Hesperis matronalis

Hello everyone,

Finally it is Friday. I just don’t want this day to end. The weekend goes by with a blink and most of the time I can’t even find time to sit, and relax and enjoy painting. Anyways… Enough with the complaining. Today I will share one of my fairly new but still old botanical illustration. I don’t have a scanner, so I am sharing a photo of it.

Hesperis matronalis_Tulay Yilmaz_Watercolor_3/3/2014

I painted this when I was in North Dakota. I found it on our back yard. The flower died really quickly, after doing the sketch of the flower and painting a few layers, I stopped painting it. Then I found another flower of the same species, and completed my painting. I worked on Scholler Durex paper, which is pretty thin. When you start putting several layers, the paper starts to get bumpy. There is not enough soaking with this paper which makes it harder to work with. The only solution is waiting for each layer to dry completely. Sometimes waiting for a day even works for the paper to turn its normal shape and be completely flat. The only good thing about this paper is, they are pretty cheap and still you can get pretty decent looking final products at the end.

I am not super happy with the shades on my leaves but still overall picture looks pretty delicate I think.

I hope you like it too.

I have a question. Where can I get good quality %100 cotton papers in US? I don’t want to order online. I want to pick them myself. I went to Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft stores, but I couldn’t find the papers in any of them. They are mainly cold-pressed ones and I want hot-pressed cotton papers. Is there anywhere else that I can take a look?

I feel like the main source of everything related to botanical illustration is United Kingdom. Maybe I should move there when I retire (:

Red Onion

Hi everyone…

Today is another day of sharing an old painting of mine. I don’t know how long I will be able to do this, because there is not much left. I better create some time to do some new paintings. I started a new job almost a month ago. I am pretty busy with experiments, trainings and meeting new people. When I get home, I am mainly pretty exhausted. Hopefully I will get used to the routine soon enough to have some time for water color paintings.

Red Onion_Water color_Tulay Yilmaz_2010

I painted this onion in 2010. This was my last painting at the course. I was taking the course after school, so I was going home pretty late and when I get home I wasn’t working on them. When the course ended, I stopped working on it. Otherwise, it could definitely have a couple more layers to make it darker.

The original painting is in Turkey at my parents’ home on the kitchen wall. Maybe I should paint another onion. Hmm… I will think about it.

Walnut

Hello everyone!

Today is another day for sharing one of my old paintings. I did this a few years ago. I remember a friend of mine commented on this ‘This thing is more walnut looking than a walnut!’ which was so sweet.

While I was working on this piece, I was scared of darkening the shadows. When I was done, it was looking a lot more lighter, but my instructor warned me to darken the shadows and told me not to be scared. So I did what she said, and walnut turned into 3D all of a sudden.

Walnut_Watercolor_Graphite_Tulay Yilmaz_2011

I think what makes a painting the most realistic are the right application of the shadows and finding the right colors to paint. 

I hope you like this painting. 

Walnut is one of my favorite nuts by the way. I can crack and eat a huge bag of fresh walnut without even care a bit that it is coloring my fingers green. It is sooo yummy!

I am kind of busy on these days, I couldn’t work with watercolor pencils lately. Whenever I find time, I want to work on new pieces and share my thoughts about watercolor pencils. 

Until then, take care guys!

Bearded Reedling

Bearded reedling,
Panurus biarmicus, male
Watercolor, 2010
Tulay Yilmaz

Hello everyone,

Say hello to my birdie. It is bearded reedling (Panurus biarmicus), adult male. I truly don’t remember what was the exact date that I painted this but what I know for sure is, this was my first bird painting. I assume I did it in 2010 and on those days I had an idea that I can paint for bird guides (yeah, a biologist in dreams). It never happened though!

What I learned from this painting was painting fur is not easy, especially where the fur is white. There should be some techniques to make it easier but I am not aware of it. Second thing I learned was it is important to date your work, then you can see your progress. Third thing is don’t leave your artwork in the mess of your table or you end up having dust and stains on them. They don’t need to be a masterpiece to deserve the respect. File them properly!

My bearded reedling has some funny wings, shading is not that great but still I like it. It looks promising, isn’t it?

Mushroom Time

Hello everyone,

I am still experimenting with the new watercolor pencils. Since there are only 12 of them, I have to use other media to be able to find the true colors of the subject I am working with.

Yesterday I saw a mushroom photo. It is a wallpaper, I don’t know who took the photo. I wanted to share the link but it is broken somehow. If you make a Google search as ‘piccry mushroom’, you can see the photo I used as reference. I also set it as featured image at the top of this post. I want to thank to the person who took this photo. It was looking so jolly that I decided to paint it.

