World Watercolor Month Week 4

It's hard to believe there is only one week left of the amazing World Watercolor Month! There are now almost 4000 artists in the group! And the quality of the pieces submitted are phenomenal! I'm glad I got to participate in this. And tomorrow, I ho back to work, for inservice. So hopefully, I will be able to participate until the end. So here are some of my watercolor pieces from this week.

July 18

I've had this quote in my journal for quite some time and when I saw in my mind how I wanted to illustrate it, it took me no time to get this done. Well, except that you have to wait for each layer to dry before deepening each color, because watercolors are transparent so in order to have rich colors, you have to layer. I used my Shinhan watercolors because they are bright in general and the set I have came with Opera Pink. It's not a color often used in fine art because it's one of the fugitive pigments, which means over time, the color can change. But I think I'm fine. I've used Mr. Poindexter's poems a few times and I just love his writing!

July 19

This was my day to play with wet-on-wet technique where you let watercolors do its thing. While one pigment is wet, you drop another color nearby (when the paper is wet) and colors will run towards each other. The piece on the tight was my feeble attempt at a impressionistic bouquet painting. And I absolutely love the quote because it's something I tell myself all the time.

July 20

I got a haircut on Tursday and in honor of it, I wanted to paint a selfie.. Here is the original.. 

I usually do a portrait when looking straight ahead so I wanted to try a different angle. I first glued a piece of sheet music by Bach that I've been trying to learn for years. And I also write the wave equation that describes the string vibrations. In my mind, they describe the two half of myself. I think art connects the two for me. The colors are somewhat muted because I used gesso over the sheet music and the equation to lighten them and I couldn't get the colors to deepen.

July 21

For this, I didn't have much in mind except, well, circles. I painted, dropped colors, and when dry, inked with a sharpie pen. Sometimes, going in circles is therapeutic.

July 22

I saw this image on a friend's Facebook page and I was immediately drawn to it. Nature has a way of warning other creatures to stay away from bright colors but some silly humans like me are drawn to it instead. I hope I never run into a real one. This is a red velvet ant, though it's not even an ant. This is a female version of a particular wasp and they are wingless and thus the ant-like body. I read that it's sting is quite severe. So stay away!!

July 23

I drew my friend, Charlie O'Shields in a superhero costume because I think he is quite impressive getting this whole World Watercolor Month started and organized. And he told me he would be a superhero if he could have a colbalt teal cape so that's what I gave him. He was quite happy with the "costume". Hehe

July 24

And finally, today's piece. You might be asking why are there four plates of challah French toast? Well, in one of the discussions in the WWM FB group, someone said in order to compare the different brands of paints, you should use them to see how they interact with other paints, whether the same pigments will actually produce the same color. And since I have several different brands of artist quality paints, I wanted to test them by painting the same subject. So I drew the first and made a copy of it and traced the rest. I used Daniel Smith paints for 1, Sennelier for 2, Holbein for 3, and Shinhan for 4. And for the first time, I used a 100% cotton hot pressed paper. It just means the paper is super smooth. I really liked how the paint glides over the surface! 

Though I didn't have all the same pigments from the four brands except for ultramarine blue, I tried to use similar colors to produce the image. I must say Amy favorite is #2, the Holbein. I love how the colors blended well and the intensity was easy to achieve. My second favorite is #1. I must say this might have been my first choice had I not overworked the piece. I think because this was the first one I painted, the need to be as exact as I could made me overwork some areas. It took me less than 5 minutes to paint #3 and 4. 

Overall, my favorite ultramarine blue is by Daniel Smith and I like the burnt umber too. I enjoy using all four sets of paint but the next time I'm working on a hit press paper, Im definitely going to grab my Holveins or Daniel Smiths. 

And I also used masking fluid for the white areas in #2-#4. But the blunt end of my paint brush was too thick as the masked area just looks like a blob of white instead of the fine dusting of powdered sugar. For the first, I used a white gel pen to create the dusting. Pure watercolorists would cringe at me using a white pen.. Oh well.

There are other pieces I created as cards and greetings but I won't share those. Next weekend when the month ends, I may do a video.. Stay tuned! Have a great week!

