For The Love Of Pumpkins

There is just something about pumpkins...is it the shape? The intense colors? Or maybe, the delicious goodies we make from these golden orbs of yumminess?! Whatever it is, I simply adore them and they are a joy to sketch and paint. This jewel is forever captured so it can be enjoyed and savored through the Autumn Season!

The original artwork shown above is available for purchase. The price is $20 USD including shipping. This is a mixed media artwork with watercolor and archival inks. The artwork is on an embossed piece of watercolor paper and measures 2.5 x 3.25 inches. It fits neatly into a 4 x 6 inch frame or with a paper backing (the green piece), a 5 x 7 inch frame. The frame shown is for display purpose only and is not included.

If interested, please send me a direct message via the link at the top of the blog. First come, first serve.

Close Up of Artwork

Do you have supplies left over from your scrapbooking days now that you've moved on to sketching? Wondering what to do with them?

Tomorrow, down at Keeton's in Bradenton, I'll be doing a live class and we're going to be working on a mixed-media page using scrapbooking paper as the main design with watercolor, stencils and colored markers to make a fun and festive page.

Come and join me if you can! More info here. Hope to see you there!

Nature's Classroom © Laure Ferlita, All Rights Reserved 9 x 12 inches watercolor, acrylic, ink, gouache, and graphite Please click to enlarge

Three or four years ago, I got an idea to paint old "specimen cards" that looked like they came out of a kid's science kit. You may remember them—they had a few slides, a small, low-powered microscope, and a manual about how to find "specimens."

I decided to start with a Google search of specimen cards. I came up with a lot of interesting hits, but nothing like I had in my imagination. I set about drawing out my idea and combined it with a paintbrush. The brush seemed more appropriate as much of my learning has been acquired at the tip of a paintbrush.

After the cards were drawn and painted, I decided to add some of the items from my personal "nature collection." Over the years, my husband and family have learned to save dead bug carcasses, butterfly wings, and bird egg shells (among other things) for me. Odd, I suppose, but each item is cherished!

From there, I was stuck. What to add next? Finally, I happen to be taking some photos of my journal with my palette sitting in the photo as well. I decided to add the palette. The palette itself is an old one from Winsor Newton that has 18 quarter-wells. A month or so later, I stumbled across a pair of binoculars my husband used to collect—into the painting they went.

Again, I lost direction and the painting laid, neglected and unfinished, for nearly a year.

The issue was that I could not figure out the background. I thought about rocks, grass, pebbles, or some other surface—outside. I wanted to get it finished, but just couldn't quite see the background working out. One day, Chris and I were in the studio and he asked why I hadn't finished the painting.

Nature's Classroom © Laure Ferlita, All Rights Reserved 9 x 12 inches watercolor, acrylic, ink, gouache, and graphite Please click to enlarge

I told him about my dilemma and he immediately started making suggestions. When he suggested the surface of his antique Federal Reserve desk that he uses as an art desk in his studio I knew that was my answer! It was a reddish oak with heavy graining and years of abuse—perfect!

Well, almost perfect.

I had not taken into consideration that I might be doing a dark background and I needed to figure out a way to keep the binocs from getting "lost" against such a background. I knew a piece of paper would work, but what kind of paper?

I wanted something that would tell a story. I had recently purchased some old French letters from an online store and with them came an old air mail envelope. That became my model with sketches and notes on it as if I had gone to the post office and become captivated by the falling leaves.

For balance, the compass and leaf were added. Now I only had one "blank spot." Imagine my joy (and relief) when the new hardbound  Stillman & Birn sketchbook arrived! A sketchbook! Yes! The final piece.

Nature's Classroom was (finally!!) completed this month. It has a little bit of everything in it as fair as medium goes, but the majority of it watercolor. I love the fact that there was never a "still life" set up—it was all created piecemeal until it came together as a whole.

To celebrate the successful conclusion of the odyssey, I will be offering one 8 x 10 print* of Nature's Classroom as a giveaway!  This is a win-it-before-you-can-buy-it deal. I will be offering the prints in my Etsy shop after the giveaway.

If you'd be interested in winning this print, leave me a comment below about what you've learned in Mother Nature's classroom! 

