Animal Pen and Inks from the late 1980s

Moms are so special, and my mom blew me away when she happily unearthed some old pen and inks from ages ago. I'd forgotten all about them, especially as after I drew them and began my professional career, all thoughts of art floated off in the breeze. [The breeze started to blow them back again about three years ago, and that's this blog story.]

Anyway, maybe the old pictures are worth posting. Disclaimer though, the elk and white-tailed deer pictures are from a National Geography book I found in my university library and was constantly borrowing. The only trouble is, I have no recall whatsoever of the title or even the year it was published, but certainly before the mid-1980s. If anyone knows, please please please share, because I so want to find and buy that book!

Pen and ink on A4 - 1988

Pen and ink on A4 - 1989

Pen and ink on A4 - 1990

Ball point pen on A4 copy paper ... what a shame not to have Bristol paper back then :( 

Playful Otters

Day 18 of the Asian-style painting challenge for November, the challenge annually hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. Something's lacking in this quick otter study ... I think it's value. Anyway, Chinese ink with Marie's Chinese watercolors on soft shikishi board, the painting medium that bleeds like crazy. I'm learning what to expect with this stuff, just need more practice. Thus, participating in this month-long painting challenge. It's fun too to practice every day ... although I'm falling behind on the schedule a bit.

Day 18 of the Asian painting challenge: Playful Otters on soft shikishi
Reference pict on Pinterest

Penguin Pals

Day 17 of the Asian-style painting challenge for November, the challenge annually hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. A quick splash of Chinese ink and touch of watercolor ... too tired after an intense all-day hike to do more ... but at least I contributed to the daily challenge. Time to make some ZZZZzzzzz!

Day 17: Penguin Pals, a quick 5-minute study for the daily challenge. ZZZzzzz time!

 

Hummer in the Honeysuckle

Day 16 of the Asian-style painting challenge for November, the challenge annually hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. Marie's Chinese watercolors and Chinese ink on shikishi board. 

Day 16: Hummer in the Honeysuckle
(photo reference)

Koi in the Pads

Day 14 of the Asian-style painting challenge for November, the challenge annually hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. Marie's Chinese watercolors and Chinese ink on shikishi board.

Day 14: Koi among and pads

Mama Panda and Baby

Day 14 of the Asian-style painting challenge for November, the challenge annually hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. Marie's Chinese watercolors and Chinese ink on soft shikishi (which bleeds terribly so is ideal for soft, fuzzy animals). 

Day 14: Mama Panda and Baby

Reference photo 

An Eagle Soars

Day 13 of the Asian-style painting challenge for November, the challenge annually hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. 

Day 13: Wings of the Eagle
Marie's Chinese watercolors and Chinese ink on shikishi board
reference painting by the amazing watercolorist Karl Martens

Reflecting on a Wood Duck

Day 12 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November, a challenge hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. 

Day 12: Reflecting on a Wood Duck
Marie's Chinese watercolors and ink on shikishi board

Lilies and Ladybugs

Day 11 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November, a challenge hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. 

Day 11: Lilies and Ladybugs
Marie's Chinese watercolors on shikishi board

Cranes at Dawn

Day 10 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November, the challenge annually hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. This is my favorite so far in this year's challenge.

Day 10 of the painting challenge: Cranes at Dawn
Marie's Chinese watercolors and Chinese Ink on soft shikishi
Reference for a Chinese Painting Crane Gallery

Apes with Afros

Day 9 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November, the challenge annually hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. I struggled with this one as the soft shikishi can't take much moisture, so with the diluted ink in my brush the ink just blossomed, and that's one thing that Chinese ink does oh so very well! Still, I'm quite satisfied with how I captured the faces; they are the one saving grace for this blobby painting.

Day 9 of the painting challenge: Apes with Afros
Marie's Chinese watercolors and ink on soft shikishi
Reference: Cyril Blondeau's "Monkey with Baby"

Day 9 of the painting challenge: Apes with Afros
Marie's Chinese watercolors and ink on soft shikishi
Reference: Cyril Blondeau's "Monkey with Baby"

Family of Squirrels

Day 8 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November, the challenge annually hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook every June and November. Today's contribution is less like a traditional Asian-style brush painting than a western-style watercolor, but my intentions were to paint this pict with Asian-style simple brush-strokes in ink. That said, after I got the simplest pencil sketch for layout purposes on the paper, I realized that the details were too fine for the Chinese brushes to get sufficient detail, especially since the paper is soft shikishi known for bleeding anyway. So much for using only Chinese ink. Therefore, opted to use Marie's Chinese watercolors with only accents of Chinese ink. My mom loves this picture ... so that makes my heart feel good!

