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"

Field Daisies

Field daisies painted as direct watercolor for a painting challenge. Direct watercolor means no pencil marks, tracing or any guide marks. Reference photos are of course permitted. I didn't really have a reference photo for this ... and it shows. Rather messy.  So there are 2 versions for this:

(1) Direct watercolor using a bit of salt for texturing

(2) Incorporating mixed media: outlining the petals with 0.8 Faber Castell Ecco Pigment

I think I prefer the first one without the outlining of petals.

cold pressed Canson Montval 140lbs - 18.2cm x 25.7cm

Day 3/30 for the direct watercolor painting for the month of June painting challenge. So it's no longer June, I still plan to finish as much as I can, especially as July is watercolor month. See #30x30DirectWatercolor2018 on Facebook for my entries and so many other peoples. It's a great learning and development site.

Osprey Watercolor

Reference photo from Pinterest. Osprey painted with Daniel Smith watercolors and accents with Micron 005 - Arches 10" x 14" hot press 300g/m 140 lb. But hmm, looks rather like an owl - hoot hoot.

 fishing osprey

Sonja's Dog: Korean Folk Painting

Since I still haven't delivered Sonja's Minhwa (Korean traditional folk painting) dog painting to her, and because she said she wished she could paint her dog "smoking a pipe" and in other traditional Korean folk story motifs, I was intrigued to try a Korean folk-tale kind of painting. So I mixed up a bunch of Korean folk ideas and put them together for my friend who absolutely loves the traditional in Korea.

Folk ideas blended in this painting:

• the rabbit in the moon -- the Korean folk view of the moon unlike the western concept of the 'man in the moon'
• the beginning of a traditional Korean fairy tale is "A long time ago when tigers smoked pipes ..." and usually a pair of rabbits is serving the tiger -- animals are common features of Korean fairy tales, but the reason for coupling rabbits and a tiger in a fairy tale I don't know
• tigers are often paired with magpies in folk paintings, I'm not sure why again, but do know that magpies by themselves are harbingers of good luck -- so magpies or rather crows get featured with the tiger substitute, the dog, and like the tiger that is painted comically with magpies or pairs of rabbits and wearing a hat, the dog is also comically painted with a hat
• pine trees are symbols of the scholar and "uprightness" (correctness and Confucianism because of their typically straight appearance

Korean Folk Story Motifs

Dog Minhwa Painting

A friend who is a minwha painter (traditional Korean folk painter) and who does tea ceremonies here in Korea commissioned me to immortalize her precious dog that passed several years ago but is still treasured in her and her parents' memories. What she wanted was a minhwa-style painting with her Chow-mix dog, a tea table, plum blossoms, and a bug (preferably two as paired animals, birds, bugs express harmony)...... so her ideas transposed to art form on 26cm x 36cm / 10" x 14" Arches pad hot press watercolor paper with Daniel Smith watercolors:

This is mixed media, not just watercolor, as I used Micro pens (0.005, 0.02, and 0.5) for some lines, and a white jel pen for white highlights.

Derwent Artbar Color Swatches + Sample Painting

Am pretty good about stemming impulse buys, but I bumped into a few questions on whether the Derwent Artbar were still being sold so tried to find out if they were being discontinued. Who can wade through the rumors on the web, so because I had been looking at the Artbars, and because Amazon had one left and at the cheapest price I'd ever seen, I did the impulse thing and bought the full 72-color-bar set. 

Here's the result of my impulse buy -- a full color chart of the Artbars. My method was to liberally apply 3 cm of color on dry 200gm watercolor paper and then add water with a paintbrush and drag the color down about 6-7 inches.  I might add I didn't apply strong pressure when liberally applying the color as the bars easily break along the score lines. The outcome is that the paint looked light but dried even lighter. Before purchasing, I did know the Artbars were a bit light in color but I was a bit surprised at just how pastel they are, especially the 12 colors in the "light" category.

