Flutterby : Spring Feast

I did this painting for challenge No.36 of Paint and Draw Together.  I used my artistic license to make up the background – complete with bokeh. It was really interesting and I had fun making all those circles.

Spring Has Arrived Version 2 in Progress

This time around I want to do the same pink magnolia in watercolor. I am using a gessoed hardboard that has been coated with Schminke Aqua primer. If you apply this primer on any surface, you can use it for watercolor painting. Now that I am painting on this surface, I can’t say that I am exactly fond of it. From my experience I can say that you need to use feather-light pressure with the brush when you apply the paint. Fewer glazings the better since the paint just sit on the surface. So plan very well when you want to layer the painting. The good news is that you can scrub it back to its white surface if the paint is not staining. I can say that beginner watercolorist can easily get disappointed if they use this surface. It is not as absorbent as nor as much forgiving as Ampersand Aquabord. Since I have never used Yupo surface, I can’t  do any comparison there. But I am sure  it must not be as slick as Yupo surface because I am using a fine-textured Aqua primer for this surface.  You can say that it is definitely not like painting on a cold-pressed watercolor paper. I am learning through trial and error to understand how I can paint on the primed surface. I guess once you learn the quirkiness of the surface, you can successfully paint with watercolor on it.

Three Cupcakes

Finally I finished the painting after dragging it for three weeks! Painting the swirls on the icing overwhelmed me a bit and I took lots of breaks in between. I painted the three cupcakes using the reference photo from week 46-48 challenge hosted by the artist Ms.Karin Jurick in the DSFDF blog. I like how the shadow turned out in the painting. I did the entire painting wet on dry surface and I believe it went well on the Arches watercolor paper. I think I am slowly liking this paper.

Three Cupcakes
9/12 inches on 140# cp Arches watercolor paper

Playing Dress Up

Here is my first painting for this year. I am personally not satisfied with the painting because of the error in judgement during the sketching stage. I read a tip somewhere online to use watercolor pencil for outline since the color would dissolve away during subsequent washes. For most part, the color did dissolve but the outline still remained. To make matter worse, I used sky blue watercolor pencil to outline the sketch. I had to use the “proxy” brushes for cleaning the dental braces to scrub away most of the stubborn lines. It helped to a certain extent. So I feel my result is so and so.

This sweet shy girl is my niece playing dress-up for a fancy dress competition at her school. The reference photo is courtesy of her parents. I hope they like it.

9 by 12 inches on 140# watercolor paper

Waterlily Series No.7

It took more than a month to finish this painting. Moreover, I did the last drawing while I took a break from this one. I owe my thanks to my DH for giving me the encouragement to finish off the painting. I skipped the underpainting part while doing the gouache resist. It was difficult to scrub away the white gouache. The watercolor paint was behaving very differently when I painted over the gouache layer. I managed to finish off the waterlily after overcoming the learning curve.

 Leslie, a talented artist,  has  just posted another wonderful gouache resist painting. You will easily fall in love with this technique once you learn how to do it

Waterlily Series No.7
12 by 16 inches on 140# watercolor paper

Canna Miniatures Set 1

It looks like I am doing miniatures in series. Though it is quite trying for me to paint in miniatures, I find it to be a great pleasure to look back and enjoy these little gems. I believe they look best if you display them together in groups. I have two more canna miniatures to go and I think I might pause my miniature paintings for the time being. I already miss my usual painting groove.

Canna leaves
4 by 6 inches on 140# cp watercolor paper
Reference source: Wetcanvas

Canna lily series No.2
4 by 6 inches on 140# cp watercolor paper
Reference source: Self

Koi Miniatures # 2

Here is the second set of koi miniatures. In my subsequent painting of koi, I can see that I have improved my skill in scrubbing out ripples from the background. I find that it takes a lot of elbow grease to do the scrubbing and get this result.

Kois in the pond 3 & 4
4 by 6 inches on 140# cp watercolor paper
Reference source: Self

“I am listening”

I am my own worst critic which becomes obvious when I say I am not too thrilled with this self-portrait. I must honestly say I have tried, really tried my best and this is what I finally get. A high-key, bland version of my portrait. I put several glazes to build the skin tone taking care not to muddy the colors underneath. Finally when it reached this stage, I pulled myself to stop.  I used Quin. Burnt Orange for skin tone instead of mixing my own skin colors. The drawback is that Quin. BO can be easily lifted off. So the glazes have to be laid carefully. I did this painting very tightly with lots of control over the washes. Personally I love to do portraits in bold colors and very loosely but this is the only way I know how to do. Maybe I never dared to find out how it is to paint very loosely.

I  am planning to submit this painting for David Lobenberg’s  Self Portrait Global Love In . The deadline is September 12 so I have got plenty of time to change my mind and submit a different painting if I have another one ready in the meantime.

“I am listening”
9 by 12 inches on 140# cp watercolor paper

Portrait #25

Onlooker

This painting is part of the DSFDF challenge that is hosted by the artist Karin Jurick. As suggested by Karin, I did a full figure sketch first as shown below:

Then I proceeded with painting the figure in watercolor. This exercise helped me build confidence and mitigated the lingering doubt in my mind about my figure sketching skills. Obviously I did not strive to build an exact likeness of the person since that was not my goal.

Onlooker
6 by 9 inches on 140 -lb cp watercolor paper
Reference photo by Karin Jurick

Two-tone Iris Progress

I am currently working on this mauve-yellow Iris. I am pleased with the transparency effect I have achieved so far. I hope that I will get the end-result that I have on my mind.