Day 8 of the Asian-style painting challenge: Family of Squirrels
Marie's Chinese watercolors and Chinese ink on soft shikishi
Reference: Pinterest picture

Prideful Peacock on Shikishi Board

Day 7 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November, a challenge hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. This isn't really a traditional Asian-style painting but am using Asian materials -- Chinese watercolors and Chinese ink on Japanese hard shikishi board. I didn't quite plan for it to turn out so "fairytale-like" as one of the comments on Facebook said, but the colors weren't blending. Shikishi board doesn't allow blending (excellent! I learned something else during this challenge) and so to make it look cohesive and less circus-stripe style, I added the Chinese ink. Even though the painting didn't turn out like I expected, I kind of like the end product. Very fanciful anyway.

Day 7 of the Asian-style painting challenge: Prideful Peacock on Shikishi Board
Marie's Chinese watercolors with Chinese ink

A Pair of Bunnies

Day 6 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November. The challenge is hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. Marie's Chinese watercolor with Chinese ink on soft shikishi, which is made of a thin mulberry paper on a thin but stiff cardboard. Evidently the mulberry paper doesn't like water ... as I was quickly to learn!

I'm using soft shikishi during this challenge for the first time, and this particular painting was a huge learning curve in new material. I assumed that soft shikishi was similar with board shikishi and so, wanting to make large swaths of ink with my brush, I liberally loaded the brush with ink. However, I quickly found out this paper has low tolerance for moisture and bleeds so easily. I painted the bunnies and they bloomed and bled. I repainted the edge along their bodies a couple of times to lessen the blooming and blossoming. Needless to say, I was not happy. That said, the blurring of lines did more or less go with the subject matter and did create softer bodies on the bunnies ... and weird blobs too. Still, I will note this problem, which several other OASlife members also made comment to the difficulties of liquid they've had with this material. The big reason in joining the OASlife painting challenge was to learn new techniques and materials ... and so today was a huge success!

Day 6 of the Asian-style painting challenge: A Pair of Bunnies
Marie's Chinese watercolors and Chinese ink on soft shikishi

Two Peepers Fishing

Day 5 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November. The challenge is hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. Marie's Chinese watercolor with Chinese ink on soft shikishi. 

Day 5 of the Asian painting challenge: Two Peepers Fishing
Idea referenced from a picture on Pinterest

Two Torpid Turtles

Day 4 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November. The challenge is hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. Wow, spent a bit of time on this contribution because the last few nights its been the 5-10 minute quickie submission. Erg, but I hate this one and if I had time, I would repaint. Ah well, we can't love everything we paint, but the artist would like the public to think that they are always successful with their creations. Not true. Anyway, my contribution for the day:

Day 4 of the Asian painting challenge: Two Torpid Turtles
Marie's Chinese watercolors and Chinese Ink on soft shikishi
(I kind of referenced Hokusai's turtles for this painting)

Thinkin' o' Somethin' t' Crow About

Day 3 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November. The challenge is hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook. Marie's Chinese watercolor with Chinese ink on hanji. 

Day 3 of the painting challenge: Thinkin' o' Somethin' t' Crow About

An Inky Feline

Day 2 of the Chinese-style painting challenge for November. The challenge is hosted by OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook, and while the group is hosted by the online Oriental Art Supply market, it certainly is NOT about marketing its product but just holding a forum for like-minded people to paint and interact among themselves at. There's a lot of support among the 563 members, and people dialog on their practice of birds, butterflies or lines, or sometimes the shows or classes they are participating in, or they ask questions on materials. I've joined a lot of painting sites (mostly watercolor) on Facebook over the past year, but this OASlife is one of my favorites. The people are consistent, supportive, not competitive or only marginally, and they offer a great artistic display of talent!

My contribution for Day 2 of the challenge, like yesterday, painted in only 5 minutes, but at least I like this contribution (hanji and Chinese ink): 

Day 2 of the painting challenge: An Inky Feline
Original source

"Angry-bird" in Chinese Ink

OASlife (Oriental Art Supply) on Facebook holds their annual Asian-style painting challenge for the month of November. Last year I participated even though my first love is watercolor painting, but I learned so-ooo much on a related artform that I decided to join again this year. 

To be more precise what I learned last year: 

• the importance of just a few strokes to create an image (wasn't very good at this)
• the importance of a single line
• the huge importance of value -- a very transferrable skill for watercolor painting!!!
• learning to use the Chinese watercolors which have more binder than western watercolors (really not much difference. The big difference between the painting mediums is the material which is painted on, not the paint itself!)
• and of course an introduction to different kinds of papers (the Chinese double and single shuen, raw shuen, semi-sized shuen .... I still don't know how to differentiate these), the Korean hanji paper and the Japanese rice paper, and the two kinds of Japanese shikishi called doobangji in Korea -- the two kinds being a soft shikishi made with mulberry paper mounted on a thin cardboard and the other of a more durable paper mounted on a heavier board and which can take a lot of water abuse!). So true: The paper or the medium that gets painted on is the big controlling factor for the final outcome! This I am continually learning!

