Painting

Halfway through a big tulip bed last spring I looked up and realized I had no idea where I wanted the flowers to stop and the background to begin. The whole right side was just... uncommitted paint. I had been so happy laying in pinks and purples that I forgot to decide where the edge of the composition actually lived.

I ended up cutting a viewfinder out of cardboard and holding it over the canvas, which helped, but it felt like something I should have sorted before I started. This happens to me more than I'd like to admit, especially with garden scenes where everything wants to keep blooming off the edge.

Do you use any kind of framing trick or compositional tool to lock down your boundaries before you get deep into a piece? Or do you just let it resolve itself as you go? I make too much art to keep losing an hour to "where does this flower bed end" every time.

This is abstract watercolor piece is called ‘shadow dancers’. There are different depictions and scenes throughout depending on the orientation. Also my style is to incorporate my tears somewhere in every piece. So if you would like to gaze for a while and explore the depth, spin around and stay consumed with wonder; I invite you to explore the world for a moment through my eyes.

Sing, Sing, Sing and Let Love in!!!!!!

Today I'm going to show you my key image. So this picture was essentially the first image I had basically finished with my own developed technique. From then on, I basically experimented more with my painting style on it. To incorporate the challenging relief surface into its effect. I painted the image for myself. In fact, it's a portrait. My daughter and I. Back then I was still working as a fashion designer for our shop and I made prototypes. These two dresses we wore were made of pure silk, and we posed for photos. But I found our gaze so beautiful that I quickly painted it as a portrait for myself. I hope you like it.

I painted it in 2013

The Weight of Labor depicts a figure carrying heavy bundles across a rustic bridge above rushing water. Colorful flowers line the riverbanks, while a small duck glides through the deep blue current below. The scene balances hard labor with the quiet beauty of the surrounding landscape, offering a thoughtful glimpse into everyday perseverance. Its expressive colors and storytelling details would bring character to your space.

, Quiet Pirouette portrays a dancer in motion, her flowing dress alive with touches of yellow, blue, and coral. Set against a textured gray background, the figure feels both graceful and mysterious, as though caught in a fleeting moment of performance. This colorful portrait brings movement and quiet drama to a room, making it a thoughtful addition to your space.

Dean Castle presents a pale stone stronghold beneath a wide blue sky, with a Scottish flag rising above the trees. The quiet path, bare branches, and sunlit hills create a sense of mystery, as though the castle holds stories just beyond view. Gentle blue and earthy tones give the scene a calm, atmospheric quality that suits a thoughtful interior. This painting would make a distinctive addition to your space.

Preparation for marouflage for large format 200x500 cm, in 10 panels of 1 m2

I sat outside a café in Lisbon last fall, trying to capture the light hitting a tiled doorway across the street. But there was also a bicycle leaning on the wall, a woman sweeping, laundry overhead, a cat. My sketchbook page isn't big and neither is my attention span when the light is changing fast.

I ended up painting everything and the whole thing felt cluttered. The doorway, which was the reason I sat down in the first place, got lost.

Since then I've been trying to commit to what I'm leaving out before I even mix paint. Sometimes I'll frame a rectangle with my fingers or cut a small window in a piece of cardstock to isolate the scene. It helps, but I still find myself creeping outside those boundaries once I get going. Especially with watercolor, one wash leads to another and suddenly I'm painting the whole street.

Do you set your composition edges before you start, or do you let the painting tell you where to stop? And if you lock it in early, what actually keeps you from wandering?

Love experimenting 🌞 this one is textured and it was painted with iridescent glow in the dark paints.... layers and layers and layers and so on 🤣 this is the result. First pic normal light , second pic under black light, third pic no light 💙 hope you enjoy

Any technical advice to improve the realism?

Down The Rabbit Hole. My interpretation of Alice in Wonderland.

Abstract Minimalist, Watercolor

Last month I realized I'd been hoarding brush pens. Like, an embarrassing number of them. Different tips, different ink flows, different brands. I kept thinking the next one would finally give me the line variation I wanted.

Then I spent a week just practicing pressure control with one single Pentel pocket brush. Slow strokes, fast strokes, ghosting the pen barely above the paper before committing. Turns out the "thick to thin" I was chasing had almost nothing to do with the tool and almost everything to do with how I was using my arm and wrist together. One pen now does what I thought I needed five for.

It got me thinking about how often we reach for a new supply when the real unlock is just understanding the mechanic underneath. Has anyone else had a moment like that? Where learning the principle behind something made a tool or technique you thought was essential suddenly unnecessary? I'd genuinely love to hear what it was and how it clicked for you.

I was inking a busy street scene in my sketchbook last week and ran out of patience about halfway through the background. Instead of rendering every window and brick, I just scribbled clusters of short, overlapping lines at varying angles. When I stepped back, it honestly read as more detailed than the foreground I'd carefully constructed.

That got me thinking about how much of "complexity" is really just the right visual shorthand. For me, one big discovery has been that crisscrossing my ballpoint hatching in two or three directions creates this illusion of textured depth that a single clean pass never does. Another one: leaving a few strategic white gaps in a dense area makes the viewer's brain fill in structure that I never actually drew.

I would love to hear what marks or techniques give you that disproportionate payoff. The stuff where minimal effort somehow reads as rich detail. What shortcuts has your hand figured out that your brain didn't plan?

Last week I was sketching a street scene and pulled from three different photo references at once. One had this beautiful converging perspective on the buildings, another had a figure grouping I liked, and the third had interesting light on the pavement. The perspective and figures clicked together almost immediately, but the moment I tried to drop in that lighting from the third photo everything started to feel stitched together instead of whole.

It got me thinking about what actually makes multiple references gel versus fight each other. My instinct says it comes down to keeping the construction logic consistent. If the light direction, eye level, and scale all agree, you can borrow pretty freely. But the second one of those fundamentals contradicts the others, the whole drawing starts looking like a collage instead of a scene.

I am still figuring this out though. When you're pulling visual elements from more than one source, how do you decide what belongs and what to toss? Is there a checkpoint you run through, or is it more of a feeling once you have enough mileage?

Painting Airbrush on cs10 canvas, Title HIDDEN DEATH STAR. Painted for the Astronomy Magazine USA.