Mushroom
Mixed media;Watercolor pencils, Colored pencils, pencils
2014, Tulay Yilmaz

I especially loved how the stem/stalk looked at the end. I used Crayola colored pencils, Faber Castell watercolor pencils and  Faber Castell graphite sketch 4B pencil. I finished this in four hours while watching a show. That’s why it is not detailed that much.

I am still happy with watercolor pencils. It doesn’t turn out as realistic as watercolor paintings but still, it is really fun to work with.

I am planning to keep trying these new pencils with different subjects then I will write a review about them.

Stay tuned and don’t forget to leave comments!

 

Watercolor Pencils

Hello everyone,

I am super duper happy today. Yesterday sweet sister Erica sent some presents from South Korea. She is working as an English teacher there.

Two presents were related to flower arrangements. One is a notebook and other is a fan. Flowers were pressed.

I used some tacky glue and arranged them the way I wanted. Here they are;

After completing these, I jumped over my new watercolor pencils. I was so excited to try them that I used the same outline paper I used for my previous watercolor work which is balloon flower. It turned out meh…

Watercolor pencils_Balloon flower

The above picture is on Strathmore Watercolor paper, acid free, Cold press, 140 lb (300 g). The surface of the paper is not the greatest for a smooth painting.

What is magical about watercolor pencils is, they both work as pencil and watercolor (The name is watercolor pencil, daa!). You color your drawing with pencils first and then use a brush by dipping it into a little bit of water and go over the pencil painted area. They smoothly move on the paper and spread on a big area.

I learned that, as we were waiting for one layer to dry in watercolor to apply the other layer, you should wait for watercolor pencils to dry too. Otherwise, when you try to paint over the wet area, it leaves scribbles. If you don’t push too hard on wet areas, you’ll be fine though. Good news is, wet area dries so quickly.

Today I was looking for another thing to paint and try my new, lovely pencils more. I was looking through my watercolor notebooks, then I saw my unfinished, ugly Hibiscus. Do you remember it from my previous posts?  Click here;

https://tulayyilmazbotanicalart.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/line-drawing-assignment_4th-and-5th-product/

A few weeks after writing that post, I worked on that drawing with colored pencils just to complete it. It didn’t turn out great either. Therefore, I left it again. It seems today was the day to complete it nicely. If I need to remind you the paper for that piece, it is Strathmore, mixed media paper, vellum surface, acid free, wet and dry media, 140 lb (300 g). This paper works perfect for watercolor pencils. Let me show you the transition;

Hibiscus_Transition from colored pencils to watercolor pencils

Isn’t it nice how smooth it gets by the touch of watercolor pencils?

And here the final product;

Hibiscus_Mixed media_Watercolor, colored pencils, watercolor pencils

I am so happy with the end product. The colors turned out so vibrant. I can’t wait to try another flower with these new colors. (LOVE YOU ERICA!)

There are things I want to say about watercolor pencils, but I don’t want this post get any longer. Wait for my next post for advantages and disadvantages of this media.

Have a nice day guys!

 

 

 

Balloon Flower

Hello there,

Today I got an e-mail saying “Resistance is a negative force within us that stops us from actually doing what we really want to do.”. This is taken from a book called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I didn’t read the book, the e-mail I got was suggesting me to read this book. I have never been a fan of personal growth books, so I don’t know if I will ever buy the book but the sentence above lit the fire today to make me paint something.

I found a picture of a balloon flower. (I couldn’t find the name of the person who took the picture, but I am thanking him/her from here.) I don’t have the expensive material to paint, so instead of hot pressed 100% cotton paper, I used my cold press, dumb, watercolor paper.  Colors just stuck on the surface and ends up with a dirty look. I love when the painting is smooth but there is no way to manage it on cold paper or I am not talented enough.

Anyways I was in a mood today that nothing could stop me paint something. I made a promise to Paul’s flower loving grandma a while ago that I will paint something for her. Therefore this painting will go to her.

Balloon flower_graphite

I prepared a detailed drawing of the flower first, then I used a play dough looking eraser to make the lines fainted. I don’t know what is the actual name of that eraser.

After these, I prepared my color. I used winsor, indigo and rose first. It turned out way too dark. Then I prepared a new mixture with only ultramarine deep and rose. This ultramarine deep color is new in my palette.  It is a Van Gogh brand which was on sale, that’s why I bought. Normally my colors are Winsor&Newton. They are fairly expensive but even little amounts of paint goes a long way. Anyways, this new color worked with rose and I found the color close enough the picture.

I painted the darkest areas first, left the white areas untouched.  It is important to work on the whole picture while painting, to keep the layers equal and balanced. Otherwise, you end up painting one area way too much than the other area.