That said, there are many ways to apply color. To make the chart above I used the dry then wet approach, but I found that wetting a paint brush and swiping up paint from the edge of an Artbar was a more effective way of painting; more effective on not leaving a trace of non-hydrated Artbar from coloring dry with pressure and more effective because the color intensity could be more easily managed. Like in the dry bar on dry paper method, for this wet brush on Artbar technique I didn't need a palette to mix the colors, but who would with a selection of 72 colors to choose from?! 

So here's a sample painting using the wet brush and swipe on Artbar method to get color for painting: 

Chinese-style tiger painting

Derwent Artbars and Pigma Micron pens - Original

My opinion about the Artbars? Well, they are pastel and because they are so light, I do wonder about how lightfast they are, and so am unlikely to use them for a painting to be hung on the wall. However, they are quite fun to use and I can see taking these "fun" colors out (and 72 of them!) when friends or kids come over and having an art party! A party without having color mixing trays so easy to organize and easy to clean up after too! They'll be awesome for making greeting cards or putting some quick and easy drawing-painting like the above in a letter. So this impulse buy isn't one that I regret.

Peacocks in Spring

Day 30, the last day of the November Asian art painting challenge held at the online OASlife Facebook group. OAS, Oriental Art Supply, is an art supply of traditional Asian calligraphy and related traditional arts material. I just became a member a few weeks before the painting challenge and really didn't know much about the group. I was just attracted to the group because it involved calligraphy and traditional papers and thought I could learn something. Wow, have I learned!

The group members are around 450, not all of course are active, but there were probably 20 or so participating in the November painting challenge and another 20-30 regularly viewing the submissions. People made comments about the type of paper, brush and ink they were using, and since most of the paper was knew to me, I was able to get an idea how different papers worked with different mediums. Well, Xuan/Shuan paper whether single or double I'm still clueless about, as I am about a lot, but the learning curve has been very healthy and I love the group. A very supportive and positive group of people!

So here is my final submission for the painting challenge November 2017.

Peacocks in Spring
M Graham and Marie's watercolors (the Marie's were too pastel when dry so started using M Graham. This particular shikishi board can take the different binders of M Graham without bleeding; other shikishi isn't so forgiving.) Chinese ink for accent and to make the colors pop.

Monkeying Around

Day 29 of the November Asian art daily painting challenge. One day left. Because the time is winding down and I've really wanted to challenge myself this month by first (1) starting to do art, (2) learning and practicing skills to make beautiful paintings (beautiful in my eyes is ok), and (3) drawing and painting different things than what I've attempted in the past. Well, I haven't draw a lot  in the past but what I'm saying is trying to do things that I haven't thought of drawing before (like the monkeys tonight) or drawing things that I don't particularly like (example, drawing still life (*&^#$@!) which I find boring but I did a still life piece two days ago, "Tea Time"). A friend just asked me to draw her little dog with a plum blossom and a tea set, all symbols that are a part of her life. I really don't like dogs and probably have never thought of drawing one, but you know, it's for a friend and she has an intriguing composition in mind ... so why not?! It'll be my first dog probably, so another first! This month there's been a lot of firsts! I have thoroughly enjoyed this painting challenge!

For these monkeys I drew two monkeys by looking at different reference pictures. The third and smallest monkey I drew without any reference. I just had to get the shape ok and since it's further in the background I didn't have to draw in a lot of detail. The shading could be better in several spots of the composition and I'm seeing a couple other areas that could be fixed up before posting this, but it's very very late and I need to crash. 

Monkeying Around
Marie's watercolor and Chinese ink with touches of Micron .005 around the face, hands and feet. Shikishi.

Birdsong (haiga)

Day 16 of the Oriental art painting challenge. This one is done on shikishi board and with Chinese ink and Marie's watercolor. And I cheated a bit, but then I'm not a traditionalist. Instead of using brush and ink for the lettering, I couldn't get the letters neat enough on the somewhat toothy shikishi so ended up just using a Pigma Brush pen. It's still not great, but it is tons better than I could have done it the traditional way.

Birdsong
Chinese ink, Marie's watercolors and Pigma Brush pen on shikishi.

