Elderberry Blossom Artful Things

Watercolor chickadees on branches with red berries, by Conni Schaftenaar. A pair of winter-loving chickadees perch in a tree offering luscious red berries for their winter repast. Payne's Gray and Quin. Red, with a tiny touch of Cerulean in the background and some Raw Sienna for the buff-colored undersides of the birds.

Bumblebee on Purple Flower spatter art, by Conni Schaftenaar A loose watercolor with spatters of a bumblebee on a purple flower.

Drunken Forest Bubbly Abstract Trees, Alcohol Ink on Yupo, by Conni Schaftenaar Found this digging around in some old paintings and realized I hadn't "quite" finished it by adding the tree trunks and branches throughout. So after doing that, I decided I liked it enough to share on FAA - hope you like it too! I named it based on the "alcohol" content and the "bubble trees" reminded me of bubbly champagne. Letting the ink drop onto the Yupo in single droplets gives this effect - fun to play with!

Sunlit Birches, a watercolor batik on Ginwashi rice paper, by Conni Schaftenaar. From my imagination. This was the first one I did with this idea, and I did another on my gallery with birch trees in autumn. I enjoy the process of batik, deciding what to coat with wax to protect, layering colors and depth.

Clear Creek in Golden Colorado, watercolor painting by Conni Schaftenaar From a photo I took in Golden Colorado in 2004.

Colorful Tulips in Watercolor Batik, watercolor batik on rice paper, by Conni Schaftenaar This is one of the three paintings I submitted back in October 2022 to the 2023 Tulip Time Poster competition. It did not make the cut, but another of my paintings did! I wanted to make tulips GLOW in a dark background. I did many washes of color to create that negative painting dark background, and different levels of wax to protect the leaves and stems that were built out of those layers of color.

Evening Tulips, Watercolor on Masa paper, 2023 Tulip Time Top 20 choice, by Conni Schaftenaar This painting was done to submit to an annual local competition for our Tulip Time Festival in Holland, MI - this is one of the largest tulip festivals in the country, with several hundred thousand visitors coming for about a week and a half in May. A number of years ago, a competition was started for local artists to produce art that could be sold as posters and t-shirts. I have been in the Top 20, from which the poster for the year is chosen, more than once - a heady experience!

Word art created from my original alcohol ink painting Sunrise Garden Explosion - Love Life!

Word art made from my original alcohol ink work entitled Sunrise Garden Explosion - Live Life In Color!

Word art created from my original alcohol ink painting called Fantasy Flowers - Life Life In Color!

Word art made from my original alcohol Ink painting called Autumn Tree advises Live Life In Color!

Word art created from my original alcohol ink art on tile named Blue Gold Abstract - Life is Art Be The Artist!

Word Art LOVE made from my original alcohol ink painting Sunrise Garden Explosion

Word Art LOVE LIFE from my original alcohol ink flower doodle painting

Word art made from my original abstract watercolor landscape: Life Is Art Be The Artist

word art made from my watercolor painting Lace on the Beach

My watercolor Surf's Up wave art in word form - Life's a Beach!

Word art created from a watercolor painting I did entitled Surf's Up - showing Michigan The Great Lakes State

White garden blossoms in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe, watercolor on paper. Recently the artist guild to which I belong had as the work topic of our meeting to paint in the style of a favorite major artist. I chose Georgia, because I love to paint flowers and I LOVE her floral watercolors. I have a long way to go, so I titled this Ode to Georgia 2, and I'm doing some more to try to get just a little closer in style to this master of the medium! I hope you enjoy this and find it an acceptable first step in my quest! Reference photo is mine - a photo of potato blossoms in my summer garden, taken on my farm in West Michigan several years ago. Can you believe the beautiful blossoms a lowly potato plant produces? This painting is...

White clematis in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe, watercolor on paper. Recently the artist guild to which I belong had as the work topic of our meeting to paint in the style of a favorite major artist. I chose Georgia, because I love to paint flowers and I LOVE her floral watercolors. I have a long way to go, so I titled this Ode to Georgia 3, and I'm doing some more to try to get just a little closer in style to this master of the medium! I hope you enjoy this and find it an acceptable first step in my quest! Ultramarine Blue, Sap Green tempered with some Burnt Sienna for the leaves and stems, and a violet for shadows made from Ultramarine and Permanent rose. Flower center is New Gamboge. Reference photo is mine - a photo of ...