So I'm back to learn more this year, but unfortunately this year I'm ultra busy. Tonight I was so tired and just before dropping into bed I remembered that today started the new painting challenge. So five minutes later I submitted and then dropped into bed. I really need to put some more thought into this challenge, or I won't feel good about myself at the end of the month. My shabby five-minute contribution:

Day 1 of the OASlife painting challenge: Evidently day of the angry-bird
Marie's Chinese watercolors on Korean hanji w/ touches of Chinese ink

OASlife members are very supportive, and even feeble efforts are supported, with a few people going out of their way to comment on every contribution ... amazing group support!  So, two back-to-back comments on this bird was: "LOVE the expression on that bird" and "That bird is just too much!" Well, I never saw an emotionally-expressive angry bird before either! 

Butterflies and Sunflowers

A best friend who I hadn't met for 28 years saw my online paintings and asked if I could paint her favorite flowers ... sunflowers! Of course I can. However, even though I love the colors of these, the perspective is a bit off, so will try again. That's how one learns anyway!

Attempted using gauze for the first time. Saw it on-line on Dr Oto Kano's YouTube channel and felt inspired to conveniently paint the textured sunflower centers that way. Only problem is my gauze is so narrow and doesn't stretch, which is fine if treating an injury but not for manipulating texture with watercolor. Note to self: get more gauze because the smaller sections really turned out well!

"Butterflies and Sunflowers" - DS Watercolor, Arches 130# 10" x 14"

Fish Pond and the Dog

Just a fun watercolor (Daniel Smith) 10" x 14". I'm not a dog person but my friend who wanted me to paint her dog and whimsically wished she could paint it in various minhwa (traditional Korean folk painting style) kind of inspired this piece. The style actually is a combo of minhwa and watercolor. Quite the fun painting to paint, esp getting the water "right", which actually turned out better than I planned.

I prefer this cropped version to the larger 10" x 14" pict (below).

"Fish Pond and the Dog" - DS Watercolor, 10" x 14" Arches 130# hot press

Sonja and Dog, Minhwa Painting

Sonja, tea master and minhwa painter (traditional Korean folk), wanted a picture of herself serving tea, her dog that is burned in incredible memory in her brain, and both sitting together under a wild plum tree with a traditional pavilion in the background.

"Serving Tea" - Sonja and Dog
Minhwa-style watercolor
Arches 11" x 14"

"Butterfly Dance" Mandala

With the outdoorsi-ness of summer over, I have time for the palette again. My second mandala, a dance of butterflies. Faber Castell watercolor pencils painted out with a water brush, micron pens (005, 05 and 08) and a Xeno brush pen, small. Just an FYI, the Microns have pretty good archival ink, but the Xeno does not, so it's not a good idea to even put a dab of water on the Xeno ink and expect it to stay put.

Sketchbook 10" x 13 3/4"

center of mandala - horizontal view

center of mandala - vertical view

"The Dance of Butterflies" Mandala - 10" x 13 3/4" with Faber Castell watercolor pencils

Horse Mandala

The Yeoksam Global Village Center (Seoul, S. Korea), a center for promoting cultural programs for expats in Korea, offered a month-long mandala class. Participants would meet once a week for two hours and, depending on the creativity and time spent, by the end of the month each participant would have created a personal mandala.

To reach this goal, participants are given a package of materials:

• a book, "My Nature Sound Therapy" (published in S. Korea by My Nature Sound Research Society, 2016)
• a 25cm x 39cm sketch book
• a package of markers
• a gold gel pen
• a two-piece stencil set
• an eraser

A tiny lecture begins each session but the majority of time is for creating a mandala while nature sounds are played. Music therapy at work! Participants are encouraged to hum along, but I find this VERY distracting! I'll find my inner zen just listening.

The examples in the book and with the instructors were all made with geometric shapes, hence the stencil set. Maybe I'm thinking out of the box, but mandalas don't have to be based on geometric shapes but can also be regularly patterned shapes, figures, whatever. So with this in mind, and since I love animals, my mandala started out as horses in perpetual flow, and later peacocks and fish were added. If you think about it, these animals represent all the sentient beings--those from the earth, from the air and from the water--very Buddhist thinking. I'm not Buddhist, but have lived here long enough to pick up quite a few cultural beliefs and symbolisms.

I also used watercolor pencils and Micron permanent ink markers (size .005, .02 and .08) instead of the supplies provided. Just seemed more suitable to the topic and because markers bleed through paper very easily and can't be layered.

