I've been working on several pieces lately in different media. Each medium has its unique properties which keeps me entertained and on my toes. For those artists who follow my blog, drop me a line and let me know what your favorite medium is. I'm curious to know whether you paint on a single medium for weeks or months at a time and then switch or if you are all over the place like me ;)

Last night I painted this giraffe in watercolor. It was exciting dropping the paint and letting it do its thing in the background, but painting this guy (or girl) was awesome. I used watercolor pencils for details for the first time in this piece. I have used WC pencils before for sketching but here I used it after the painting was almost done to add some details. I saw someone on youtube doing this and wanted to try it myself. Basically, if you dip the watercolor pencil tip on water before drawing with it and/or paint on top/next of a wet area, the ending result is more natural as you get broken pieces of pigment that merge with the watercolor. In other words, it looks less as something drawn and more like something painted.

I also worked some on laying in the basic colors for this oil pastel (OP) painting of mangoes, my favorite fruit. This is such an exciting piece due to all the bright colors. Next step would be to push the OP into the paper and blend the different colors together. After that I'll add more layers of OP to refine shapes and add detail.

This morning I spent a couple of hours working on my orchid in oil paints. Below is a picture of how it looked like before I made the latest changes. I will post those in a few days once the paint dries. I have glazed some phthalo blue and lamp black on top of the background and added details on the main bright pink/red leaf. But I still have a ways to go with it.