12/19/07

Christmas Cactus Study

This is a small watercolor study of the Christmas Cactus in yesterday's post. I did I light sketch of the shapes and then painted the leaves with clear water. Starting with quinacridone gold I dropped some pigment on the leaf sections, followed by a little Prussian Blue and a small amount of quiacridone red. I let the colors float around a bit and then helped it mix a little here and there. The petal color was done with a mix of quinacridone red and lemon yellow. Everyone in class did a beautiful job of letting it mix on the paper and keeping it simple.

I finished a little more Christmas shopping today. I have come to the conclussion that Christmas is so stressful because it is all about loose ends! One loose end after another - who's picking up what gift, who's coming to dinner, WHERE is dinner, who's gonna fix that thump-thump noise in the car so I can finish my shopping . . .

It'll be fine. It's all coming together.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I knew it would be simple, yet beautiful. I'm going to try that with my Christmas Cactus--it's red.
Merry Christmas to you and your family Catherine...you'll get those ends all tied up in time :-)
Marj. M.

Catherine said...

Thanks Marj. Merry Christmas to all of you too.
I will be anxious to see your Christmas cactus painting!

brian nelson said...

Beautifuuly done!

Anonymous said...

an inspiration. Keep things simple. The wet on wet and beautiful combination of colors. Just love it.
Thank you for sharing.