After a total of 8 hours in broken sittings, I had completed my simple mandala.

Fun new experience, and my niece will get the materials now with a sample mandala in the sketch book. Think it'll be something she'd really like ... and have time for. 

Horses, peacocks, fish in perpetual motion

Art Deco Tulips

Day 10/30 of the #30x30DirectWatercolor painting challenge on Facebook. I won't be finishing this paint 30-consecutive-days challenge but it's been fun participating until my busy summer schedule kicks in. I've learned a lot more about color mixing, but mostly I've learned that I've been VERY dependent on presketching the basic shapes before laying down color, which limits spontaneity. I'll have to figure out strategies to develop myself as a more spontaneous painter. One strategy I used was in this painting -- I spontaneously masked with masking fluid where the tulip flowers, stems and fore-leaves would be. The masking created the overall shape of the painting so the rest was easy.

So, the tulips painted yesterday turned out a bit like art deco. I'm not too keen on the Canson cold-press watercolor paper, esp as Manganese Blue Hue Daniel Smith, salt and this paper all create granulating patterns. For this color and paper combo, the granulation process just doesn't work ... the color turns out very flat. Usually I've used Arches hot press paper and have loved how the colors, even Manganese Blue Hue, granulate on that paper. The Canson also buckles badly with much water,  despite being #140 lb. Live and learn. The Canson is inexpensive and is more suitable for casual plein air painting done with waterbrushes and not watery washes.

trial run .... I think I could fix it with a bit more time but wasn't liking how the leaves were turning out

second attempt - the background and main subject colors didn't have enough contrast so added the fine liner inking. Turned out kind of art deco, but kind of cool at the same time.

Art Deco Tulips

Bees and carnations on scrap paper

Doodling on scrap paper for the #30x30DirectWatercolor painting challenge, and I started liking my doodles better than the tulips I was working on. So here's my doodles paper.

Day 9/30 of the direct watercolor painting, which means directly laying down color without prepping with pre-sketching on the canvas. Thus my reason for "practicing" bees on scrap paper.

Surreal Moose

This was kind of a hilarious painting. Laid some orange down on the paper and absentminded put some blue sky beside it and suddenly the paint was dull. Hah! So I went with it. While I planned on having a vibrant orange painting, the shapes that started emerging were quite interesting .... and so no more orange was added, and the mountains took on a surreal wintry look. Added the moose as an afterthought to balance out the empty foreground. Kind of a bizarre surreal look overall but there is harmony in the end product ... although if someone had said I would be painting moose today, I would have laughed :)

Day 8/30 of the #30x30DirectWatercolor daily painting challenge (no pencil lines, just laying color on paper so rather challenging but definitely developmental).

Surreal moose - lol! 

Mandril Watercolor

Day 7 of the #30x30DirectWatercolor2018 painting challenge on Facebook. Had a hard time getting the perspective right without making an undersketching, and then had a miserable time getting the color contrast right. I'm realizing one of my biggest weaknesses is not saving white in the paper. Note to self: remember to retain white to get better contrast!

Mandril - Canson Montval 140lb cold pressed, 18.2 x 25.7cm

Toucan Popping a Berry

Day 6 for the #30x30DirectWatercolor2018 painting challenge. Now this picture painted directly on paper without preliminary lines or undersketching really worked, and I got the colors pretty well too. I am so in love with the Daniel Smith granulating primateks! They really made this picture great!

Toucan popping a berry

Canson Montval 140lb cold pressed, 18.2 x 25.7cm

Horse from the Mist

Day 5 for the #30x30DirectWatercolor2018 painting challenge. It's rather hard but challenging to paint directly, without lines or undersketching. It really helps a person develop ... but if I prefer the undersketching method as I can erase repeatedly until I get the shape and contours I like. And it would be easier to position the objects, case in point, my horse wouldn't be almost standing off the paper. Good development though to practice this way!

Lovely Red Flowers

What a muddle! When I got the flowers painted in, there wasn't enough contrast. Added dark greens and then it was too dark. Added white gouache and then the picture looked weak. More dark touches. A bit more white touches and a white gel pen. Arg! The light picture didn't turn out as I imagined ... but that's learning for you!

This was done for the June #30x30DirectWatercolor2018 June painting challenge on Faebook. My Day 4 entry,. The June painting challenge period has timed out, but I'm just painting what I can and in my own time. The paint-something-daily challenge is a bit of a motivator, now that I have time post-semester.

Day 4 for the June daily painting challenge (yep, it's July but I'm slowly working at my own pace). See #30x30DirectWatercolor2018. This was done using the direct painting method ... no penciling or lines. I did mask directly but that's acceptable since I created those lines directly.