Yesterday in our watercolor class we had the option of painting something with green. I had taken a photo while driving along the coast and thought this might be fun to paint. I am still struggling with watercolor, but had a little fun with this.
This is the original photo.
This is just a quick blog post to show three different styles of the same thing.
Back to the watercolor class today with mixed emotions. I wonder if watercolor is even my medium? Do you ever wonder why you are trying something new. I was told the piece was very “painterly”, which was nice, but I really did not like the piece. I came home and added some pen and ink to the watercolor as it looked to bland to me. I am having a hard time figuring out how to have more dark darks in watercolor. It is so very different than painting in oils.
How do you control the movement of the water with the paint as you apply it, so you do not get splotches? How do you get the vibrant color that you get with oils? I won’t give up! I won’t give up!
It is a class of beginners, so hard to learn from anyone else in the class. I am using the class as a reason to force myself to try something new once a week. Not sure if it is working, as would I ever be able to sell anything in this medium. Maybe that is not a good reason to be taking a class.
I’ve been doing a lot of pen and ink drawings with a watercolor wash of the houses in my neighborhood and I like the effect of the combination. Structure or no structure?
One of friends that sells real estate asked me to do this for home she is selling. I had such fun doing this today. It was challenging, as the photo from the MLS was very small, but I think it turned out well. I used water color pencils to give the orange a little punch. Let me know if I can do one for you or one of your clients.
Sold this gorgeous waterfront home the first part of December and just sent out “Sold Postcards” yesterday with the hope someone out there would love for me to list their home.
Sold this home on two acres to my youngest son last month too. Has a water and mountain view. 1934 home with lots of land to build a new home someday in the future. So proud of my sons. All of them are now home owners.
Did another version of the flower painting shown below, as the first one sold and a second one was requested by another client. Similar but different.
Happy New Years to everyone. Hope every year is better than the last year!
Over the course of about two years, we totally redesigned my friend’s house. She loves it and is the best client. Our last task was to select colors for the exterior and for her door. Benjamin Moore HC 45 for the exterior and bright aqua for the front door. The house looks great. It is so heart-warming when things come together and everyone is happy.
Back in time to Port Gamble with its Post Office. Port Gamble represents one of the few remaining examples of company towns, thousands of which were built in the nineteenth century by industrialists to house employees. Founders Josiah Keller, William Talbot, and Andrew Pope planned the town to reflect the character of their hometown, East Machias, Maine, where many of the early employees originated. For 142 years, the community existed to support sawmills that produced lumber for the world market. The mill closed in 1995, but as a National Historic Site, the townsite has been preserved to reflect an authentic company mill town.
The first known residents of Port Gamble were members of the Nooksclime, Clallam, or S’Kallam tribe who fished and gathered food along Hood Canal. The S’Klallams belonged to the linguistic group, South Coast Salish, which populated Puget Sound. Tribes traded and intermarried and generally experienced little conflict except for raids from outside the region. In 1841, a U.S. Navy expedition led by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes (1798-1877) named the two-mile-long bay at the mouth of Hood Canal after Navy Lieutenant Robert Gamble, who was wounded in the War of 1812.
In the summer of 1853, San Francisco lumber merchant and sea captain William Talbot (1816-1881) spotted the sand spit at the mouth of the bay as a likely place for a lumber mill. Talbot was a partner of Josiah Keller (d. 1862), Andrew Pope (1820-1878), and Charles Foster in the Puget Mill Company. They planned to cut the abundant trees of Oregon Territory into lumber for sale in California and across the Pacific. The sand spit sheltered ships and was close to stands of timber.
S’Klallams already lived on the spit and on the bluff above. Keller induced the natives to move across the bay to Point Julia in exchange for free lumber, firewood, and Christmas gifts. The S’Kallams called the site Teekalet, “brightness of the noonday sun,” for the way the water and sand reflected light on sunny days. Talbot borrowed that name for the mill.
Here is the oldest photo of the building I could find.
Out and about buying fabric to make Easter Dresses for my three Granddaughters, with camera in hand, Port Gamble is such a lovely piece of our local history. Originally built as a sawmill town, there are rows of houses built for employees and managers of the Port. the Walker Ames House, which I drew last week was the owners original home.
In the next week or so, I will be drawing the General Store, owned by friends of mine with some of the best food in the area. The fabric store Quilted Strait is often one of my favorite stops, as they have a lovely and varied selection of cotton, more designed for quilts, but work great for “Granddaughter” dresses.
This beautiful Victorian home in Port Gamble, Washington is stately and beautifully designed. It has not been used as a residence in many years. In 2008 a group interested in paranormal activity came and definitely felt the presence of “ghosts” in the house. Built in 1888 it was the home for William Walker, master mechanic,and his wife Emma, daughter Maude, and son-in-law Edwin Ames. The house was close to the mill so Walker was nearby in case of emergencies. Ames was the resident manager from 1883-194 and then general manager until 1931.
This is the rear of the house. It faced the waterfront to welcome ships and captains.
When I was teaching Interior Design at The Art Institute of Seattle, I had the good fortune to teach a class called Adaptive Reuse. My students had the choice of redesigning this or another structure. It was wonderful to see this elegant home come to life as a Wine Bar, a Bed & Breakfast, a Wedding site and several creative venues. It is too bad that zoning makes most of that impossible and for the most part the building sits empty and sad.
Here is a photo of the house in it’s 1888 glory time. There are no color photos from that time for obvious reasons. I love to draw historical houses and places and you will see more of these in the future.
My drawings are available for purchase at Liberty Bay Gallery in Poulsbo, or from me.
Poulsbo, Washington is such a lovely little city with lots of wonderful restaurants and shops. I often take guests there to shop a little, eat a little and wine a little. One of the fun places is our local “Hare & Hounds Public House, where you can get great food and in the summer sit out on lawn and enjoy Poulsbo like a tourist. In the next few weeks, I will be adding more Poulsbo attractions to my blog. I live it Kingston and love it there too, and will be SO glad when Kingston has as much to offer as Poulsbo or Bainbridge Island. Stay tuned for more drawings.
Sometimes it is fun to show the photograph that prompted the drawing. In this case there needed to be a bit of editing to make it a little more interesting or hopefully so at least. Maybe a person actually using the booth (if it is operational) would have been more fun. When I was teaching at The Art Institute of Seattle, I often asked my students how many of them had ever used a “Telephone Booth” and unless the student was over 50, they really did not have the concept of what they were or how to use them.
When I was working my way through college in sales, I had to use telephone booths (often in not so wonderful neighborhoods) and a map, not a map book, but a map to try to find the homes of my clients. This part, the gps/cell phone part of life I believe is much improved. The not talk to the person standing next to you and texting them, not so much.