Quick sketch landscape

We have a gray weather today. So to perk up my mood I quickly sketch this colorful landscape. Doing this is part of my practice routine in watercolor. Now I can better see what I should improve in this sketch.  I have seen this image from the magazine called Palet & tekenstift. 

Pastels' study

This is another practice on pastels. Here I used fixative, and I observed afterwards that it changed the intensity of the colors in the painting. I read somewhere that fixative darkens the colors, thus many pastels' users avoid it in their paintings. However, many use it to avoid smudging. I think I have to read further on this issue to know the benefits of using and not using it.

Water drop

This is a mini water drop (7 x 10 cm) I did last January. I was just practicing 

then on a scrap watercolor paper, but it turned out cute so I decided 

to put it in a frame. The idea of this water drop came from the demo
of Birgit O'connor and from Barbara Fox.
I did this as a practice and for fun; and not for sale.
This is in watercolor.

Bird of Paradise

While watching a TV program "Hour of Power" yesterday, I saw a vase of mixed flowers with a bird of paradise in it. Then I thought I will make a sketch of the flower. And here what I made out of it. This is of course in watercolor.

Lidice Rose 3

Every one of us has our own favorite subject to paint. For me, I like roses because they are my favorite flowers especially the yellow ones. So, in this blog I would like to tell everyone that once in a while you will see roses here :-). I hope you'll not get tired of enjoying my roses as I do. Regarding the title of this post, Lidice is a place in Czech Republic where a memorial park dedicated for those who died in the area during the war is located. I had been in the area in June 2009 in which during that time, the park was full of blooming roses.
This is done in acrylic on Canson's acrylic paper, 20x25 cm.

A try on pastels

This is a small subject just to try on pastels. I thought it would be good to know how to use the medium. At the moment I cannot say if I'll use it frequently. I used here light gray Canson pastel paper.
I did the pencil sketch of this shell while watching on Sunday the Australian Open Tennis championship (on TV) between Nadal and Djokovic. Both played amazingly for more than five hours. I am a fanatic tennis fan.