White wild morning glories in watercolor in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe. Recently the artist guild to which I belong had as the work topic of our meeting to paint in the style of a favorite major artist. I chose Georgia, because I love to paint flowers and I LOVE her floral watercolors. I have a long way to go, so I titled this Ode to Georgia 1, in anticipation of doing some more to try to get just a little closer in style to this master of the medium! I hope you enjoy this and find it an acceptable first step in my quest! Reference photo is mine - a photo of wild bind weed or morning glories taken on my farm in West Michigan several years ago. My husband hates them and tries to eradicate them; I love them and I'm glad that so ...

White cosmos in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe, watercolor on paper. Recently the artist guild to which I belong had as the work topic of our meeting to paint in the style of a favorite major artist. I chose Georgia, because I love to paint flowers and I LOVE her floral watercolors. I have a long way to go, so I titled this Ode to Georgia 5, and I'm doing some more to try to get just a little closer in style to this master of the medium! I hope you enjoy this and find it an acceptable first step in my quest! I used granulating colors (a blend of Sap, Burnt Sienna, and a little Ultramarine Blue) in the background and lifted out the tangle of grasses around the flower. The only grasses painted positive are the pieces that cross the ...

Yellow iris in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe, watercolor on paper. Recently the artist guild to which I belong had as the work topic of our meeting to paint in the style of a favorite major artist. I chose Georgia, because I love to paint flowers and I LOVE her floral watercolors. I have a long way to go, so I titled this Ode to Georgia 4, and I'm doing some more to try to get just a little closer in style to this master of the medium! I hope you enjoy this and find it an acceptable first step in my quest! I used granulating colors (a blend of Sap, Burnt Sienna, and a little Ultramarine Blue) in the background and did negative painting around some leaves and lifted out some grasses and leaves around the flower. Reference phot...

Gentle waves lap on the beach, with beautiful blues, teals and purples in the water, foamy "lace" on the beach.

A blue heron stands in a body of water in front of a bank covered in tall grasses with yellow seed heads.

A lovely bunch of green grapes ready for harvest, painted in watercolor on tissue paper.

Three pink tulips watercolor batik on rice paper.

A branch of beautiful apple blossoms, painted in watercolor on Masa paper. Love that "batik" like crackle!

A watercolor batik painting done from a photo I took years ago in Holland, Michigan during our annual Tulip Time Festival. The tulip bed was rich black soil, so my closeup photo showed a dark background, which I used in this painting to make the colors pop.

I painted this as part of a watercolor class involving batik on rice paper - loved painting on rice paper, as the melding of watercolors for the background was just so interesting! I did a minimal amount of color (batik) in deep purple after waxing, mostly to enhance the lower left background. Hope you enjoy the vibrant colors in this work!

I couldn't resist the play on words of naming this "Iris Lace". As a long-time crocheter, I have crocheted and absolutely love the 3D texture and intricacies of Irish Lace. I had chosen a photo of an iris I have that I had filtered in Photoshop to be in bright neon colors (see this image on my gallery). The original photo was taken by a friend at my house, and she graciously has allowed me to use her photo. Our watercolor class was challenged to create a watercolor painting utilizing some sort of patterning as part of the painting. Some people were using stencils to add or lift off color, some used stamps and other devices. I used a fine piece of machine-made edging lace I had and, after pouring very light Thalo Blue and dropping in ...

I am an ardent recyler/reuser of items . . . I had a sheet of Arches Hot Press paper I had practiced doing wet-into-wet flooding of colors. That board had laid around for months - I liked the color combos, but it wasn't really an "abstract" I felt I could post as is. When our watercolor class was challenged to do negative paintings of autumn leaves, I decided to see if I could use that sheet. I lifted color in some areas to lighten some of the darker blues and greens inside of leaf shapes, then darkened around them, adding the layers behind. I hope you like the way it turned out, and it was fun to go back to an old work and see what else could be done with it!

Using watercolor paper in the background with night sky colors poured and tilted and blended; then painted rocks on mulberry paper and tore them out and mounted them. Painted black acrylic on a long-fiber rice paper and tore it into strips to glue down and create the large foreground tree. After all was dry, painted some mid- and background trees in watercolor and spattered white gouache for a light snowfall.

Watercolor on paper, wet washes for background areas and misty trees, used a piece of plastic to scrape color patches onto the birch trees.

An enticing view through sun-dappled trees - what lies beyond in the sunlit area? Pink impatiens and green hosta leaves in the foreground.

Watercolor painting of a walnut tree silhouetted against a beautiful pink sunrise.