Memories of Summer – step-by-step

One of the advantages of having time to paint during the day is that I can take progress photos of the painting as I paint (if I remember, as most often I get totally lost in the painting process and forget about everything else).

After arranging the still-life, I lightly sketched the shells & seagull feather with Faber-Castell 9000 pencil (F hardness) on Fabriano Artistico CP watercolour paper. Since I knew that the angle of the sun will change while I paint, I painted the shadows first to remind me where the light was coming from.

Next I added the first layer of Winsor & Newton watercolour to each shell & piece of coral individually, working wet-into-wet to allow the colours to merge and mix.

After the first layer of the watercolour dried, I applied clean water to most of the feather. I kept some areas dry as I wanted them to remain white. I mixed Winsor & Newton French Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna together to get various shades of grey. I started painting from the outside edge of the feather letting the colour bleed down towards the feather’s rachis (shaft).

Next I started adding details, further defining shapes and texture.

I kept on slowly progressing around the painting.

At this stage I decided to finish working on this painting and added my signature with a pencil.

Feathers, feathers, everywhere

Hello!
How have you been? I’m still painting, but struggling to find time for writing. During the summer school holidays I mostly did quick sketches in my various sketchbooks. There is a story behind each sketch, but sadly no time to share them here. As the holidays came to the end, I got back to painting small standalone pieces in the attempt to regain some focus and to get used to the new daily routine.

Four feathers – Winsor & Newton watercolours on Fabriano Artistico HP watercolour paper (4 x 4 inches)

My son is in childcare for 15 hours/week this year and I have great plans for learning, experimenting with new techniques and finally getting down on paper some of the paintings that were hunting my mind for months, sometimes years.

Two blue feathers – Winsor & Newton watercolours on Arches medium watercolour paper (5 x 7 inches)

As well as painting, I am spending a lot of time in front of the computer. Almost two years ago, when a friend wanted to buy some of my paintings, I opened an Etsy shop. It stood neglected all that time, but now I’m working on putting some small paintings, greeting cards and eventually prints into it.

Three feathers – Winsor & Newton watercolours on Arches medium watercolour paper (5 x 7 inches)

I also created a Facebook page for my art. I’m not sure if I’m spreading myself too thin or stepping out into an exciting wider world.
Are you working on anything in particularly at the moment? Do you have any goals or dreams for this year?

Signs of Autumn – Winsor & Newton watercolours on Fabriano Artistico HP watercolour paper (4 x 4 inches)

Trying new paper

Recently I’ve been using small Fabriano Venezia sketchbook for my casual quick sketches and I love it, so I decided to try Fabriano’s watercolour paper, as I’m not 100% happy with Arches. I bought two sheets of 300 gsm Fabriano Artistico – one CP and one HP.

Winsor & Newton watercolours on Fabriano Artistico HP watercolour paper (4 x 6 inches)

I loved painting on the hot-pressed paper, as it has smoother surface than Arches HP and there is less (no?) granulation. And since it is so smooth, it scans beautifully and there is almost no Photoshop adjustments needed to remove unwanted watercolour paper texture.

Winsor & Newton watercolours on Fabriano Artistico CP watercolour paper (4 x 6 inches)

I liked the cold-pressed paper, but need to experiment a bit more with both Fabriano & Arches CP papers (preferably in the same painting session) to make up my mind on which one I prefer.

Playing in the journal

I have vague painting ideas floating around the corners of my mind. I’m trying to gently tease them out by playing in my studio journal, which is the repository of random thoughts, quotes from books I read, brochures from exhibitions I went to, family photos, letters from friends, notes on the art materials and craft projects. I use it very sporadically, but reading Gwen Diehn‘s “The Decorated Page” makes me want to pull it out and record something in it everyday. I usually don’t show it to others, but thought you may enjoy having a glance at this page created using watercolours, paper-cut and Sunprint feather prints.

Focus

I finally finished my dreamcatcher and thought this would be a good time to write a longer reply to a question that was asked by one of my lovely readers in the comments:
“My problem is focus. It’s not desire or motivation, but organized focus. Do you ever run into this?”

