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"

"Butterfly Dance" Mandala

With the outdoorsi-ness of summer over, I have time for the palette again. My second mandala, a dance of butterflies. Faber Castell watercolor pencils painted out with a water brush, micron pens (005, 05 and 08) and a Xeno brush pen, small. Just an FYI, the Microns have pretty good archival ink, but the Xeno does not, so it's not a good idea to even put a dab of water on the Xeno ink and expect it to stay put.

Sketchbook 10" x 13 3/4"

center of mandala - horizontal view

center of mandala - vertical view

"The Dance of Butterflies" Mandala - 10" x 13 3/4" with Faber Castell watercolor pencils

Horse Mandala

The Yeoksam Global Village Center (Seoul, S. Korea), a center for promoting cultural programs for expats in Korea, offered a month-long mandala class. Participants would meet once a week for two hours and, depending on the creativity and time spent, by the end of the month each participant would have created a personal mandala.

To reach this goal, participants are given a package of materials:

• a book, "My Nature Sound Therapy" (published in S. Korea by My Nature Sound Research Society, 2016)
• a 25cm x 39cm sketch book
• a package of markers
• a gold gel pen
• a two-piece stencil set
• an eraser

A tiny lecture begins each session but the majority of time is for creating a mandala while nature sounds are played. Music therapy at work! Participants are encouraged to hum along, but I find this VERY distracting! I'll find my inner zen just listening.

The examples in the book and with the instructors were all made with geometric shapes, hence the stencil set. Maybe I'm thinking out of the box, but mandalas don't have to be based on geometric shapes but can also be regularly patterned shapes, figures, whatever. So with this in mind, and since I love animals, my mandala started out as horses in perpetual flow, and later peacocks and fish were added. If you think about it, these animals represent all the sentient beings--those from the earth, from the air and from the water--very Buddhist thinking. I'm not Buddhist, but have lived here long enough to pick up quite a few cultural beliefs and symbolisms.

I also used watercolor pencils and Micron permanent ink markers (size .005, .02 and .08) instead of the supplies provided. Just seemed more suitable to the topic and because markers bleed through paper very easily and can't be layered.

After a total of 8 hours in broken sittings, I had completed my simple mandala.

Fun new experience, and my niece will get the materials now with a sample mandala in the sketch book. Think it'll be something she'd really like ... and have time for. 

Horses, peacocks, fish in perpetual motion

Art Deco Tulips

Day 10/30 of the #30x30DirectWatercolor painting challenge on Facebook. I won't be finishing this paint 30-consecutive-days challenge but it's been fun participating until my busy summer schedule kicks in. I've learned a lot more about color mixing, but mostly I've learned that I've been VERY dependent on presketching the basic shapes before laying down color, which limits spontaneity. I'll have to figure out strategies to develop myself as a more spontaneous painter. One strategy I used was in this painting -- I spontaneously masked with masking fluid where the tulip flowers, stems and fore-leaves would be. The masking created the overall shape of the painting so the rest was easy.

So, the tulips painted yesterday turned out a bit like art deco. I'm not too keen on the Canson cold-press watercolor paper, esp as Manganese Blue Hue Daniel Smith, salt and this paper all create granulating patterns. For this color and paper combo, the granulation process just doesn't work ... the color turns out very flat. Usually I've used Arches hot press paper and have loved how the colors, even Manganese Blue Hue, granulate on that paper. The Canson also buckles badly with much water,  despite being #140 lb. Live and learn. The Canson is inexpensive and is more suitable for casual plein air painting done with waterbrushes and not watery washes.

trial run .... I think I could fix it with a bit more time but wasn't liking how the leaves were turning out

second attempt - the background and main subject colors didn't have enough contrast so added the fine liner inking. Turned out kind of art deco, but kind of cool at the same time.

Art Deco Tulips

Bees and carnations on scrap paper

Doodling on scrap paper for the #30x30DirectWatercolor painting challenge, and I started liking my doodles better than the tulips I was working on. So here's my doodles paper.

Day 9/30 of the direct watercolor painting, which means directly laying down color without prepping with pre-sketching on the canvas. Thus my reason for "practicing" bees on scrap paper.