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

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)

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.

Autumn Song

Day 26 of the painting challenge. Marie's watercolor and Chinese ink on shikishi. Used a picture reference for this to get the colors right. 

Autumn Song
Marie's watercolor and Chinese ink on shikishi
picture reference

Thinking Eagle Thoughts

Day 24 of the Asian painting challenge being hosted on OASlife on Facebook. Tonight I painted an Asian-style eagle. My mom's comment was "Except for the head, it looks pretty good" and many people commented on the aggression and anger of the eagle. Well, I did reference a picture although I changed it enough to kind of call it my own ... except the awesome blue-dotted bark of the pine tree. Whoever originally did that was masterful! And unfortunately, am unable to locate the picture. I had it as a download which was saved from a long time ago.

Thinking Eagle Thoughts
Marie's watercolor and Chinese ink on shikishi

Panda Mama and Her Toddler

Day 23 of the November Asian art painting challenge. Several months ago I saw a picture of a mama panda joyfully tossing her cub in the air, and the cub seeing to whoop and holler like any human toddler. Susan Windsor was the artist and she really captured the spirit of fun, joy and love. So tonight I tried to emulate her painting, but wanted to frame the pandas in a thick forest. Hmm, I do like the contrast but the overall picture is a tad bit messy.

Panda mama and her toddler
Marie's watercolor on shikishi with small touches of Micron 02 archival ink on the mouth, eyes, and claws.
Art credits to Susan Windsor

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