*This giveaway is for one 8 x 10 inch print of Nature's Classroom. This is for the print only. No copyrights or rights are included. The print may not be reproduced for any reason without written consent from the artist.
Please leave a comment (just one, please!) on this post by Thursday night, November 1st, at 12:00 am EST. The winner will be announced on Friday!

Watercolor and Ink 3.5 x 8.5 inches

The art pictured above is a piece I created a few years ago. So far, we haven't had much in the way of color, but we do have a bountiful crop of acorns! I'll be working with artists in An Imaginary Visit To Autumn starting October 18th. We'll be focusing on capturing the rich, varied hues that make this time of year such a pleasure to capture in our sketchbooks!

Watercolor and WC Pencil on recycled paper with Gel Ink for the text 4" x 6"

I went otter hunting again yesterday.

I didn't find any. I'm not sure if I expected to see one or not.

I was extremely fortunate to have seen the otter last Saturday. After doing a little research on them, I found they can have a territory range of up to 50 miles! He may also be a little put off from this particular location as well since he was so annoyed at me for disturbing him. Not likely, but possible. This particular area is a riddle of creeks, rivers, ponds, and puddles so he has much to choose from.

However, other gifts were waiting.

I went to the otter's creek early yesterday morning and as I stood watching, I heard something hit the water. As I turned my head to see what it was I caught a flash of something speeding towards the top of the tallest pine tree just north of the creek. Try as I might, I could not make out a distinct ID.

I had the long lens on the camera and I tried to focus in on the bird, but there were too many branches fluttering in the breeze and the I couldn't bring anything into focus.

Time was running short as I was meeting a friend for a day-long outing so I abandoned the watch and headed out.

Late in the afternoon, I decided to go back by the otter hole and see if maybe, just maybe, that sweet whiskered face would show itself.

No luck.

However, there was the sweetest breeze blowing, bees buzzed and butterflies floated by, a peaceful symphony reigned....a gift in itself to just stand there and take in the beautiful "silence."

The water was dappled with sun...I watched as seemingly lazy fish would swim in and out of the sun spots until they spotted some bug hitting on the surface of the water. They would shoot up like a rocket, leaving nothing more than a rolling of water as they swam back to the bottom. Silent ripples spread across the water.

Once again, a flash caught my attention.

Looking in the direction of the flash.....nothing.

Just as I started to turn away, another flash....maybe 6 or 7 feet above the water and no more than 10 feet away from me, almost at eye level, then straight up, fast as a bullet....again to the tallest pine, this time on the south side.

Ah, but this time I had a positive ID, a male Belted Kingfisher!!

I stayed south-facing and within 4 or 5 minutes, I saw him leave his perch and high above me, fly north, for parts unknown.

Nature seldom disappoints if we are open to receiving the gifts offered rather than the ones we came seeking.....

Watercolor, gel medium, gesso, and tissue paper in Handbook Watercolor Sketchbook

This is one of the worse watercolors I've done in a really long time. It doesn't show so much in the scan, but the paint would not dissolve, so there are little clumps of paint everywhere. This particular paper doesn't allow for layers as all the paint sits on the surface. Blah, blah, blah....

Wondering why I'm posting a sub-par image? Because I haven't painted anything else lately. In our family, we have something we affectionately (not!) call the Black Ass (BA). It simply means that you have a bad case of the blues, your mood is quite dark (black) and occasionally(?) you act like an......ass. BA has a particularly negative effect on painting.

Whereas I did not get roses for Valentine's Day (a good thing), I have received them in the past for no good reason (a very good thing). I thought about all the roses that were given for the holiday and wondered how many folks save a bud like I do to dry.

This little bud is a few years old and I wanted to capture it as a memory. This didn't turn out quite as expected due to flawed choices at the beginning. I'll try it again though as the experiment worked....I recently made a purchase that came wrapped in some fun tissue paper. I saved it for use in a collage.

The piece you see is a very small section cut out and pasted to the page with gel medium. Once dry, I added clear gesso over the top so I could watercolor over the "tissue tag." I need to do a bit more experimenting, but the idea is solid.

Why the black mood? We've have a very dear friend that has been given a rather grim prognosis of congestive heart failure and we'll likely be losing them soon. My heart breaks just typing the words. I recently read an article the said our relationships don't end with death....the relationship merely changes just like it would if someone divorced, moved away, etc. I find a great deal of comfort in that thought.

