Labeling the Garden: Garden Signs

Friends are great! A few months ago some avid gardening friends moved to their dream house near water for kayaking and with space for a large garden. Their house is small because they spend their time outdoors (oh, we so connect!), so I wanted to give them an appropriate "housewarming" gift, well, actually a "garden warming" gift. The idea was born when one of them said, "I am so jealous of my sister for getting this really awesome garden sign that says, 'I live in the garden, I just sleep in the house'", so I knew I had to give her something really unique to make her garden fun and personal and totally unique. The outcome: labels for her primary vegetables and then, since they've been dabbling in herbs the last couple of years, thought I'd make her some herb labels as well.

Making the Vegetable Labels: scrollsaw work after free-handing the lettering

free-handing the lettering for the labels (notice my "new" and very first router! Had to put that in the picture because it promises new woodworking projects in the future!)

After cutting the outlines of the words out, had to drill holes to insert the blade to cut out the inner parts of the letters (erg, what a lot of time)

Labels cut and sanded, and ready for painting

The yellow and red should show up nicely in the greed of the garden!

"hot" colors for veggies, and "cool neutrals" for the herb garden

Tiger Woodblock Carving

The 2018 woodblock carving contest approaches, but this year instead of being held in October-November, the competition is in July ... of all things. Who can carve when the spring sun revolves into a bright shiny globe for warming the earth in the summer months?! I had to force myself to get this woodblock done. The only reason I didn't throw in the towel is that the opportunity only comes once a year, and I should never live with the regrets of having missed a meaningful opportunity and an artistic challenge ... and so I carved.

After many, many hours of careful designing, I had my picture
and then just had to transfer it to the woodblock. 

The tiger and its reflection in a pool

Once I had it drawn, I carefully shaded all the areas I wanted to be in well-defined bas relief.

With the faces transferred, I am ready to begin the first cuts.

If anyone says carving is not a messy activity, trust me, they LIE!

Oh yes, a very messy activity. At one point, me, my chair and my picture were very covered!
BTW, just got this chair and wow is it saving my back!!!

Those whiskers just about drove me nuts, esp because something just doesn't seem right about them.

Something felt missing to be an authentic reflection, so added a couple of ripple-rings.
Now the idea of a reflection makes more sense.

Just need a few more hours ...

And the finished woodblock!

And then the part I dislike the most about carving ... inking the block.
It didn't come out dark enough. I'll have to buy another scroll.

The whole process took about 37 hours to carve, and untold hours to design. Quite proud of it, but still feel that something just isn't quite right about those blasted whiskers.

Painting in Nature

Two artist friends and I got together for the weekend. It'd only been three or so years since we hung out, and in that time all three of us have discovered art. Rather amazing! So we decided to spend a whole day together in nature and do some doodling or whatever we wanted. 

We piled in their car and went to a hidden gem of a waterfall about 20 minutes away (Suok Waterfall in Goesan, S. Korea), but not connected to public transportation, which is very sad. During the whole time we were there, a few Koreans would come, take some pictures and almost immediately leave. Kind of like go to a culture spot, take a picture to prove you were there, and then go get something to eat. 

Meanwhile, the three of us were enjoying the beauty of nature. One friend used her plein air setup for the first time, the other took an artistic day off and just slept in his inflated chair-bed, and I took my inflatable chair-bed to the water's edge and painted in my tiny traveler's watercolor pad while soaking up the sun. Absolutely a perfect day!

My friend and I both like watercolor painting but our styles are so interestingly different. She prefers thick paints, preferably opaque and loves to paint in large designs. I like the transparency of watercolors and choose thin washes while using only transparent and semi-transparent pigments. I also tend to paint on much smaller paper, but that is partly because I like detail and partly because I frequently tuck my watercolor pad and altoid paint box in my purse or day pack.

The lesson I learned from this painting experience is NEVER PAINT FROM MEMORY! In my inflatable chair, it was awkward to access the Internet to keep looking at the picture I'd chosen to paint. Also with the sun so bright I couldn't see the screen clearly anyway, so I decided to just paint from memory, and what I remembered was a large frond over the toucan's head, so painted what I remembered .... however, the angle was totally different and the leaves were definitely in more muted tones. This frond turned out embarrassingly garish and overly broad and misshapen. Ugh. Other than that, I did kind of capture the essence of a jungle with light permeating through the foliage ...  so I did have some success.

Seal Carving

Korea National Museum sponsored a seal carving class for foreigners to familiarize foreigners with the long-term cultural practice of using a seal instead of a signature to show authority, status, power, wealth, and so much more. Even now seals are used in bankbooks, to sign contracts, and for professional and financial reasons, not to mention their heavy use in most art forms. 