Two comments to the post made by OASlife members were very intriguing. One person offered the origin of this saying -- from the poet Henry van Dyke (1852-1933):

"Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if not birds sang except the best."

One of the other members commented that this was Japanese haiga art. Oh? So I looked up haiga style on Wikipedia .... 

Haiga art-form

Haiga (俳画, haikai drawing) is a style of Japanese painting that incorporates the aesthetics of haikai. Haiga are typically painted by haiku poets (haijin), and often accompanied by a haiku poem. Like the poetic form it accompanied, haiga was based on simple, yet often profound, observations of the everyday world. Stephen Addiss points out that "since they are both created with the same brush and ink, adding an image to a haiku poem was ... a natural activity." 

Stylistically, haiga vary widely based on the preferences and training of the individual painter, but generally show influences of formal Kanō school painting, minimalist Zen painting, and Ōtsu-e, while sharing much of the aesthetic attitudes of the nanga tradition. Some were reproduced as woodblock prints. The subjects painted likewise vary widely, but are generally elements mentioned in the calligraphy, or poetic images which add meaning or depth to that expressed by the poem. The moon is a common subject in these poems and paintings, sometimes represented by the Zen circle ensō, which evokes a number of other meanings, including that of the void. Other subjects, ranging from Mount Fuji to rooftops, are frequently represented with a minimum of brushstrokes, thus evoking elegance and beauty in simplicity.

And then a note at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry stated to see also wabi-sabi ...

Wabi-sabi

In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (三法印 sanbōin), specifically impermanence (無常 mujō), suffering (苦 ku) and emptiness or absence of self-nature (空 kū). 

Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes. 

According to Leonard Koren, wabi-sabi can be defined as "the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of traditional Japanese beauty and it occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West." Whereas Andrew Juniper notes that "[i]f an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi." For Richard Powell, "[w]abi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect." 

The words wabi and sabi do not translate easily. Wabi originally referred to the loneliness of living in nature, remote from society; sabi meant "chill", "lean" or "withered". Around the 14th century these meanings began to change, taking on more positive connotations. Wabi now connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, and can be applied to both natural and human-made objects, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear, or in any visible repairs. 

After centuries of incorporating artistic and Buddhist influences from China, wabi-sabi eventually evolved into a distinctly Japanese ideal. Over time, the meanings of wabi and sabi shifted to become more lighthearted and hopeful. Around 700 years ago, particularly among the Japanese nobility, understanding emptiness and imperfection was honored as tantamount to the first step to satori, or enlightenment. In today's Japan, the meaning of wabi-sabi is often condensed to "wisdom in natural simplicity." In art books, it is typically defined as "flawed beauty."

Wabi-sabi in Japanese Arts

Many Japanese arts over the past thousand years have been influenced by Zen and Mahayana philosophy, particularly acceptance and contemplation of the imperfection, constant flux and impermanence of all things. Such arts can exemplify a wabi-sabi aesthetic. Examples include:

Honkyoku (traditional shakuhachi music of wandering Zen monks)
Ikebana (flower arrangement)
Bonsai design features such as snags, deadwood and hollow trunks highlight passage of time and natural cycles. Bonsai are often displayed in fall color or after they have shed leaves seasonally, to admire their bare branches.
Japanese gardens, Zen gardens (tray gardens)
Japanese poetry Japanese pottery, Hagi ware, Raku ware Japanese tea ceremony

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

Chickadees on Rice Paper Fan

Day 11, November 11 aka Peppero Day - names because peppero sticks are long and, according to creative Korean thinking, resemble the 11.11 of today's month and date.

Anyway, the Oriental Art Supply November painting challenge continues. Tonight I tried using a totally new medium: iridescent paints my mom gave me a year ago. (Shame on me for not opening them and using them before.) Had fun playing around with them, but they don't create contrast so used M Graham watercolor paints for the bird, stems and most obvious green leaves. Also touched up the edges of the stems and the birds with a Chinese Xeno calligraphy brush pen, small. Had to use it last as it's not waterproof. Those tiny black accents really sharpened the sparrows, but still, something's lacking...

