Sketching Out Blog: Sketches of art, watercolor, photos, recipes, books, interviews, Jewish topics, and Highland Park, New Jersey

Watercolor: Nuts, Raisins, Seeds

Nuts, Raisins and Sunflower Seeds, watercolor and ink pen by Leora Wenger, 2014
Nuts, Raisins and Sunflower Seeds, watercolor and ink pen by Leora Wenger, 2014

I painted this scene of nuts, raisins and sunflowers seeds for the food exercise in One Watercolor a Day. I’m not convinced of the scale I chose – perhaps since I made the nuts as big as I did, the sunflower seeds should be bit bigger? But no point to criticizing one’s own work – here it is for you to view. In the Facebook group for One Watercolor a Day, someone painted a lobster. It was quite a painting – lively and colorful. As I keep kosher, I would not have considered lobster for a food study, but that’s the sort of range one gets with these exercises. I also did a watercolor food study of beets – perhaps I will post that one closer to Pesach (Passover) and tell you how to make fermented beets, one of my favorite foods.

My son bought a new printer, an Epson XP-310 (or I bought it for him). I used the scanner for this painting, and I was quite pleased with the results – no more excess gray. I may buy a standalone scanner so I will have a larger scanner (the Epson XP-310 is quite small). When I do, it most probably will be an Epson.

The next watercolor exercise I plan to try is to paint some toys. I have a doll in mind to add to my still life. What other toys should I add? We still do have plenty of toys in this house, even if my children are no longer little.

Carver says

I like this water color very much!

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Leora says

Thank you, Carver!

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Lorri M. says

This is lovely, Leora. I like the combination of food items, along with the tones. It has a very warm aspect to it.

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Leora says

Thanks, Lorri. It was a challenging subject - I've never painted nuts before. Tomorrow I'm going to try dolls (my daughter thought I was going to put paint on her dolls - I said, no, I'm just going to make a watercolor of them!).

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Lorri M. says

How cute that she thought that.

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Arleen says

You are such a talented lady. I thought your water color was beautiful. I can't even draw a stick man. I love beets and look forward to your recipe for fermented beets

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Leora says

Thank you, Arleen! I also love beets. Hope to post about beets in the next few weeks.

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Susan Cooper says

Very nicely done my friend. I understand the scale thing, nevertheless, it's still a nice composition. :-)

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Leora says

Susan, you are the only person thus far to note and understand the issue with scale! I think if I repeated this twenty times, I would get it right. But no need ... moving on to the next exercise. Thank you for the compliment.

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Tuhin says

You used ink pen right? Normal ink pen or any specialized drawing pen?

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Leora says

Tuhin, yes, it was some kind of drawing pen - I'd have to look up which one I used. I need to order more because my son keeps borrowing mine.

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Leora says

The drawing pens I use: Staedtler's permanent black ink pens

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