Messing around with paint Arena Shawn style: Abstract

Anyone who has seen Arena Shawn's incredible watercolors (which I am sure includes most everyone who sees this post) will recognize the colors and similar technique in this abstract flower painting.  I wanted to see how she achieved the dynamic backgrounds in her paintings.  So I put some greens in with Davys Gray.  Then I dropped some yellows and reds and messed around with shapes and scrubbing.  I've mentioned before how I don't really enjoy painting flowers.  That doesn't mean I don't enjoy seeing them painted by artists as accomplished as Arena Shawn (TTSIC blog). And if anyone can inspire one to paint flowers, it is her.  It was an enjoyable little exercise, and I learned some things I can use later in my still life painting.  Thanks Arena.

Foster Apartment sketch

A little sketch (5"X7") of those apartments behind the Art Supply store.  I'm trying to work a little more raw and gestural so that I can get more paintings done in a smaller amount of time.

Floating objects

Here is another candidate for a small framed piece.  This was done awhile back and is one of four floating objects I did. I dubbed it the skittles series because it was so contrived.  But singularly it doesn't look so bad.

I'll let you be the judge.  Here is the painting I separated this from.

Matting and framing

My friend Adlai Alexander asked if I could frame a couple of my pieces for him as well as a print done by another artist.  Basically, the top and bottom left two are a couple of sketches (obviously more finalized sketches) I did for him.  The bottom right is a  print of an illustration of him done by Hampton Rodriguez.
 I made a note to myself.  The top painting was intended to be a quick sketch, but it came out pretty good.  I shouldn't have used the cheap drawing paper.  There were some obvious defects in the paper that showed up.

Birch Tree final answer....

At some point early in the week, I decided that the effort I put into the (first) Birch Tree painting was insufficient.  Though I rarely do this I started it over.  The reason I rarely do a painting again is I feel that if I don't succeed, I will have wasted twice as much time on one thing.  Time doesn't allow me to waste time on one try, much less two tries.  But I felt strongly about this project.  There were elements in the first one that showed possibilities.   I took the reference photo at Gabriel Park last winter and had thought about it quite a few times.
To be honest, it's hard to go wrong with birch trees in the sense that the white bark makes it  immediately recognizable.  The angle looking up is appealing to the eye, and....it's a tree.  No one can accuse you of putting a branch in the wrong place.  Speaking of which, I found it a challenge to get the branch coming in from the right side of the painting to look right.  It followed the angle of the branch behind it, which made it look too symmetrical to the branch behind it.....If you want to read the boring details there's more below. 

Small Framed Paintings, Birch Tree started

I finally filled the 3 small frames that were Christmas gifts from my sister Paula and bro in law Scott.  I also started that painting of the birch tree.  More on this later.