Zoo Sketches

So I went to the zoo to sketch, hoping that kids were still in school. At nine am, when I got there, there were already 20 buses in the parking lot. Kids gallore….. I still had a nice time. I’ve decided my favorite animals to sketch at the moment are Flamingos, Ruffles Tail Lemurs, and The Elephant Shrew.

zoo

zoo1

Lady Love and Last Watercolor Class

I named this first painting lady love (my teacher was not amused by the little lady bug I snuck in my painting). It’s the poppies that I set aside and didn’t finish forever because I was afraid I would ruin the potential. I really liked the painting. It didn’t come out as good as I had hoped. It would have come out better if I had finished it while the project was still fresh in my mind. Instead I waited a few weeks and finished it at my last watercolor class.  Anyway, I am going to do more paintings like this because I would like to get better at flowers.

lady-loveHaha, actually now that I look at it, I realized I left the leaves and dark spaces unfinished. Oh well.

I also did a value study because I’m still learning about colors. This is just darkest to lightest with all my colors. Some of them came out great, most didn’t, but it was a good little learning experience, plus it’s pretty on my wall. :) Sorry about the crappy picture…this paper doesn’t fit on my scanner.

color-chart

And then this was my first attempt at a color mixing chart. EPIC FAIL. And it take forever to do, but I really do think this will help me, since so far in most of my paintings and whatnot I tend to mix and use the same few colors when I have all these to choose from. So I mix everything 50/50 – which is why it’s a triangle. I was supposed to mix it 2:1 colomn:row. Now I know…new one will be better. And that was with my new lil travel watercolor kit….I really can’t imagine trying to do the 24 colors of my actual paint set.

mixing-chart

Sketchbook

My sketchbook is coming along very nicely. Here are a few of the drawings and what-not I did.

lanterns

lion

flower

woman

I’m working on a painting from my last watercolor class of poppies, and I will definitely post that here when I’m finished. I’ve just been concentrating on this sketchbook cause it needs to be done by Monday so I can send it in. Let me know what you think!

Day at the Gardens

I went to the Botanical Gardens today. They had a cacti and succulent show as well as an orchid show. These are just a few pictures I took (if you want to see more, go to the link at the bottom of the page). I was going to sketch the orchids, but I went with other people who would not have appreciated waiting around for me. I will probably draw some from the pictures I took…hopefully.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Michaela.Stiber/Orchids#

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