YES! I have many ideas swirling inside my head and often feel oversaturated by the inspiring beautiful art that I see around me and online. I see something I like and I start to wonder what I could achieve with the same medium or in the same style or exploring the same subject. I wish I could try drawing with pastels and coloured pencils, painting with oils, make collages from my own handmade paper, create book illustrations, achieve the level of realistic detail found in botanical illustration, fill pages with the watercolour splashes and puddles, sketch my surroundings daily, paint on large scale, etc. As well as all these above I also love crocheting, knitting, tried my hand at jewellery making, sewing, embroidery, weaving, polymer clay, yarn & fabric dyeing, and would love to learn to make patchwork quilts.

Take this dreamcatcher. I crocheted the middle of it, which took longer than simple weaving would, but I enjoyed using a skill that I mastered as a child. I also wanted the middle of it to look a bit like the compasses of the iron lacework in my paintings and paper-cut.

The weaved beads were made years ago, when I went through the bead-weaving stage, and now I found a perfect use for them.

And of course the feathers (cockatoo, ghallah & domestic duck) are from my collection that I gathered for the watercolour paintings.


I wish I could follow my interests in all of these crafts and art areas all at once, but there isn’t enough free time available to me to allow this. Over last few years I was learning to consciously choose what to spend my time on, but also to remember to leave some time for play, research and exploration of ideas. For now I’m (softly) limiting myself to pen and pencil drawing and watercolour painting, as I feel that I have lots of work to do before I’ll master them. At the same time I’m musing on the idea of limiting the themes for my work, instead the medium, because each time I switch to something else I learn something new. It could be fun to explore “painting” lacework & feathers in watercolour, oils, linocuts, crochet, knitting, etc. Today I painted these magpie feathers with watercolours, but maybe next week I’ll see how they would look done in black&white linocut.

Winsor & Newton watercolours on Arches medium watercolour paper (15 x 21 cm)

Passionfruit

After few days of 36-39C heat, today was slightly cooler with the forecast promising the top temperature of only 31C (87.8F).  So I used this opportunity to sketch the passionfruit vine, which is growing against otherwise ugly metal shed.  Sadly the flowers are already gone, but there are plenty of leaves and fruit.

Lamy Safari pen with DeAtramentis Archive Ink and Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolour in Strathmore 400 Series sketchbook (21.6 x 27.9 cm)

And here is the photo of the two page spread, because I love how the sunflower and passionfruit vine sketches look together.

Happy 2016!

Well, hello in 2016! I’m wishing you a peaceful, joyful, healthy and creative year.

I took advantage of the overcast morning and started my first day of the year by sketching the sunflower in the garden. Sunflowers are such cheerful, solid, vibrant flowers. I planted two varieties this year (this one is Giant Single or Helianthus annuus), but I think next year I’ll plant few more.

Lamy Safari pen with DeAtramentis Archive Ink and Winsor & Newton Cotman watercolour in Strathmore 400 Series sketchbook (21.6 x 27.9 cm)

Afterwards I retreated into the coolness of the house to finish something that I wanted to get done last year, but frustratingly got sick & had to put on hold for few days. My daughter asked me to create a colouring page for her. She is very specific in what she wants, so I thought I’ll have a practice run first with the existing sketch to figure out the best way to go about creating colouring pages. Ta Da!

As you can see I used the sketch for my Christmas cards. I retraced it with a Staedtler pigment liner pen. (My first attempt at using the pencil sketch didn’t work too great, because the scanning process turned the colour of the thin paper & pencil lines in too many shades of grey and was too hard to clean up.) After scanning the pen drawing I played around in Photoshop with various adjustments to try to get background as close to white as possible and the lines as close to black. My knowledge of Photoshop is very basic, so this step took the longest. I suspect that it would be faster to learn how to use Adobe Illustrator & my Wacom tablet (a birthday present from my sis) and trace the pencil drawing digitally in the Illustrator instead of by pen.

Anyway, if you feel like doing some colouring, you can download the PDF by clicking on the link Goldfields New Year Colouring page. My kids already had a go at colouring it in.