Oh my! Spring Tulips!

Oh, what a welcome sight! Tulips Blooming!

The calendar says spring has sprung and when you see the tulips starting to pop up it's not hard to imagine that the winter is really behind us and warmer temps are just around the corner. My Tuesday Afternoon Watercolor class got their brushes wet this past week and painted some beautiful tulips from last year's photos. This is a work-in-progress shot of a tulip painting I started as a demo.
Here is a tip for painting red tulips in the sunshine. Paint the tulips yellow first, then glaze the red paint over the bright yellow tulips. You might like the variety of the mixed colors and decide to leave some yellow as you see in the example above. It's not completely finished, but I do like what I see so far!
I can't wait to go to the tulip fields to see them in full bloom this year! It won't be long the daffodils are blooming now and the tulips are not far behind.

Another Wave...This one is for Vicki

This is my Spring SWAP painting for my partner Vicki Greene.

Sharing With Artist Partners is a wonderful spin-off group of artists from my Watercolor Workshop group. Both are international groups with artists members from around the world. We exchange paintings each quarter (4 times a year) and this is our 25th SWAP. Our paintings are all 5" x 7 " watercolors.

I'm still waiting for my SWAP painting and wondering where it will be coming from???

It's almost like Christmas .... very exciting and a lot of fun!

Happy Painitng Everyone!

SUSIE

Sunset Sky with Tree Silhouettes

This was my demo for my Wednesday night class. I promised the class I would share it when I finished it. The reference for this painting was a photo I took near Deception Pass at sunset overlooking the Straight of Juan de Fuca, Washington State.

When you paint a beautiful sunset sky with nice reflections it can be very challenging to add the dark silhouetes tree shapes in the forground. But quite often the drama is worth the challenge!

The painting is 11" x 15" Arches 140# CP paper using Daniel Smith Watercolors painted with my 1" Susie Brush and a #4 rigger.

Painting Skies and Clouds

This coming weekend (March 13-14) I will host a weekend workshop for artists who have a 9-5 job in another career. It is really hard for working people to find classes on the weekends so I'm trying to fill this void in my own special way. If you live in the Seattle area I'd like to invite you to join me and take a weekend watercolor workshop. (Even if you don't work at another job!)

Our topic for this workshop will be painting watercolor skies. If all goes as planned we will end up with at least nine or more skies to use on future landscape painitngs. These are a few of my skies and clouds "starts" that came from my paintbrush in preparing for the class.

And speaking of future landscapes....the April weekend workshop (April 10-11) is on painting "Landscape Elements" ( trees, rocks, mountains, bushes, grasses, etc) Join us if you can! Register here.

Happy Painting!

Keep those brushes wet!

SUSIE

Making Waves DVD has been Released!

Hip Hip Hooray! The new DVD is ready to hit the market!

Are you ready for Making Waves?? Order Here!

All the pre-release orders are in the mail and on their way to the studios of fellow artists. (THANKS!)

Wow, what a feeling! I'm so glad to have this latest effort behind me and now I'm ready to start the next one....well almost! In case you don't know the whole story, I do have other DVD videos and while they have been very successful (thank you very much!) this is the first project I've produced totally on my own "in house". (....or should I say "in studio"?) It was a great big learning curve and I now have a fresh respect for videographers and what all is involved in filming and editing and producing....etc.

You'll find a short YouTube preview here on my blog in the right hand sidebar. Take a peek and let me know what you think.

I'm always interested in learning what topics you might like to see me paint for future DVDs.
Here's a link to a page on my website to add your DVD suggestions

Thanks for stopping by! Keep those brushes wet!
SUSIE