MIA working on this half sheet. kilimanjaro 300# Top right still needs work but was too tired last nite to finish it. Worked til abt 11:15 pm. 😵😵😵 Ready to rock and roll. Am enamored w pouring. BUT i forgot that Baker said NOT to use colors that were not marked transparent. 5 am i woke up thinking abt that. Slapped myself for Forgetting that. She said she always checks the tubes to see if it says its a transparent watercolor or not but i forgot.First pour. Cobalt Indigo and Raw Sienna The colors I used cad yellow and cad red. Never transparent. What was i thinking. Yellow ochre and raw sienna same thing. Duh. Only my blues were-indigo and cobalt. Not sure abt Antwerp.Then i added the cad red. 😵 Duh. Thank goodness my paint was tea consistency aka very thin.Pour 2 dry. This took along time and i got some blooms along the edges. The paper had so much water on it it was limp. POUR 3. Remember i have to add more masking every pour. Hard to decide where to put it. Used all my paint cups now. My cups of watery paint. A tip from Irena Roman. Wrote the names on the cups!! Muffin pans work great to keep it stable. Messy business pouring. Cant imagine spilling these esp on the dining room table where i paint. 😵💫😵💫😵💫Pour 3 dry. Removing masking. What an onerous task that is. Peeled masking everywhere on the table. Now I have to paint. Really like that cheap joes golden taklon brush. Makes great straight lines. Paint and mist the edges to soften. And this is where i left her. Pic i took of a red bellied sap sucker today. such pretty birds!!
Margaret abt ready to go back to hed and its only 6:30. Madly doing spring cleaning too. as if i am jot doing enough!😵💫. Xoxoxox
MIA working on this half sheet. kilimanjaro 300# Top right still needs work but was too tired last nite to finish it. Worked til abt 11:15 pm. 😵😵😵 Ready to rock and roll. Am enamored w pouring. BUT i forgot that Baker said NOT to use colors that were not marked transparent. 5 am i woke up thinking abt that. Slapped myself for Forgetting that. She said she always checks the tubes to see if it says its a transparent watercolor or not but i forgot.First pour. Cobalt Indigo and Raw Sienna The colors I used cad yellow and cad red. Never transparent. What was i thinking. Yellow ochre and raw sienna same thing. Duh. Only my blues were-indigo and cobalt. Not sure abt Antwerp.Then i added the cad red. 😵 Duh. Thank goodness my paint was tea consistency aka very thin.Pour 2 dry. This took along time and i got some blooms along the edges. The paper had so much water on it it was limp. POUR 3. Remember i have to add more masking every pour. Hard to decide where to put it. Used all my paint cups now. My cups of watery paint. A tip from Irena Roman. Wrote the names on the cups!! Muffin pans work great to keep it stable. Messy business pouring. Cant imagine spilling these esp on the dining room table where i paint. 😵💫😵💫😵💫Pour 3 dry. Removing masking. What an onerous task that is. Peeled masking everywhere on the table. Now I have to paint. Really like that cheap joes golden taklon brush. Makes great straight lines. Paint and mist the edges to soften. And this is where i left her. Pic i took of a red bellied sap sucker today. such pretty birds!!
Margaret abt ready to go back to hed and its only 6:30. Madly doing spring cleaning too. as if i am jot doing enough!😵💫. Xoxoxox
Ballerina quarterish sized sheet arches. All done wet in wet using six colors, the hideous potters pink was one. Had the nasty color forever. Who knew it could make wonderous skin.
It was A Ken Call class that Mike and I finally did today that is part of Watercolor Live 2023 back in January. Kens website is well worth a look. His portraits are gorgeous. This is what it looked like at the beginning. Ultramarine , Potters Pink, Burnt Sienna Sodalite Genuine Paynes Grey and Burnt Umber on arches 140 cold press. I have some 300 but i did not want to cut it up to try this technique when i didn’t know if i would like it. Arches now costs $28 a sheet. Ouch. That was before inflation.
