cay Kaye".

Parody of Parrots

30x22 acrylic on watercolor paper 140 lb cold press.  My Puerto Rican parrot photographs provided me with vivid hues and eager excitement. I wanted one large central bird on a full sheet of paper to say ‘tropical foliage and feathers.’ Drawing from memory, I placed a large head at the top. Using curved line dominance in a vertical format, I repeated interlocking shapes for movement with the main parrot’s body. The medium and small birds’ heads were created by using negative painting. White areas were left untouched. Finding my background too busy, I unified its abstraction by adding mint and turquoise green acrylic and letting small pieces of underpainting show.
This was a fun process as its focus was on design and this work is SOLD.

Puerto Rico Condo

19x12.5 watercolor on Italia 140 lb paper, American Journey paints begun yesterday and finished today. I took this photo of our condo on our first visit to Puerto Rico in 1995 with the intention of painting it someday, but didn't realize it would take me this long! This is wet on dry painting darks first.

Mimics

Tuesday evening I drove to Plains, TX about 2 hours north and close to the New Mexico state line to do this demo for their art group, the Yoakum County Art Association. This tiny farming, ranching and oil town has a busy bunch of dedicated artists. Direct painting wet in wet watercolor on Saunders 140 lb cold press paper, I was able to do the birds and a light green value background in an hour. Size is 22x15 inches and paints used are Daniel Smith and American Journey. Back home in the studio I finished the negative painting leaves and other foliage to frame the brilliant hyacinth, scarlet, and military macaws.