Week 26 - Night Flight

Night Flight

This week I have been working on dragonflies.  Summer had felt like it was winding down, but today it revived itself quite well.  Here's to late nights, summer adventures, lightning bugs, and dreams coming true.
Have a great week living each moment to the fullest. There is beauty in the world around you now, take in so you can remember it later. 

Week 23 - Black and White Ball

Black and White Ball

This week I will continue to work on butterflies and dragonflies, I have a piece that I want to add them too, I just need to know that each one will come out looking beautiful before I add them to the piece to come.

Week 20 - Holiday weekend

  Take Flight - Sumi-e

This weekend was different from other three day weekends, we normally have travel somewhere fun.  This weekend we were not in a position to travel, and so we spent our weekend cleaning, I managed to find time to paint as well.  It was a relaxing time, and I feel very accomplished in all the projects I was able to finalize. These are the three I completed, there are about 4 more that are almost finished, which is very exciting for me.

 

Pure Love - watercolor

 

Mystic Night Dragonfly - watercolor

Have a great week, keep making the world around you beautiful!

Happiness

Happiness

Lucky Bamboo given in threes is an expression of Happiness, and thus the name.  Three stalks equal happiness in this piece, it also works well for composition in general.  I would like to do more bamboo and practice the dry brush technique on the stalks, this is trickier to do with the smaller brushes.  

Panda & Old Beggar - Week 3

Panda - this is the final version this week.  His body still is not what I'm looking for, so I will be painting him again.  I will post pictures of new paintings of the panda as they improve.  But he will be one I will work on matting and framing properly, this is a whole art form in and of itself.

Here are two other panda's one of which was painted on the wrong side of the paper.

This guy just needs help, but the look in his eyes is rather endearing in a pathetic way.  The ink was too light on him, and the body was shaped strange, but the ink flowed pretty nicely.

This is what happens when you paint on the wrong side of the rice paper.  There was a lot of bleeding in the paper. Another lesson to remember regarding water, keep paper towels by your side so you can dab off excess water.  The runny ink is not pretty. 

There are those who think that Chinese brush painting is easy, this is not true.  There is a reason that the masters spend life times working on capturing bamboo, and other subjects.  When painting in this medium it is very important to use good quality brushes.  The ink is permanent, paint in old clothes and have lots of sheets of paper to keep painting even when you do not get the image right the first time.  There is no correcting mistakes, no lifting the ink, no changing the lines once the ink is on the paper.  The simplicity is deceiving, there is a careful balance of ink and water, very deliberate strokes and then just knowing how move the brush with your arm instead of your wrist.  If you hesitate in the middle of a brush stroke, the ink shows it.  I love to paint like this when I get to wrapped up in the details on other pieces of work.  I can just paint, and start over again if it turns out awful.  These will not be posted on Fine Art America until I feel like they are better.

This weekend I finished another piece for a friend, The Old Beggar.

I'm not sure who took the photo, so I will not be posting this on Fine Art America either, but he is complete.

Drawing's still get me twisted in knots, trying to make it perfect.  He is not perfect, but he is complete.

So, the lessons for the week: use heavy duty drop cloths, paint in old clothes, use good quality brushes, and keep painting until you like it.  Simple beauty does not always mean it was simple to create.