Art Day—Dogwoods

I was sitting on my patio last night waiting for time to turn the flank steak on the grill, and I was admiring my neighbors' dogwoods. Their backyard is natural with woodsy trees and ground cover with a few dogwoods sprinkled here and there. The blossoms act like speckles among the brown and green with the blue sky as the backdrop. So, after dinner, I painted.

Here is the first attempt at dogwoods not using my neighbors' backyard for inspiration.

Mmmmeh, I said to myself and tried again. With their yard in mind, I came up with this. A little better maybe, but not quite what I'm looking for. I'll have to work on that.

With the paint left in the tray, I created a closeup of a budding plant.

And with a photo of No. 1's cat, Nicholas, in mind (left), here is a closeup of a cat. I used frisket to mask out the whiskers and learned something—don't try to remove the frisket until the paper around it is dry. Otherwise, you just dig a big hole with the eraser. I used Photoshop to fix the error and will keep the lesson learned in mind for next time. I also used Photoshop to severely adjust the contrast because the black I had mixed was too thin and gray. Another lesson learned.