March Is My Watercolor Month

About two years ago, I got very interested in painting in oil after meeting some local oil painters.  Until then, I had only painted watercolor (which I still love).  So I amerced myself in this new medium (to me), fell in love with it, and didn't paint another watercolor until this month.  A few months ago, I was invited to compete in an international watercolor competition.  Now, all of a sudden, I had to submit the watercolor and I hadn't painted a single watercolor since, well you know...  So, consequently I decided that March would be my watercolor month, everything I painted had to be watercolor.

It's always good to stretch yourself by trying new things, and to also retrying something you haven't done for forty years?  How time flies, doesn't it!  Well, I know it is a good thing to do this, but I'm not sure it's good to put these fresh starts on one's blog.  But I think if blogs are to be a record of an artist's life, then it's good, but the viewer needs to see these visual efforts in the context of artistic stretching.

I did this very thing with my last blog at the Eiteljorg Museum when we painted from the model in Western get-up.  It was the first figure I ever painted, having not even drawn the figure since college until a month ago.  Oh my.  And I had to paint the figure in, you know, watercolor.   The cowboy was my first effort at this, and this portrait from the model is my second watercolor figure painting.  However, in this one, the watercolor juices are beginning to flow again, and I felt more comfortable with it.  It was just the portrait part that was new.  Hope you enjoy it.   Tomorrow I'll show you the painting I submitted to the international invitational competition.   If you'd like to see my watercolors before oil painting came into my life, just click on the link to my web site.