Birthday Greetings

I made this card for a special friend's birthday. Many fushias are blooming in the garden at the moment, so I brought a few branches indoors to serve as my subject matter. (I am quite frustrated with the scanning results, the colors are so mutted, while the original was bright and colorful! Any scanning tips would be greatly appreciated!)

Hibiscus

In watercolor class we all painted small pictures. This one is a 5x7. It is a hibiscus flower, not the tropical kind, but the tall, branching type. I've usually seen them with blue flowers, but this one was a delicate pink, to white. It felt good to actually FINISH a painting, as lately I have started scads of them, and never have the time to get back to them! All I want to do is paint, actually, but time just does not allow for it.

On a recent trip we explored the countryside between Cambria and Paso Robles. This photo is of a walnut grove. When we stopped at a winery I commented about how the bare branches appear to be lavendar-gray. They explained that is because the trees are grafted. The trunks are black walnut, and the branches are English walnut. The black walnut is more disease resistant with other various attributes, but the better nut is the English walnut, so they've found the perfect solution!

I'm so excited to have filled up my new Homee Palette! It holds 33 colors. I made a color chart for each of my paints on Bockingford coldpress 140 lb watercolor paper to tell me which paints are transparent, opaque, etc, if they are sedimentary, and if they stain or not. I then painted a sample of each paint, from dark to light in each space. I covered it with SelfSeal. There is a blank mixing palette that fits over the top of my color chart (in the lid). It will never look this good again, so I thought I would show it to you while it is all neat and pretty!