Gladiolas

Gladioli in my garden are in full bloom. I enjoy them a lot because they have all possible colours. Unfortunatly we have a lot of inclement weather leatly and wind is banding some of these tall flowers down. They are ending as decoration in my home.

The drawing of gladiolas was done with color pencils on beidge tinted paper.

Loch Raven

Loch Raven is a largest water reservoir for Baltimore. My family and I often visit this place. On weekends a road along the lake is closed for motor vehicles and it is our favorite spot to walk, bike or roller-skate. When we're tired of the bitten path, there are beautiful trails throughout the woods there too. In case we're lazy we simply sit near the shore and watch birds. Sometimes because of a drought, the water level is so low that we can walk to this small island.
In my painting a fog is covering the other shore of the lake. The fog can make this place really enchanted and simplify my composition a lot :)

Blooming Summer

When I was a kid I used to spend my Sumner vacation with my relatives at villages near Krakow in Poland. To get there I had to take a train and then a bus. After jumping out of the bus, the first thing I always noticed were the wild flowers in the meadows. With their various colors they welcomed me to the back country paradise. 

For a long time I didn't know why farmers didn't like poppy flowers blooming on their fields and why called them weeds.  I recently learnt why. If poppy seeds mixed up with corn seeds, the flour would have yellowish tint and it gets rotten faster. Lately I haven't seen any weeds in the crops. I guess now we have herbicides that completely eliminate all wild plants. Well, I miss them a lot.

Last year my neighbor gave me a small poppy plant and this year I had my first poppy flower in my garden. I was so happy to watch it develop its bud and finally bloom. I took a few pictures, sketched, and painted it with watercolors. The original painting was sent to Poland to my dear cousin who has the same admiration for these wild flowers as I do.

The painting process is on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84uHkM_EBUA 

If you'd like to paint it too you can copy my sketch. Happy painting

Soft Like Summer Rain

During memorial day weekend, besides the traditional barbecuing and enjoying the gorgeous weather – I drew. Using soft pastels, I made 3 portraits from photos. I was thinking about drawing from life but everyone was too busy to pose.
The last and 4^th portrait I sketched with charcoals. I found the photo of a beautiful model girl in a Cosmopolitan magazine. She was advertising Vidal Sassoon. Because I mentioned the source of my reference photo and because I’m not making any money on it, I shouldn't have a problem posting it here (it's for educational purposes only).
I like how I left the tanned colored paper untouched so that it imitates the girl’s skin tone. Incorporating the color of the paper into the subject saved me a lot of time. I was simply drawing the shaded areas with black and the highlights with white.

I felt so guilty that I was drawing from someone else's photograph that I had to add something completely mine to this post. Wild hare charcoal painting from my own photograph. 

Pastel Finger Painting

This is the portrait of my friend's mom, done in soft pastels on colored paper. I was painting it from old black and white photograph. I'm pretty happy with the outcome especially I like her hair. I was painting them with my fingers and it was such a joyful experience. I like to paint more hair, maybe my dog -Shetland sheepdog will be my next model. See you soon.

Yosemite

Yosemite National Park is a place of great beauty. I was very fortunate to have a chance to visit it. The view of tall granite walls, waterfalls, trees, meadows and wildlife give joy to every guest.
I took a lot of pictures there. Now I'm using them as reference photos to my paintings.
I like the top painting better. The colors are vibrant and trees have much better shapes. I remember us walking down the bridge to dip our bare feed in the cool water. After long hike this place was great for restoring our energy.  

Wintry Creek

Today in Maryland we had a beautiful, warm and sunny Saturday. I went hiking in Gunpowder State Park. There was a lot of ice and snow on north side of the mountains, but on the sunny side all snow was gone making the trails muddy and slippery. So my family and I went off the impassible trail and trekked through the woods. We climbed the hill and sat up high on the rocks and looked down at the river below.

My watercolor painting keeps me in a wintry mood. The warm colors of the sunrise indicate the meltdown of snow.  Old, brown grass will soon turn green and the first flowers will bloom. I'm ready for new season.