While painting I was like, I hate you cold press paper. However, when you think about it, it is actually good to have these around. Especially for making presents. I complain a lot about this paper but actually it turned out pretty sweet. I completed this one in 4 hours. Normally a painting can take days. Here is the end result;

Balloon flower_Watercolor

It was a nice, short exercise for me. If you have questions, please write down below. I would love to hear what you think too.

Have a nice day guys!

Alignment Assignment_First Product

Hello everyone,

I have completed my first product from our second assignment on a boring, gray, rainy day of San Antonio.

I should admit that I had questions in my mind how this exercise would really help me to improve my drawing but today I realized it definitely helps. I will gather all the benefits and publish them as another post at the end of this assignment.

I picked Tulipa sylvestris for my first drawing. I pasted it to a word file, and resized the picture. Trick is holding ‘Ctrl’ button while resizing not to distort the picture.

Then I started drawing the flower on my paper only by looking. I didn’t use any ruler, protractor, or anything else. I was pretty confident while drawing. It was looking nice and correct. When I was done, I copied my picture to a trace paper and put it above the print to see how my lines were aligned.

Matched and unmatched lines

As you can see on the picture above, black lines are my drawing. Red lines are the ones which don’t match with the original picture and blue ones are the matching ones. Not much, right? And besides my Tulip turned out chubbier than the original one and its leaf was way off from where it was supposed to be.

I put the trace paper to my side to guide me. I deleted my wrong lines and fixed them section by section on my paper. When I was done, I put the trace paper over it again just to see the end result. It wasn’t perfectly aligned still but it was good enough. Then I found myself coloring it with dry pencils. It wasn’t planned, and the colored pencils were not the best kind either but at the end it looked simply pretty. Here is the result;

Tulipa sylvestris-Reproduction-Colored pencil-2nd Assignment 1st Product

Hope you liked it. I encourage all of you to try and share them with me.

Stay tuned for the next one!

Line Drawing Assignment

San Antonio Botanical Garden, Citrus flower
2014
by Tulay Yilmaz

Hello everyone,

First of all, I want to thank you all for liking my posts. It seems ’Rosa foetida’ is the most popular one in all. I was expecting that for ‘Hyoscyamus reticulatus’ actually but I should confess that Rosa has a special place in my heart too.

Anyways, I want this blog to be a place that I will interact with you art lovers, improve each other’s talent, and learn more about botanical illustration. In this regard I started searching other blogs about art, painting, drawing etc… I also checked all of the blogs who liked my posts. It was a good and easy source to reach for unique and beautiful pieces of yours; the world is a better place with you all. However, the more I look, the more I get confused about my next step. I want to prepare a schedule myself that I can paint regularly. I saw the same problem was mentioned in different blogs. It seems I am not the only one having troubles to put the painting into a discipline.

My excuses are lack of equipment and a separate corner in the house. These are affecting me to a certain point but my main problem is finding an inspiring material to paint. I’m in San Antonio; there is nothing but oak trees all around me.  And the rest is grass. Only flower I can see on the ground is Taraxacum or itty bitty flowers, which I have no excitement to paint. However I have seen people paint fruits, vegetables, dried leaves, and many other simple materials we can find anywhere. It seems I’m just making silly excuses and being lazy. As being a person of schedules, I thought I need a schedule immediately and this schedule calls for assignments.

Although I had 3 different botanical illustration courses 15 days in duration for each, I still don’t feel confident about graphite drawing. Because the courses were so short in time, we couldn’t focus as much as I would have liked on graphite drawing, scaling the plants, or preparing sketches in that amount of time. What I know for sure is, I need to draw and work on shade and light for a while. Luckily, I have the sense of form and shape, and my previous paintings never turned out bad, but botanical illustration needs to be done precisely. In that respect, I am setting my first assignment as ‘line drawing’ without any details or shading.

We all have our own distractions in our lives, but we meet at a certain place that we all love painting. Those are the moments we float in the air by accompany of the music. If you feel the same way I do, and if you also have similar insecurities about your drawings, join me in these assignments and share them here.

Time table. Assignment should be completed in 11 days (orange area).

Starting from today, we have 11 days to complete our first assignment which is a plenty of time. Depending on the material you pick, amount of the pieces we finish may vary. However I want to set it at least 5 pieces of line drawing of different materials. Who is in?

Hyoscyamus reticulatus

Hyoscyamus reticulatus
Kars, Turkey
2009
by Tulay Yilmaz

When the illustration course was over, we conducted an exhibition free to public. Everyone was standing next to their paintings and giving information about the process and the plants. However, it turned out to be the locals knew the plants better than we  did. One of the villagers said the fruits of this plant is poisonous and causes hallucinations.  I was already warned not to be too close, or touch to the plant during my drawing and painting but seeing people knowing the plants around them and talking from experience was pretty sweet.