If I'm not around much this week, please bear with me. I'll be back.

Chris and I are not your usual sweethearts on Valentine's Day, exchanging boxes of chocolate and roses for power tools....no, we go in for things that are just a little off-beat. We have also been on an anti-clutter campaign for quite a while now, so if we give each other "stuff" it better be some really kickin' waaaay cool "stuff!!"

With this in mind, I was pretty sure that Chris was going to be thrilled with getting a box of artificial eyes for Valentine's Day....

I distressed this with sepia ink and tore the corner off to add to the look of antiquity

I overlapped the end pieces as if they were seals, and then "broke" them as if the box had been open a long, long time

Click to enlarge and read—it's pretty funny!

Is that not just wicked cool?!! I had the best fun making this from a piece of clip art I found over on the Graphic Fairy's blog (do check it out...Karen's got some really cool stuff!) and a wooden tea box that my sister-in-law sent to me because she knew something awesome could be made out of that box!

I spray-painted the box black and touched up a few areas with a black marker. I then measured all the surfaces and sized the art to fit. I had to put a black border around some of the pieces because it didn't quite work out to size. I printed the art on the back of some paper headed for the recycle bin. Once I cut down the art, I blackened the edges and "distressed" the pieces with some sepia ink. After gluing everything down, I went and found some antique glass marbles and put them inside for "sound effects!"

I wrapped it in an old paper box with lots of stuffing and bubble wrap to complete the "look." When Chris went to open it and the marbles clacked together, I cautioned Chris to be careful so as to not break anything! He was trying to figure out how to open the eye box (the lid slides open) when he realized what he was actually holding in his hands—the tea box. Too much fun!

He gave me an anatomically-correct squeeze heart.....
...with our initials written on it. He seems to think I may occasionally need some stress release......I'm not sure where he gets that idea from????

What did you get for Valentine's Day?!!

I am positive that the mother of creativity is "necessity." And the father is "oops." Think about it. It's when we create an "oops" or make a mistake (gasp!) and we're pushed waaaaaay out of our comfort zones that we seem to learn the most!
We're beginning to see tulips in the stores here in Florida and I decided I wanted to capture just a simple, single bud in my long, skinny sketchbook. And I did. Done.
At some point, I managed to get the ink wet....oops. I didn't even know I had done it! The photo above shows it after I tried adding white gouache and white acrylic. Both made the ink bleed even worse. It doesn't show in the image above, but there's ink above the tulip as well.

It was just a sketch in my sketchbook, right? No big deal. Lesson learned. Make sure to use permanent ink next time. Except it was bugging me. Big time. (I liked my tulip! And then I didn't.)

To salvage the page, necessity stepped in with her treasure chest of creativity.

I decided to take the "Well, why not?" approach and use this as an opportunity to play and see what would happen. I pulled out different papers, stamps, ink pads, and any other tools I thought I might need. I had been looking at Toni Kelly's beautiful art here and Kate Johnson's brown paper here, and decided to use a brown lunch bag as my "patch."
Once I had the brown paper down on the page, the white of the watercolor paper was too white. I went to town with my stamps, texturing tools, and dip pen. No more white paper.

Quite the difference, don't you think?

There are several things I wish I'd done differently, but I an assure you that I'll be trying more of this as it was just plain fun! And I also have a page that I like in my sketchbook rather than one that was bugging me.

BTW, anybody interested in an "Imaginary Visit to the Garden?" Let me know in the comments!

Watercolor on Tissue paper with Ink Handbook Watercolor Journal 3.5" x 8.5"

I recently saw an article on using spray adhesive to attach a piece of tissue paper to the page, over a sketched subject, where you then watercolored on top of the tissue paper. In the example I saw, the color diffused and the wrinkles in the paper added texture to the page.....

I didn't get that! If you enlarge the image above you can see there's not much in the way of wrinkles and the texture is mostly from the blotchy application of the watercolor on the tissue. The wall beside these two windows was heavily textured and it seemed this would be a great way to introduce some of that texture. Not.

If I try this again, I would definitely crumple up my paper for more texture, I would probably try it on a larger area as well as heavier paper so the water and color could disperse a bit more and I'd probably swap the pen for graphite. If I were to try this again......