Golden Koi

Day 21 of the November painting challenge, and my Asian-style contribution for tonight is Golden Koi. First I painted the shikishi board with three colors of blue (Marie's watercolors) and let that dry overnight. Then today I sketched out the koi and water and painted it with Finetec metallic watercolor paints. But somehow when I got the metallics on the board with the blue background, there just wasn't enough contrast, so with SWC ShinHan professional watercolor peacock blue I outlined the koi and scattered blue water bubbles, and somehow that seemed to provide the necessary dimension and color contrast. 

Golden Koi
Finetec metallic watercolors on shikishi board; accents in SWC peacock blue
18cm x 21cm
Reference 1 and Reference 2

Cranes Frog-fishing

Day 14 of the Oriental painting challenge for the month of November. The cranes frog-fishing turned out a bit surreal with all that carmine-ish background, but shikishi board doesn't allow gradations (at least I haven't figured out how to do it neatly yet) so I just painted the water carmine too. And then it was too much pink so added the mauve clouds to tone the colors a bit, and they turned out surprisingly ok. 

Mixed media painting

Cranes Frog-fishing
Mixed media: Marie's Chinese watercolors, Chinese ink and FineTec metalic gold paints
Japanese shikishi, 18cm x 21cm
Referenced Large Asian Red-capped Crane Stencil