Drips are in with Ken. Me too. I do love a good drip. You use a flat synthetic brush to lift color almost back to the white on this project. Did i say we lifted a LOT in this painting??? Really kind of an amazing technique at least in his hands.
There are two videos of him painting on youtube. Both are about an hour and a half long if you are interested in trying this technique.
After much lifting this is how she looks now. She’s a big girl on a piece of cold press Cheap Joes Kilimanjaro 15×20”. An imperial half sheet as Vlad would call it. Trying to make Shelley Priors technique taught at Watercolor Live 2023 my own.
if your like watercolor painting you really should sign up. Exposures to about twenty artists for a reasonable price. Well worth the cost and it just goes up the closer it gets to the start of the next years class. I literally had rivers of paint swirling around. I darkened the wash because I hate the too even spikey feathers I had drawn on its back and it was the only way I could get rid of them. @ericrhoads @shelleyprior Taping to do the stripping. I had to strip off the dreaded thalo green run with a lot of tape and lifting with a Mr Clean sponge. Also used a stiff brush to clean off the little lumps and bumps where the green background thought abt overflowing. After I cleaned it with a Mr Clean. Better but still a slight mess. I also lifted bits of green that has overflowed into the flamingo here and there. They were everywhere. With the tape off. I am signing her and saying she’s done and available. I added some quin rose and quin gold plus some cerulean to her head to fix it. Tried to keep it soft. I also softened a lot of edges. It was feeling a little cut out to me which happens when the edges are too hard.
Colors used quin rose, quin gold, cobalt, cerulean, DS pimonite genuine, burnt sienna, aureolin, thalo green
Been working on this bird for a few days. Maybe a week off and on.
This is 9×12 and done. I like a lot. So I decided to paint a bigger one. BYTW this one is available if you need her at your house. The background wash went well but darn what was with the bird drawing. the back looks like spikes and regular ones at that. Regularity is an anathema in a painting. So how do I fix it without starting over?! So of course I kept on painting. Starting the head. And then of course I forgot to take pics. Sigh. Really like the quin gold and the quin rose with cerulean on the neck and around the beak. But then no more pics. Sigh. So here she is almost done but those spikes are still annoying me. So yesterday after madly painting with Vlad I thought slap some paint on the background and get rid of those spikes. So I did. And it went well. I painted the horrible spikey look out. HURRAH!! But then I got the dreadful green run across the bottom of the beak. The 140 kilimanjaro was waffling like crazy with huge ripples making the washes run like crazy. To make it worse the green run was THALO notoriously staining of any paper. NIGHTMARE time. Slapping cobalt on to give her some curves. So her she is today. The paper dried amazingly flat for all the ripples it had yesterday. Maybe I can grey out the green streak. Tomorrows job! I do like the way she looks now.Maybe a crop to take a couple of inches off on the right?? She’s a big girl at 16×20”. Did I say I have already drawn another one?! 😵💫 Tonite sunset was rather spectacular. I saw it out of the corner of my eye as I was heating up our dinner leftovers. We do love a good bowl of leftover soup.
Available. Today it was a house sparrow. I do think they are so cute. My husbands favorite because if you feed them they will sit on your foot. Well his foot. Watercolor pencil on fabriano postcard. This little birdie would love to fly to your house. Yesterdays Daily Bird A Chickadee. Also available! They are too cute. Daffodils in full bloom around here. Spring is springing the pollen is flying. 😵💫Out my back door tonite. What can I say but WOW!
Griffith 140 cold press arches. Not my favorite painting. Stan Millers grandson. Stan does phenomenal portraits and has some great YouTube videos.
I will say that by taking his demo at Watercolor Live I have saved myself the trouble of taking a class from him in person which Mike had wanted to do before covid. Stan doesn’t want you to interpret the person but to paint an identical likeness. He’s very 123 so easy to follow but as my long time teacher Al Beyer said don’t worry abt the likeness unless they are paying you for it.
