Painting with Julia

This morning the cool breezes were blowing on the west porch, and I decided it was a painting morning. Here's who I decided to paint:

"Little Pom"

Pom Pom gave her to me. And I must digress briefly and say that I've been inspired by Pom Pom and her friend Lisa. (Check out those blog links to see some of their work.) They paint with watercolors, often from other people's paintings/drawings, and then trace the images in black pen. And they're lovely. It's simple, relaxing stuff.
So, here's my beginning on the doll, whom I'll call "Little Pom."

And here you see how much the black pen finishes her up, and really tidies the whole picture. I love it!

So, I kept going. I had a flash of realization from Pom Pom that one of the best things to paint is someone else's painting. I mean, it makes sense! If I do what they did, all the issues of dimension and proportion and perspective should take care of themselves. Here's a picture of pears on my tea cup this morning:

Here's my rendition. I was planning to line it in black pen too, but Julia said no.

What do you think? Black pen or not?

Here was our painting table on the porch, before we started. Julia loved doing this together. I want to paint a LOT this school year. Would each morning on the porch be too much? Probably -- sigh.

Julia decided to paint fruit from the tea cup too. (We kept forgetting, and dipping our brushes in the tea!) Here are some apricots, we think. We weren't quite certain of the type of fruit. I think they're very good!

Here's a (fuzzy) photo of the original.

She also did some apples, and they're beautiful. I like the colored backgrounds. She may do a whole sheet of them.

My mother was enthusiastic about our efforts, so she gave me a photograph of Tasha, for me to try. Oh my! I'm no portrait painter! This was my sorry attempt. It looks vaguely like a corgi (or a fat fox), but not much like Tasha.

I like this one better; it's my version of one of the corgis from Tasha Tudor's cookbook. A bit large in the neck and shoulders. I'll have to keep trying.

And that was our morning of painting. I find it so very relaxing and soothing, to paint. I need to do it more, but I've never considered myself any kind of a painter or artist. My oldest brother Max is the artist. I'm the pianist and singer. We tend to put ourselves into categories, and sometimes I think we're the poorer for it, aren't we?