After a hiatus from painting, I wet the watercolors and just dropped in color, scraped and lifted. The texture is from the 300lb. Arches watercolor paper when scraping away wet paint. Size is approximately 4 3/4" x 4 3/4".
Tom on the right, Jerrie on the left
Jill being held by my niece
Jackie playing with a new toy
As can be seen so many areas to work and rework. Today's main goal is to correct the eyes. It has to do with shapes and values, so the eyes set in their sockets and appear rounded, along with making sure the eyes are level and shaped correctly. The nose is shaped about right as is the mouth, and will clarify the values and colors in those areas as well. 
Karin Jurick hosts the Different Strokes for Different Folks blog. She provides a photo bi-weekly and different artists paint their interpretation. I decided to paint a cropped version and just sent this photo of my painting to her. Hope the photo is acceptable as the paint is still wet. The painting is 9" x 12" on gessoed Ampersand Bord. 
One of our visitors this weekend was White Hawk, a four year old Arapaho boy from Wyoming. He came with his newly adopted grandfather, Tom, who is a wonderful family friend. I have to say this little boy captured my heart. We played with Leggo's, then played hide and seek. We sang and we tickled. I loved watching how he concentrated on each thing and then would look up with such openness of heart and joy. He and Grandpa Tom are leaving for home today and I will miss them. 
I painted this piece of the puzzle in April and today the images were posted. There were two teams painting the same photo and the completed paintings can be seen below. My painting was used in both team paintings as was Bonnie's. It was a fun and challenging painting, especially when I had one table leg angled totally wrong. 
This morning I worked on the Bell, Book & Candle painting. As can be seen in the side by side comparison, I darkened a lot of areas plus added the cast shadow from the candle and holder. I added a bit warmer yellow paint to the book, added more red and shadows to the bell, added more shadows to the brass candle holder as well as the table top and background. I darkened the cloth that is on the viewer's right behind the book. 
The subject for a project, due to be posted tomorrow at Painting Friends, was bell, book and candle. I set this up on a table and took several photos of the setup from different angles, so this subject may show up in another painting. Below is a grayscale to get an indication of the values. My favorite part of the painting is the candle.
Below you can see what was cropped from the top of the painting. The reason I cropped is because I felt the background was competing with the focal area and felt a close crop would do the subject more justice. I love the way watercolor mixes on the paper. 
I had a chance today to paint this 5 1/2" x 10" watercolor from a photo I took at one of our family reunions. While I was painting this I was remembering the many gatherings that have taken place in this yard over the last 60 years.
Karin Jurick hosts the Different Strokes from Different Folks (DSFDF) blog. This sketch is based on her photo for the current challenge. This challenge ends May 20th and is one I would like to try hence getting my feet wet with the sketch before trying my hand at painting a cityscape. Karin's blog is one I truly enjoy as there is so much talent in the work posted.
