Watercolours to die for!

I was planning to post an update on my garden today. But then I happened upon a wonderful watercolour artist, Ruth Steinfatt, through the Greeting Card Universe forum and decided the garden could wait until I've shared her lovely work with as many people as I can!

Ruth told me,

'I didn't get started painting until I retired and it really has fulfilled a long time dream. Flowers are my first love but I also find living on Vancouver Island I do a lot of coastal scenes. Watercolor is my choice of medium  and to take a blank piece of paper and watch your image appear never fails to thrill me.'

Ruth teaches watercolour painting and if she could teach me to paint half as well as she does, I'd willingly reconsider my views on whether art can be taught! Her flower paintings, in particular, have such a sparklingly fresh quality about them that I was curious to know whether she paints from photos or from the plants themselves. Here's her reply -

'I paint from both photos and the real thing.  I just finished some sweet peas that I did sitting in my garden.

'I find painting from a photo just fine providing you take lots of pictures of the stem, leaves, and the flower from different angles so you can have an interesting composition.    LIGHT is the main thing that you want to capture so early morning or mid afternoon will give you the most intense shadows.  Light is what makes  your paintings sing!'

'Collages have become great fun for me as well... using old sheet music covers, watercolor and acrylic mixed.  I also have started mixing acrylic and watercolor for a different effect -'
 

Ruth has a Zazzle gallery  and she also sells her work through Greeting Card Universe. It was a real challenge for me to decide which of her cards to show here as they are all so beautiful. So I chose a variety of subjects from Ruth's GCU gallery to demonstrate that she doesn't 'just' paint flowers! (But I couldn't resist the 'Peace' roses!)

     

        

You can find out more about this inspiring artist and her amazing work on her blog, 'Painted Words' and on her 'Wildwood Watercolours website.

And, by the way, I've also just come across Michele Webber's latest Squidoo Lens which is packed with useful information about understanding watercolour paints. I doubt whether you'll find a much better source of  information on this subject!