With Brush and Pen

Summer is my favorite season. Well, in the summer it’s my favorite. I love them all when I’m in them. I love their colors. Their smells and sounds. I love being outside in the weather.

What are the colors of summer?

My grandma had the most beautiful back yard. Flowers filled one side and along the back, with a tall white fence as backdrop. An arbor ran the length of the far side. And as the season progressed, grape vines climbed and wove in and through until the arbor was a mass of summer greens and plump purple grapes.

The flower beds were not formally laid out. They meandered. The seeds had been randomly scattered, to germinate and grow as they would. Veggies and herbs grew in their own sunny patch behind the arbor.

Life at Grandma’s house was a lot like her yard. Not so much peaceful as hilarious with color and laughter and personality, and of course, the promise of food and wines. She made a profession of cooking for any family or friends who might stroll through the always-open front door. And her home-made wines were, well, home brew. She’d grown up in the deep South during Prohibition and knew what she was about. Yum.

So when I thought of painting flowers in the early summer this year, I remembered my Grandma… and I picked up my Painter brushes and began dropping colors as she must have dropped seeds so many years ago.

And of course had to pick and draw the grapes, pushing for the wine…

What about summer textures?

These were painted with regular watercolors and scanned into the computer. The first I’ve called Heat Rising, the second Summer Fireworks. Both use salt, which I find difficult to achieve in Painter unless I scan it in and then use a grainy brush to reveal it.

• You are welcome to copy each to make papers to use as salt textures in Painter. (Just don’t print them as your own paintings please.)
• Or copy and place one or both on layers above your painting and experiment with the composite methods.

Grandma’s garden looked more like the first painting, but the second could be printed on vellum or at reduced opacity onto note paper for summer correspondence.

How do you paint your summer?

Happy painting…

I believe you can capture the essence of your pet in a painting if you get the eyes right.

Painted on Italian paper, with water brushes in Corel Painter.

Eyes are as unique to animals — species and breeds within each species — as they are to people. Shapes vary. How they sit in their sockets, how far apart they are, their colors, how much light goes through and bounces back. Every eye varies. Even the two on each face vary somewhat…

What to Look For Before Starting to Draw or Paint

• Look at the shape of the eyeballs – are they round or elliptical?
• Are they the same size? Exactly the same shape?
• How are they set into the sockets? (Deep, or do they protrude somewhat?)
• What is the structure of the socket?
• Do the eyelids cover part of the eye?
• Are the lids thick, causing shadows on the eyeball?
• What is the size and shape of the pupil within the eyeball?
• Where are the highlights, dancing or dark, on the eyeball itself?
• Are there reflections bouncing back from the eye?
• Look at a profile view. Is there space between the lens and the iris/pupil? (This helps determine how much light passes through.)

Where are the Whites?

I have a saying at my house that I won’t put on the coffee until I see the whites of their eyes – my best coffee-drinking friends, that is.

But we don’t say that about our pets. Animals don’t have white showing. Their irises and pupils fill the eye opening.

Some Facts May Help Your Choices

If you do even the smallest amount of Internet searching, you can learn the how and why of your pet’s eye-construction. I like having this knowledge because it helps me see better, and ultimately paint better.

Some of what I learned about cat’s eyes for this portrait helped me make my painting choices:

• Pupils vary in shape as well as size, depending on the amount of ambient light.
• Cats see better at night. In bright light their pupils close to vertical slits. As the amount of light diminishes, their pupils round out and increase in size.
• Cats’ eye colors can range from blue, to pale yellow or tan, to deep orange or brown, to copper, to green. And any combination of these.

Resources, Online and Otherwise

• Take a look online at Cat Eyes – Up Close, for gorgeous photos of cats’ eyes. Notice the images reflecting off them. Pay attention to the side view (third one down) to understand how their eyes become such beautiful mirrors reflecting back their surroundings.
• A really good visual resource is Claudia Nice’s book, Painting Your Favorite Animals — not just for eyes, but for how to draw the direction of animal hair on various places of their bodies. She covers cats and dogs, horses, farm and field animals, birds, and small furry creatures.
• Melvyn Petterson’s pocket drawing series book, Cats – How to Draw Them, is also excellent.

Get to know the pet you’re painting. Even breeds of the same animal differ – not just in looks and hair length and structure, but also in temperament.

Like people, each pet has a story for you to tell with your brushes. Happy painting…

I welcome comments, questions, links to your own work from the comment section. Do you have a pet you’ve painted?

P.S. This post will appear in the July issue of Digital Paint Magazine. You may subscribe to this ezine, still a free subscription, and a link to each issue will be delivered monthly to your inbox.

Previous column tutorials are here. Feel free to download the PDF files.