World Watercolor Month 2017

It's been a year since my last blog.  I thought about deleting the blog several times because as a teacher, I know my students and their parents can find my posts.  Do I want that kind of exposure? And of course the main issue for me was time.  After years of absence from teaching, preparation consumed most of my time.  And if you follow me on Instagram you know that I was creating and journaling but I just didn't have the energy to blog.  Now, after one complete year of teaching plus summer school (I taught Geometry), I may have some breathing room.

Plus, July is officially the World Watercolor Month started by Charlie O'Shields at Doodlewash. The challenge, of course, is to create a watercolor sketch everyday in July.  It was a huge success last year and this year is off to a great start.  This July, I'm committed to using all the watercolor products I have. As you can see, I have quite a stash.

July 1:  Akashiya SAI Watercolor Brush Markers

I purchased these almost two years ago and used them in my stone paper journal.  Colors are very vivid and the brush maintains a sharp point so you can really vary the line width.  These are great for handlettering. 

July 2:  Lyra Aquarelle Crayons

I won these in a Giveaway.  Most artists prefer the more expensive Neocolor II crayons but I think these are just as good.  The only drawback to these is that you can't buy single crayon to replace. But I don't think I am going to be running out of any single color anytime soon.

I started out by dabbing the colors in and use my brush to spread the colors.  I did go back and pick up more color directly from the crayon to add highlights and shadows.  I will definitely use these again when I do more florals.

July 3:  Windsor & Newton Half Pans
These were my first "professional" grade paints I purchased.  What I love about this particular set is that all the primaries and other essenetials come in warm and cool tones.  What that means is that you can create so many other colors by mixing them.  They wet easily and mix well.  You can also purchase individual cakes if you needed to replace a color.  I use burnt umber and ultramarine the most out of any set so it's important for me to be able to replace individual colors.

July 4:  Koi Watercolor Set
These are very saturated colors but they tend to be more opaque than transparent.  I don't use these much any more because of the opaqueness.  But if you want the chalky look, which I did for this painting, it's perfect!

Over the last year, I've tried creating Islamic Geometry art.  I will do blog post about my adventure into this art form later.  I created a motif using a compass and a ruler.  I then traced my motif and repeated the pattern to create the star-page.  It's great to combine my two loves, math and art!

July 5:  Kuretake Gansai Tambi
These are lovely watercolors, but for me, there's nothing remarkable about them.  I will definitely use them but will not purchase again.

Arizona sunrises and susets are incredible.  And just about everywhere you look, there are mountains and cacti!

July 6: Jane Davenport Watercolors
Jane Davenport is known for whimsical faces (girls) and I've taken two workshops from her.  She now has her own line of mixed media art supplies (and I own many of them). Her watercolor sets come in two different shades, neutral and brights.  I used the brights for the background and the neutrals for the arms.  These are not pure pigments so mixing them can sometimes produce weird colors.  And it's difficult to layer colors on top of each other without stripping the previous layers.  But she put together some fun colors so you don't really need to mix them.

There are many changes happening in my life currently.  My son is off to college in a month, my middle child is learning to drive and my youngest is starting high school.  It's tough letting go sometimes

July 7:  Sennelier Watercolor Half Pans
These are lovely watercolors and next to Daniel Smith, are my favorites.  The colors are vibrant, they wet well, and mixes beautifully.

I'm hoping to post every week, at least through July sharing my contribution to the World Watercolor Month.  I'm also thinking about posting my bullet journal pages on Sundays.  As always, if you'd like to follow my daily journal entries, you can follow me on Instagram!

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!

World Watercolor Month - Week 3

I can't believe we are half way through the month already! This past week for me was getting back to my "roots" and doing more journal art rather than art pieces. And as much as I love seeing others' works, I found myself trying to create pieces that others would appreciate or acceptable rather than what I find inspirational. So I'm trying to learn from others but apply the learning to my style, if that makes sense. So here are the pieces from this past week!

Day 11

I had jury duty on Monday so I took my art supplies with me to pass the time. Good thing too, as I waited 6 hours and being excused. Luckily, I won't have to appear for at least 18 months. I found I don't like people staring at me while I painted. It's natural for people to be curious, but I kinda had performance anxiety.. Lol. 

Day 12

So if you have been following my art process, you know I usually start with a quote. I thought about things that scare me artistically.. There lots of things of course but I chose painting glass. It's difficult because of caustics (how glass reflects and refracts light) and dealing with different shadows and highlights. So I tried painting my olive oil carafe. I think for the most part I was successful. Green is so hard to render. Most greens that come in a kit or you buy are bright Christmas green and that's not what most greens in nature are. So you have to mix. What I found helpful is a YouTube video by Teoh Yi Chie about color mixing. So I used his method of using the color temperature to mix my greens.

Day 13

Today's focus was people. In my journal, I painted Dustin Pedroia, the second baseman of the Boston Redsox who happens to be my son's favorite player. The night before was the All-Star game and though Dustin was not chosen, I wanted to try to paint him. The second piece was done in my journal last year but I wanted to do it on a larger sheet so I can have it printed. I've been playing with creating skin tones so this was a great exercise. I'm liking Perylene Maroon as my red for skin tones.