MLK Day

I have used quotes by Dr. Martin King Jr. in my art before, but I had never seen this one before. It seems so fitting today, with fear driving some of the presidential campaigns today. 

Fear certainly is a powerful motivator. Kids certain know it, and people who abuse power knows it too. And though I think a little fear is good to get you motivated to do the right thing, it shouldn't be the primary motivation. People in the position of power, whether you're a parent or a leader of a group or country who use fear to "control" others cannot sustain loyalty or command respect. People will follow only until the threat of fear is gone. So the leaders create more fear, more lies to sustain their power.

And who will help us build our dikes of courage? 

Yesterday was Tikkun Olam day at our synagogue. Tikkun Olam roughly translates to repair the world. It is a day for our congregational community to get together to give back to our community at large, do some charity work. Girls and I particles in making mats for the homeless out of plastic grocery bags.

This is not a quick job. It took us two hours to make one panel and it takes 4 panels to make a mat! We brought home two looms so the girls can continue to make them throughout the year. And I'm going to crochet a mat whenever I can. I just have to do the prep work of creating strips of plastic and making a ball of "yarn." I feel like we have a lot to be thankful for. Even with all that happened last year, we never worried about not having a place to live or be hungry. I think this is something our family can do..

So for today's art, I sketched MLK using only two colors, pyrrole scarlet and phthalo blue. It's amazing what two colors can create!

And over the weekend, my prompt for Saturday was "how I relax" and for Sunday it was "favorite shoes." So here they are..

I often read and listen to music on my phone. I have my phone with me all the time and I love to read. It just makes sense.

Other than flip flops, I love my Dansko clogs. These are shoes that many nurses and doctors wear because they are so comfortable. They aren't the prettiest pair of shoes but they are definitely comfortable!

My girls and I are going to watch MLK's "I have a dream" speech on YouTube. It's our MLK day tradition. And maybe work on the mats.

Favorite Sci-Fi Character

Stanley Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of my favorite science fiction movies. With minimal dialog, ambiguous themes and lack of special effects, this movie differs so much from the current record-setting Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But I love both.

It's been awhile since I've seen the movie so I won't talk about the film, but every time I've seen it, it was with a group of friends and I loved the discussions the movie generated about the relationship between humans and machines, artificial intelligence and the origins of the universe. Pretty nerdy stuff. But what can I say, I'm a nerdy gal and proud of it too. And that quote! Lol...

But I'm here to talk about the art.

The background was done with Inktense block and applied with a baby wipe. I find that the baby wipe is the most effective way to get color to go on smoothly. The lens part was done using Daniel Smith watercolors and I used Pyrrol Scarlet and Phthalo Blue. You're thinking "what?" 

Since the center is orangish red, I wanted  the whole gradation to black to contain that same red. You see the color mixing chart I created comes in handy for something like this. I used varying amounts of Pyrrole Scarlet and Phthalo Blue to achieve the gradation.

If you ever have extra time, I'd encourage you to create your own mixing chart because you may be surprised by the range of colors you can make with just two colors.

More Coffee, Anyone?

Yesterday, I found a local art supply store, not a hobby store like Michael's but a real art supply store. It's not quite as big as Blick's but certainly small enough that you could look at every single item there. I have been thinking about buying artist's grade watercolors and I finally bought a few. There are so many colors to choose from but I settled on the essential kit plus quinacridone gold. I should probably have gone with quinacridone orange but maybe next time.

With these 7 colors, you can mix to produce so many different colors. Daniel Smith also provides a handy PDF to show you how.

http://www.danielsmith.com/docs_pdf/daniel-smith-watercolor-guide.pdf

I am really excited to try these but Im afraid to use them for everyday art. But how crazy is that? 

Today's daily art isn't what I had imagined at first but I'm happy with it. The prompts were:

Tinker lab - drip

Dawn Nicole - tree

Let's sketch it - cuppa 

I was imagining a tree with coffee cups overflowing with coffee but instead I decided to go with coffee beans. I was able to play with my new paints to create different Browns.

If there were coffee trees that would drop coffee into my mug, that certainly would be a tree of life because I would be unbearable without coffee. 😊

Have a creative day!