I'd already taken the seal-carving class from Korea National Museum but thought I would join again, because artists need many seals to sign off on their work, and in particular calligraphers need three seals: 

• the mood seal to express sentiment, season, or mood of a work's creation (can be either yin or yang design)
• the name seal in yin design
• the 호 or nickname/artist name seal in yang design

name seal, yin design
(must be stamped first or above the yang design nickname/artist name seal)

Since I had commissioned a mood seal to be carved in Chinese character with the meaning "the overflowing of creativity", and had already designed my yin name seal, I still needed the yang nickname/artist name seal ... so I joined the class.

My Korean name Min Se-ra, given to me long long ago but never really used, is the name that I can pick out of any conversation and answer to. I identify with it and claim it as my artist name so today I completed my set ... Now I just need time to write calligraphy, or paint pictures (although for painting using one seal is quite appropriate).

penname/artist name, yang design
(the yin and the yang design of real and artist name balance each other;
yin supersedes yang and is always stamped first)

A design, date or mood etching is always put in the thumb position on the body of the seal, so the person using it can easily pick it up and know he/she will always stamp with it in the proper upright position.

This gold pigment was rubbed into the side etching to give it a professional high-class appearance.

In our class a Vietnamese woman was particularly talented with brush and calligraphy ink. We were all told to write a postcard and stamp it with our new seal, but this lady went all out with her simple yes graceful pictures of bamboo and traditional Vietnamese settings, which she stamped and gave to whoever wanted one. She was very controlled with her brush.

Arranging a Marie's Chinese Watercolor Palette

After using the excuse that I don't paint as much as I'd like because I need to put together a wet palette before actually painting a picture (working with wet paint is the way to go), thought I would just bite the bullet and make a "dry" palette, so in the future, seeing a whole arrangement of colors already laid out would inspire me to just grab a paintbrush, a cup of water and sit down. 

I've read the debate between choosing "good" watercolors with rich pigments versus student-grade watercolors with fillers replacing pigments and think there's a lot to be said about starting with the more professional grade. Shinhan Professional Watercolors and Mission Gold Pure Pigment both are quite highly regarded as professional grade while still being reasonably priced -- wonderful! That said, I'd like to paint sometimes on Chinese scrolls which have hanji (Korean traditional handmade mulberry paper) or Chinese/Japanese rice paper, but traditional watercolors aren't designed to be painted on the thinner paper. They bleed horribly. 

According to what I've read ... and seen with Chinese watercolorist Lian Quan Zhen, Marie's Chinese watercolors have a special binder that suits them well for painting on the thinner paper. The names of colors are only written in Chinese but they do have numbers -- not sure what the numbers mean but they can at least conveniently be used for refilling the palette -- so with a 24-watercolor set, arranged and filled my first non-travel palette. 

Paints for rice and other traditional handmade papers

Before filling the 28-well palette, I washed off the residual manufacturing toxins, dried the palette and then buffed the 5 mixing wells with a scrap of sandpaper. Have seen paints don't spread well on glossy plastic so other artists have learned the trick of dealing with the problem -- rough up the plastic a bit.

Of course I arranged the colors in the palette according to my taste. Didn't use the black and at the last minute decided to go ahead and use the white ... might use it to tint a color, who knows. Didn't use one of the greens (#592 and #593 are just too similar, and wish I didn't use one of the blues as #492 and #493 are too similar as well), so that left me with 6 extra wells. Filled those with colors from ShinHan Professional, a Korean brand of watercolors; they are not Chinese watercolors with extra binder so not sure how they'll work, but thought because they extended the color range (5 of them very earthy colors), I would at least add them to the palette and use them on rice paper with caution. [A comment on Marie's 24-set: rather weak on yellows with only #218 and #242. A bit of a surprise as yellow is one of the primary colors, but the many oranges, reds, blues and greens do reflect the more stylized landscape and botanical painting style of Chinese painting.]

Be aware that Amazon markets two different boxes of Marie's watercolors x24 sets. One set has the more traditional range of Western colors (colors are also written in English), and then there are the Chinese watercolors without English and whole different range of pigments, and evidently, binders as well.

Marie's Chinese Watercolors, 24-paint set

Filled the 28 wells with 22 Chinese watercolor paints and 6 Shinhan Professional Watercolor paints

A quick study of a swan

Painted the swan using only two colors only (#495 a Prussian blue and #406 a Bordeaux) and a Micron 001 pen.
Mixed Media drawing-dessin-pastel watercolor 200 g/m paper, 5 3/4" x 8"

Made the classic mistake of beginners ... not maintaining white space to show contrast. Aw well.

Giraffe Runs from Lions

Painted this without enough background color to bring the giraffe forward so tried a glazing method that Steve Mitchell teaches in his "Mind of Watercolor" Youtube series. The glazing helped add depth. Thanks, Steve Mitchell!

Canson 300g (140#) Cold Pressed (Not) 10.6" x 14.2" - "Giraffe Runs from Lions"

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"