Watercolors in Very Bright Light

A VERY busy weekend - going to the temple for the first time in MONTHS. Anyway, dibs and dabs of time to paint. I tried painting very early in the morning, but the sun casts harsh shadows and I found that I couldn't do anything! My hand kept blocking my painting as I tried to work.

In a nutshell, this week's work has focused on getting back to a plainer, clearer form of painting, like I used to do with only clear watercolors.

 Fewer layers. This one actually had a lot of white in it, so it didn't *really* follow the rule. I tried using yellow and alizirin crimson in the sky.

The sky's a bit muddy, but I think it's okay...

Another thing I never did with my original watercolors was experiment/use so many blooms. I see now how much I like them. It busies it up a lot - hmmm....

This started out to be a book painting. Then it turned into trees. I'm not sure - it looks a bit contrived.

I need to work on folded books again! I'm getting lopsided with my art doing.

Book Page Paintings

I've been using my old book again to make more bookshelf paintings. These are based on that stack of 200+ pictures I took at the library one day. I'm trying to work on my color composition - if you choose ONE color that you ADD to every other color, it ties them together a bit. As long as the primary color isn't too showy. 

This one turned out best colorwise. It looks like I limited the palette, too. I don't do that very often or well. :)

  Ta da! Another house painting! This one was in my stack of things to do. I drew it a long time ago and am only now getting around to painting it. The chimney looks like a devil's horn.

And here is the work in progress desk. That picture on the front of the books turned out great...

Experiments in Drilling Holes in Books And Other Weird Things I've Done

This painting didn't get any better. In fact, I'm pretty sure I ruined it with the colored pencil. This all comes from trying to accommodate a HUMONGOUS stamp into my painting. From now on, it's only little paintings. At least for these super color-saturated paintings. I just can't make them do what I want over a large area of space. Now this painting will go into a sad pile to languish until I can look at it with fresh eyes and see if it is salvageable. Maybe putting some book paper over the totally awful parts will do...

I had a box of books and access to a drill press. So I drilled holes. Then I kept the box for several weeks because I didn't know what to do with them.  The other night, I sewed one. Frankenstein book!

I am making a wedding bouquet of paper flowers for a friend. Here is one I made from a paint chip.

And here it is on top of the Frankenstein book.

Hearts Gone Postal

I had an idea last night to border the hearts with words. Colored pencil seemed best because I could match the color to the piece and I like my handwriting. (THANK YOU MOM!)

Blue heart words: Water Serene Peace Tranquility Breathe Rest Drop Patter Ripple Still Listen Sky Ponder Relax Thought clouds Breeze Quiet Still Small Voice Whispering Take a minute to just remember

Green words: Growing quietly whisper soft and too slow to notice until one day you realize everything has changed and its amazing that it all happens without you realizing what part you played bringing it to flower

Hmm.. got a bit poetic. Oh well.

Red words: Love heart tingle of delight and the thought of this could be the time when it really happens and then after years go by remembering before and without and being so grateful that it is Now

Yellow words: Yellow is the beginning of strength it is the ??? of the Sun heating preparing for action the warmth of knowing truth the expansive feeling of growing and of remembering a little

??? cos I can't read my writing!

Ugh

 

This painting is 6x10 in., 4 times bigger than my normal size of 5x3 in. It was this size to accommodate the proportion of the two stamp-sized houses. Now I've gotten completely lost in that huge background sky part and am not sure if I'm going to be able to save it. THERE IS TOO MUCH GOING ON!! Maybe I can put a clear, clean flat wash over it to pull it together and just start doing the houses. See if that keeps it from being totally whack. :(

If not, I might tear it apart for parts.

I've Been to the Desert With Several Paintings of No Name

This painting has a red house. Like most of my paintings. I should call it Red House #?.

Red house with a stamp! In the future, I need to handle the stamp differently. I like not having windows on it and I really like the empty door look that's in the painting above.

Yellow house! With silly fish in the windows! And with water ripples that look like a face with a fat nose! Sometimes it is good to do paintings that are less serious. It also let me experiment with colors. Since when have I EVER used yellow?

Again, I love the look of this house - the door not being painted and its size relative to the size of the house. I think I'll do without the crazy feather-in-a-cap chimney thing going on... I am really loving the rainbow-like combo of colors. It's SO satisfying.

This is an old picture I pulled out last night to try and salvage the edges. They still aren't pretty and perfect, but that's not all I worked on. Obviously, from the other paintings I've posted, I got out the colored pencils and LOOK WHAT I DID WITH THIS PAINTING!!! I love the sunbeams coming down through the clouds.

And I've just never posted a picture of this one before.

Stamp Mosaic

I got an idea yesterday to do a whole picture with stamps. When you look at it in person, all the colors of the picture are pretty much the same value. It made it hard to see so I put the white strips of paper (cut out by perforation like a stamp) around the main shapes.

Oh, then I used some of my favorite phrases from a book to put around the entire picture as a border.