Day 14

I practiced brush lettering with watercolors. Brush lettering with brush markers is hard enough but trying to use watercolors and blending the colors is really hard. So I practiced and created this.

Day 15

I had drawn a pair of eggplants in my journal the day before because I made baba ganoush which is a creamy dip made from roasted eggplants. And for day 15, I thought I'd created an illustrated recipe spread. Though both sets of eggplants look good, Ibreally liked the first better - I thought the color and the reflection were better in the first. 

Day 16

I have these inkpads that are dew drop shape. They are India ink pads which means once dry, they are permanent. So I used the inkpads to stamp a few dew drops on watercolor strips and immediately sprayed with water. Some of the ink ran but the shape remained. And while the paper was wet, I added watercolors. Once the whole thing dried, I used metallic gelly roll pens to draw embellishments. These will be bookmarks, though my kids said who uses bookmarks anymore.. Lol

Day 16.2

Here is a spread with lots of zentangle patterns and shaded with Neutral Tint (watercolor paint that is grayish). It's so much easier to shade with paint than with a pencil and a blending stump!

And finally Day 17

I used two colors, Quinacridone Gold and Ultramarine Violet and a straw to create this piece. I used water to create the flower shape and dropped quin gold and used the straw to blow. While wet, I dropped ultramarine violet. Together, they make mud, or a cool brown. Once dry, I dropped more violet so you can see a bit of the violet. I've been holding on to this quote for awhile and thought perfect with this painting. But I almost ran out of space!

This month so far has been so fun. I actually have to start planning for the upcoming school year next week and I actually have to go back to work the last week in July! I'm so happy that I got to spend time creating again. Hope you all have a great week!

World Watercolor Month Week 2

Here are the pieces from Monday, July 4 - Sunday, July 10.

What you see above is Day 10. I used my compass to create the "seed of life" drawing which I've done before. This time, however, I used watercolors to to color the negative space. This ended up being more of a color study than a completed piece. I used three colors from Daniel Smith - Quinacridone Gold, Perylene Maroon and Neutral Tint. Using two colors at a time, I created several colors. Plus I added salt while the paint was wet to create the texture. I may use this again for othe tri-color combos.

Day 9

Sometimes when I'm stuck for an idea, I just draw myself drawing in my journal. It's a good practice to draw the hand. I'm disappointed in how light the hand is.. I always forget watercolors dry so much lighter. 

Day 8

Many things in nature follow a spiral pattern, petals in a flower, how leaves arrange themselves, pineapple rind, etc. There is a special sequence called Fibonacci numbers that appear quite a bit in nature. The sequence is simple, you start with 1 and and you add the previous.. So the sequence goes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc. These numbers appear in nature. For example, the number of petals in a flower is one of the Fibonacci numbers. If you divide the two consecutive Fibonacci numbers, the quotient approaches 1.618 as you go higher in the sequence. That number is called the golden ratio. There is a relationship between the golden ratio and how petals are arranged. Ok, enough math. So I used my math knowledge to create the flower above. Pretty needy but so cool.. 

Day 7

My new favorite color is Neutral Tint by Daniel Smith. It's a wonderful grey/black on its own and it's great with mixes with other colors. So I used neutral tint in my journal and dropped tiny alcohol drops. Alcohol repels water and moves the color out to produce this light puff. 

Day 6

Here is another math related art. This is a tessellation art. Tessellation is just repeated patterns. You can slide, rotate or do a combination of both. I created a pattern out of a triangle and created a rotational tessellation art. The cool thing is trying to "see" what the pattern shows. I saw a bird, a butterfly, and a fish and decided to go with birds and butterflies. I should have gone with the fish. But I'm happy with the results. I decided to go with analogous colors (next to each other on the color wheel) for each. And I used a quote by MC Escher, who is know for his amazing mind-bending tessellation and optical illusions.

Day 5

Ok, the only watercolors you see are on the small piece of art.. I made that for a Facebook friend who is not doing well physically. But I also created that cool zentangle piece. I love transforming one pattern into something else. 

Day 4:

I actually worked on two pieces because I got up at 3:30 am and couldn't go back to sleep. So I fished one piece and started another. I love both quotes. The bamboo fountain piece was done in a realistic method so it took awhile it to complete. I used to love to watch these bamboo fountains as they fill and and empty. The second one was done without a pencil or pen for pre-drawing. All was done with watercolors. I was happy with the result..

So this concludes the second week. There are over 3000 artists that are part of this group on Facebook and it's amazing the talent! Check out the hashtag #worldwatercolormonth on various social media for pieces submitted!

Check out the website to order merchandise that benefit the Dreaming Zebra Foundation to provide art supplies for underprivileged children.

July is World Watercolor Month!

My friend, Charlie O'Shileld over at Doodlewash petitioned to have July be the official month dedicated to watercolors! And Charlie has challenged artists from all over the globe to participate in 31 watercolors in 31 days. Check out the details here.

I can't wait to participate! Hope you can too!