That said Stan has some absolutely gorgeous watercolors and rightly so he has made his living for forty years selling and teaching it.
I should add that I could soften a lot of edges with the Mr Clean eraser if I wanted to. I did the one on his right cheek with it and the arches paper was just fine with it. I pulled it down his cheek a couple of times and they did the trick. I will say one of the things I don’t like abt this portrait is all the hard edges which of course I could soften.
TIP: I cut the Mr Clean Eraser up into smaller wedges so I don’t have to deal with the whole big eraser which is sponge sized.
Sometimes I seem better at drawing paintings than actually getting them painted. Hopefully tomorrow.
Almost done. Twelve hours or so just today on this 1/4 sheet. Fabriano Artistico cold press 300#
Endless drawing. Third time. First trace was wrong second draw was lifted by masking. Spent three hours redrawing. Or was it four. 🙃🙃🙃😵💫
Now to figure out where to put the masking on the bottle. 😳😵💫

Jar masked. Kept dipping the brush in soapy water and drying it off. Also dumped the masking in the lid. Went much easier after I did that. I think asking the whole letter and lifting the mask to paint the dark will be easier than masking the highlight around each one. We shall see
Masking on jar removed. I think it looks awful. so hard to soften those edges that masking leaves.
Quitting for now. Need to work on the jar some more esp 1858 BUT my hands and shoulder are DONE.
Finally standing back from it i think it looks amazing if I do say so myself. since it’s sucked up most of my life for the last few days glad it does.
She showed us her home studio today. I want one like hers.
The background is poured. A whole lot of options for messy Margaret to flood the world with blue. Eeek.
A whole Lot Of Masking. Ruined the old paint brush I was using. Oh well.
One pour down and two to go. So far so good. It’s a mix of inathradone blue ultramarine violet dioxizine purple and viridian.
Bytw I covered my chair seat which is cloth w plastic put on my old slippers and an apron wished I had a plastic one. 😳
Pour number 2. Looks dangerous and a total mess. Number two dry. Supposedly it keeps the paint transparent. Not to sure abt that. Last pour is now drying. I added quin gold to the mix per the instructors directions. Amazing how dark it got.
Last pour and no catastrophes yet!! 🙃😂. Next up removing all that masking. Can’t see how this was better than a wash. Hmm
Be sure to check out Irenas site. Her paintings are phenomenal.
In the middle of all this I was making my friend Mikes Cream of chicken rice and mushroom soup. DH said it was the best soup ever. He even cleaned up the kitchen. Yeah. Margaret xoxoxox
Matthew Birds realistic still life. While I like the looks I am not fond of all the masking and layering. I kept making mistakes and having to start over. My fault not his of course.
Attempt #3 was best. I kept my lights on most of the apricots. The rock looks good. Background wash might need another layer. Last.
Three looks much better in person. I saved almost all the lights on the fruit but the iPhone flattened them out darn it.
Apricots and a Bowl #2
Attempt number 2 screwed up the darks on the front of the stone. Painted it all alizarin. Oops off to a bad start from the first. Fabriano 300# cold press. Background washes hmm does it need more? I do like the bluey black.
Attempt 1
Attempt #1 140 fluid cold press paper. Not great for lots of washes. What was I thinking using a 140 for all those layers of washes?! Will probably finish it sooner or later. Someone will want it.
Still think they need more background washes. Might just mix up some green alizarin and indigo and give them two layers but I do like the blue shining thru the back. Really pretty in person.
Best of all. Those Dynasty faux squirrel reservoir brushes. Have had them for a couple of years and never use them. They worked great for those endless lines on the bowl. I loaded the 12 once and did ALL THE LINES WITH IT and the hearts too. Who would have thought??
There they are. My sweet kitty Haley being a good girl this am.
Margaret McCarthy Hunt Art 