Category: Prints and Paintings

Art prints and paintings by Elizabeth Ruffing

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Lop-eared Bunny

I have added a lop rabbit to my sketchbook menagerie. I am trying to stay the course and make them into watercolor paintings. I have a terrible time trying to make decisions about “how” to do things. There are sooooo many options. I am always trying to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution, something everyone would like. And that’s just crazy.

My current distraction has been that people seem to have a preference for paintings on canvas, at least when collecting originals, but I know that my work will be of better quality at this size if I work in watercolor. I’d like to expand my portfolio of artwork, for licensing and for printmaking, and quality is important to me. Things just get twisted up in my mind when I try to incorporate marketing everything into what I am doing. But, then, do you ever know your market? Opportunities come along that you never anticipated, and it seems that you should have been doing that other thing you came up with last year. Or someone wants that painting for which you never thought you’d find a use.

Underneath the tranquil, pretty, or whimsical exterior of all your work, lies a long sequence of risks. Maybe it’s called “art” in recognition of the skill you exhibit in choosing what to let show in your work.

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“Love is the Sweetest Thing” Treasury on Etsy

Deidre at dedesbeads included my “Angels’ Kiss”, also know as “Peace and Love”, in her Etsy treasury “Love is the Sweetest Thing”. Thanks Deidre!

The print is available on our Ruffing’s site here, and in my Etsy shop. I imagined it as a heavenly reunion when I painted the original watercolor, and even when I’ve posted it as “Peace and Love” (white lilies for peace and red roses for love), I’ve been told it represented a heavenly reunion to someone else. It’s one of those paintings that touches some people on a very personal and private level, when they have a story of their own that ties into it. So I feel, in regard to the painting, saying less is more when talking about it.
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Sick Days and Ducks in the Rain

In between sketching and resting, I watched the goings-on in our backyard. This is one of the first iris of the season. I ran out and got a photo just before the rain started here. It blooms faithfully, but I cannot remember its name. I will have to look it up sometime. I took some artistic license with the color of this iris for my “Jubilee” watercolor.

“Jubilee” was one of many paintings (and other projects) that I started and finished years later. I believe I had painted the iris in the upper left, and most everything else, except for the remaining matching two iris. There was something I didn’t like about the already painted iris, like the direction the light was coming in from, and so I intensified its color so I could move the shadows. The existing dark areas became the new light areas. With watercolor, you can’t just paint over what you’ve done, and so you have to get creative when you want to change something. That’s how all the iris ended up much richer in color than my model. I thought it looked quite joyous when I was done, which is why I named it “Jubilee”.

Once the rain started, we got some visitors. We used to have geese wandering through, and I was sad when they disappeared. This year, we have ducks on the pond down the hill, and they wandered up in the pouring rain to nibble on our unmowed grass.

I got a little wet photographing them, and my zoom lens doesn’t zoom as much as I might like. Still, they are awfully cute.

Not long after the ducks showed up, a pair of rabbits came to play leap frog, or leap bunny? I didn’t manage to get a picture of them, but they were very amusing, running and leaping over each other. At one point they each anticipated a charge by the other and leapt, simultaneously, straight up in the air.

“Afternoon Delight“! That’s the name of the iris. It just came to me!