Spring Sketching, Lilacs and Trees

To see my paintings visit my website www.janblencowe.com

Every year I make sure that I do something with the lilacs when they bloom. Sometimes it's a full painting, sometimes just a watercolor or sketch. This year it was a sketch. These come from a large shrub in my mom's yard. I brought her a huge bouquet of them as she was in the hospital recovering from a hip replacement. The scent of lilacs is just intoxicating! Watercolor, pen, acrylic marker.

This quick watercolor was done just at the edge of our property looking up the road. It was very overcast and while I was working it started to mist creating beautiful star patterns in the paint similar to what you get when you drop salt on wet watercolor.

Birthday Flowers

To see my paintings visit my website www.janblencowe.com

 Yesterday I celebrated my birthday! Since my birthday is in the spring and since I love flowers and gardening I tend to get a lot of flowers for my special day and yesterday was no exception. These beauties are from my husband who also got me an ipad3 much to my delight! I also got flowers from my friend Joan , pansies for my flower boxes from one of my sons, a container of tulips from another friend, and a gift certificate to the local garden center from my mother. Needless to say you'll be seeing sketches of flowers in the next few days.

This is done with my fav Uni-ball Vision pen, Daniel Smith watercolors, and Golden Fluid Acrylics. I'm really pleased with how well the 100lb. paper in the Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook takes all the wet in wet water media I throw at it.

I've put links to the Stillman & Birn website and Facebook page in the sidebar for you to enjoy!