Palm on Dewees Island

I took this photo on Dewees Island, South Carolina and always wanted to paint it but just didn't feel I had the skills. Then I saw in one of my watercolor how-to books a painting of a palm close-up like this one, so I tried it and it worked out first try!

On the Battery

This painting is from a photo I took while on the battery of Charleston, South Carolina. It's just another example of paintings I did while in South Carolina in the summer.

South Beach

When my husband and I went to South Beach, Florida, a few years ago, I enjoyed the art decco architecture there. In an art gallery there, I discovered an artist by the name of Mark Rutkowski, who had done many watercolor paintings of the art decco architecture from South Beach. In many of his pieces, he featured not only a historic building, but a historic car. This painting is a copy of a postcard I bought while in South Beach, but not until I bought the book of Mark Rutkowski's work did I even consider doing such a painting.

House by the Sea

I started this painting in the summer of 2007 when I was reading Nita Engle's book, "How to Make a Watercolor Painting Paint Itself". The house is from Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, and all the rest is made up.

Sunporch

This is a scene of the screened-in porch of the beach house we stay at in Charleston, South Carolina. Every afternoon I was attracted to the shadows on the furniture.

I decided to put the shadows in first using a mixture of ultramarine blue and violet, which worked well for this composition.

Peony

I started this painting last year from a photo of a peony in our garden. I found this composition difficult because of all the petals. Midway through the process of creating the painting, it just looked like a bunch of pink blobs to me, but eventually it took shape. I have been reading Susan Harrison-Tustain's "Glorious Garden Flowers in Watercolor" to do the leaves, but in this case I did the dark leaves by lifting them out of the dark background. It isn't what I intended. When I put the dark background in without leaves that appeared to be in the shadows, the flower seemed like it was floating and disconnected from the earth. I put in a stem where there wasn't one in the photo and some leaves in the shadows. I like Susan's dewdrops, so I put in a couple of those, too. Despite the difficulty, I will probably do more peonies since I have so many photos of them.

Dunyavi Choreography