Wasn't liking how the first fan was turning out so tried painting another. Well, while I like the sparrows on one fan much better (got the eye right, what do you know?!), I like the flowers of the other one better, less messy. Like I said, more practice needed, but these things have great potential!

Mixed media: Chinese rice paper fan with iridescent and M Graham watercolor paints
along with touches of Chinese Xeno calligraphy brush pen, small. 

Plein Air Painting at Sochi House

Today is the fifth day in the OAS (Oriental Art Supply) November painting challenge. Since I was traveling this weekend (did templestay at Ssanggye-sa Temple, Jindo Island, Jeollanamdo, South Korea, and because the temple is right beside Sochi House, the traditional home of the famous aristocratic painter, Sochi, penname for Ryun Hur (1808-1893), I did a bit of plein air painting at the traditional house. Actually I started but had to finish at home because before I could finish our templestay group had to hike up the trail to the temple where we were staying.) 

Sochi House

Jindo Island, Jeollanamdo, S Korea. 

Sochi, pen name for Ryun Hur (1808-1893), was a traditional painter and calligrapher with many disciples. Despite his father's wishes, he became a painter (an unstable job that didn't bring in steady income), but though he wasn't loaded with money, he was satisfied with his choice to exercise his creativity. He was a passionate artist, and he became the founding father of 5 generations of artists, with the fifth alive today. He and his artists descendants strongly influenced Korean painting; they seemed to have contributed to a more realistic approach to painting nature. Their pictures show development in depth and tone. Shading and brush stroke were changed to add to the more realistic style. 

Kaleidoscopic Altoid plein air palette --- M Graham paints are too messy for plein air! So are Sennelier too I hear.

Sochi House, home of Korean traditional painter, Ryun Hur (1808-1893)

The pond just in front of Sochi House, Jindo, South Korea

Micron pens and Altoid box plein air painting with M Graham on Fabriano watercolor postcard. (FYI, M Graham and Sennelier are honey consistency paints that are perfectly lousy for plein air painting .... but absolutely smooth and creamy for studio on site painting! My Altoid box is now a kaleidoscopic mess!)

Cranes at Sunset

Oriental Art Supply (OAS) on Facebook is hosting a November painting challenge with the idea of promoting people's creativity by challenging them to paint something along the lines of Oriental-style painting every day and posting it on the OAS Facebook site. Inktober passed and I never did a piece of art. Sad. I've only been inspired to paint since the beginning of this year, and haven't done much. So OAS, challenge accepted. My first contribution:

"Cranes at Sunset"

Mixed media: M Graham watercolors and Chinese Xeno small brush pen on Arches hot-pressed 140lb paper (3.9” x 9.8”)

Flying Parrot - Watercolor

"Flying Parrot" painted with Korean Alpha watercolors on 6" x 8" mixed media rough texture paper. Mixed media - watercolors and Micron 01 pen.

6" x 8" mixed media painting - "Flying Parrot"

First Watercolor Attempts

Other than an intro to Korean watercolor a year ago (an art exploration that absolutely sold me on watercolor painting) these watercolors are my first attempts at the art. Since that intro, I've watched a few watercolor YouTube clips and wow have I been inspired! Just needed a vacation with some time to put my new interest into action. 

I was trying to teach mom some basics of watercolor and since she's in love with her Birds & Bloom magazine, we referenced that for ideas. Watercolors done on 4"x6" tablet pad of mixed media paper for marker, pen and ink, and watercolor.

mixed media - water color and oil-based ink

mixed media - water color and oil-based ink

A friend really liked this baby elephant, to quote her "so sweet". She wanted it to frame but no way is someone getting a three-legged oddly-balanced embarrassment. Made the mom-and-baby elephant pair for her as a consolation, but think she still liked the "sweet" baby better. 

Must work on color mixing. Having trouble maintaining cool and warm tertiary colors. 

mixed media - water color and oil-based ink

Whip-sketched a greeting card for another friend - the background is kind of cool.

mixed media - water color and oil-based ink