What I have been up to?

Hi everyone,

It has been a while since my last post. I think we all need an update. This picture is pretty much the summary of the last a few months;

I have been keeping myself busy lately. I was reading The Modern Flower Painter by Anna Mason, which was my Christmas present. I love her book, because at the end of the book there are exercises that you can try by following the instructions which are pretty easy to follow. The Clematis and The Viola are from her book that I painted. What is nice in this book is, it also has outline drawings at the end. If you are a lazy person, you can transfer these onto your paper by following the lines. She tells about her technique, materials she uses, brush techniques and other good stuff. Whole book is filled with her delightful paintings. I think she is super talented giving textures to anything she paints.

The other book I was reading was Watercolor Flower Portraits by Billy Showell. I got this one from Amazon, and couldn’t wait it to be delivered. She is a composition master I think. Her paintings are so soft, so real, and they just dance on the paper. What I love about her book is, it has different chapters for painting leaves, flowers and stems. It is filled with great tips and techniques and with her delicate flower paintings. She also has projects at the end of her book.

Other than reading these books, I was taking pictures. Spring is here and all kinds of flowers bursting from the earth. Here is a few examples from San Antonio, Texas flowers;

Texas bluebonnet_Lupinus texensis

Texas paintbrush_Castilleja indivisa

Prairie verbena_Verbena bipinnatifida

False dayflower_Commelinantia anomala

Other than these, I was also ruining my hands making a metal pepekura of R2D2. It is so tiny that you need super skinny hands to assemble it. I do have, but doesn’t seem to be enough. It has only one arm so far, and its head is not attached yet. I will complete it soon with bunch of frustration!!!

And do you see that super, amazingly beautiful drawing right next to R2D2? It is a drawing of a pomegranate flower which I found at the HEB parking lot by pure chance. It looked so inspiring, I came home and drew it. Now it is dead but I already took bazillions of pictures of it, decided lights and shades, and took notes of the colors that I will use while painting. However, tomorrow I will visit that parking lot once more to get another live sample just in case (:

That’s what I have been doing so far other than work.

What about you? Do you also enjoy seeing all those pretty blossoms?

Scarlet globemallow

Hello everyone,

Spring is coming… I am so excited. It is my best season. I love seeing all the flowers emerging from the soil, so green, so fresh, and so full of life. In Texas, some of the flowers already bloomed because of the confusing hot and cold weather, but this year will be crazy for wild flowers because precipitation rate was high and it seems it always rained on the right time.

Today I will share one of my quick paintings. I was so lazy that I didn’t even clean my palette while mixing the colors on it. I added on top of each other. You can see in the painting how dirty the colors looked instead of being bright.

Sphaeralcea coccinea_Scarlet globemallow_Watercolor_Tulay Yilmaz_2014

I couldn’t scan this one, so I am sharing a photo of it.

I am not really proud of my dirty colors, but I like the harmony of the flowers on the paper. There is a movement in the composition.

This is probably my only panting that I painted the same flower from different angels onto same paper.

I hope you liked it. Please leave a comment and have a great weekend!!!

Poppy

Hello everyone…

How y’all doing? I live in Texas and am getting used to their accent. Yee haw!

We experienced all seasons in one week for the last few days. It was summer, spring, fall and winter and today we are back to summer again. Weather is changing so quickly that no surprise everyone is getting sick.

Today I will share one of my old paintings I completed in 2011 I believe. It is a red poppy.

Poppy_Water color_Tulay Yilmaz

They are one of my favorite flowers. They don’t smell that great, flies love them and their leaves fall off really easily but they have a delicate look, and their center is so nicely structured. I especially love running in the poppy fields.

Mom picked this one for me on her way back home from work, but it was pretty much dead when she gave it to me. I did a quick sketch and painted it the other day. I love how deep the colors of the leaves turned out.

I want to paint new poppies.

Sometime.

Later.

Yup, I am bad.

Have a great weekend guys!