As Promised

I've been having a bit of a rough week. One of those 'everything that can go wrong' types. But I believe in honoring my commitments, so I wanted to make sure to post my latest watercolor. Unfortunately, the coloring may be way off in this image as compared to the original since I have no real photo editing software to speak of on my laptop.

watercolor 5" x 13"

copyright 2007 Stacy L. Rowan

Available

This is a statue that can be found on the property of Green Hill Farms in Bucks County, PA. The farm was once the home of Pearl S. Buck and now is used to teach people about her work. I took my family members to the farm to tour the Buck house as part of Girls' Weekend. Every GW hostess gives a souvenir to the people who attend her weekend. For my souvenir, I gave each attendee a book by Pearl S. Buck or James Michener (we also visited the James A. Michener museum in Bucks County) and a bookmark. The bookmark was a laminated copy of this painting. (Of course, I reduced the painting when I copied it so it would actually fit inside the book.)

I painted this using my own photo reference which I took in the late afternoon of a beautiful fall day. Unfortunately, I didn't see any sign indicating who made this sculpture so I can't give them credit. If I find out who the sculptor is I will definitely let you know.

The most challenging part of the painting was the group of flowers at the base of the sculpture. Since the stems where the lightest part, I had to employ a technique called negative painting to render this area. Negative painting is painting the areas around an object. In this case, I envisioned where I wanted the stems and leaves to be and then painted the dark background around them. Luckily I had some practice using this technique in graphite when I took a class on Wet Canvas. The class was taught by Mike Sibley who is a pro at negative drawing and all things graphite.