Thursday 7 June 2012

Merlin

Falco columbarius
finished watercolour
© Lala Ragimov 2012

underdrawing
© Lala Ragimov 2012

my model (with a bit of a fish-eye lens distortion)

Thursday 24 May 2012

Botanical sketching

Did some 30-50 min sketches of Southern California native plants at the Madrona Marsh nature centre.

Catalina snapdragon
Galvesia speciosa
Watercolour sketch,
9x12in
©Lala Ragimov

Desert mallow
Sphaeralacea ambigua
Watercolour sketch,
9x12in
©Lala Ragimov

Firecracker plant
Dichelostemma ida-maia
Watercolour sketch,
9x12in
©Lala Ragimov


Brodia sp.
Watercolour sketch,
9x12in
©Lala Ragimov


Thursday 3 May 2012

Lesser goldfinch

Finished the lesser goldfinches - it's my fist time working from a skin - much more difficult than from a stuffed bird.  Had to use imagination and some photos for the poses, and used the skin for the details of feather patterns and texture.  Having to invent made the final result look a bit archaic I think! What would be really interesting to do is to work from live birds, too bad they don't have any at Madrona Marsh nature centre.

Lesser goldfinch (Carduelis psaltria)
© Lala Ragimov 2012

the model

Sunday 29 April 2012

Starting

I created this blog while in the middle of working on a series of paintings for an exhibition at the nature centre of Madrona Marsh, a local preserve.  At this point I have three landscapes, two bird illustrations and two botanical illustrations.  The show will consist of studies of the marsh and the species of plants and animals that inhabit it as well as a couple of inventive paintings inspired by those studies.  The bulk of the work will be scientific illustration, which is a return after a long pause to a genre I really love working in.

Also projected is my coming back to portrait painting, and later, to figurative painting, after four years of focusing mostly on still lifes, figure drawings, and copies.  It's something I've been wanting to do for a while and I'm curious about the results and whether I will decide to continue with it or come back to still life.

Updates:
2012 was filled with drawings from the antique I did at the Getty Villa and with numerous scientific illustrations after the specimens at Madrona Marsh Nature Centre. Also as always I painted commissions in oil and some still lifes for myself.
In 2013 I dedicated a lot of time to reading, translating and online writing on the topic of technical art history as well as exchanging ideas with curators and other wonderful specialists.  In connection with that I created several serious old master drawing copies.  I also created four oil-painted commissions and did finally paint a figurative painting again, a Danae.  I also started learning printmaking and created seven prints.