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!