BLUE BIRD

Blue bird waiting for spring.




Painted on Stonehenge Aqua hotpress 140# paper.  

MIXED MEDIA PAPER AND WATERCOLOR

Wet and windy day...

ANOTHER ACRYLIC PAINT AND COLLAGE

Acrylic painting, then collage on top (cut from a pretty paper napkin), some Japanese art paper (dyed) added and finished with dark graphite stick (water soluble).  

HAPPY PI DAY!

PAINT AND COLLAGE

Acrylic painting, then collage pieces added (from magazine and the Japanese art paper I dyed with watercolor).  Then finished with some dark water soluble graphite stick. 

Still going into my little art room and just pulling out bits and pieces and doing...whatever. 

MIXED MEDIA PAPER

Watercolor on mixed media paper (not sure what brand).  The paper is a bit slick but not like Yupo - the paint doesn't sink into the paper.  Just flinging paint around with no plan when I go into my little art room.



Weeping Willow

IS IT BLOGGER OR ME?

I have had some issues with posting on friends’ art blogs recently - namely, Lisa, Bruce, Jennifer Rose and Myrna.  I post my comments and hit the send...and it just sits there OR I get through the send part and I have to pick the bus, the traffic light, the crosswalk in a set of photos OVER and OVER and OVER.  Don’t know what the deal is but just know that I do see what you’re doing, dear art friends, and I do want to comment but blogger is giving me fits.  And it’s not all blogs, just some, so what is that about?

Oh, well, just saying hello and loving your recent stuff Lisa and Myrna.  And saying hello I’m still reading your posts Bruce and Jennifer.

Have a good weekend - we Spring Forward here so everyone’s complaining already about losing an hour of sleep this weekend.  Well, guess it’s better than complaining about the state of U.S. politics!

JAPANESE ART PAPERS

A friend of mine (thanks, Jane W!) gave me some Japanese art papers she purchased and couldn't use (she's a colored pencil artist and these papers are too thin and porous for that).  So I have 3 rolls of interesting paper.  I've used them for batik in the past but don't do that anymore so...just decided to dye a few sheets using watercolor.  

Not sure what the papers are called - there are so many names of the art papers.  These first 2 have fine little bits included and the last 2 have larger threads.


I will probably use them in collage work at some time.  

Right now, I'm not really painting.  I think it's the usual winter blues that's got me down.  Not feeling very creative so burying myself in books for a while.  


I did order some new supplies from Cheap Joe and that may perk me up when they come in.

Sweetie likes this last one the best (this one is made by pouring acrylic ink from a pour bottle).  Sweetie says this reminds him of ice frozen on a window :)  If ice on a window was this colorful, I might not have the winter blues!




I hope you are all feeling well, healthy, and thinking about spring.  We're having snow again - Mother Nature doesn't know (or doesn't care) that it's almost spring.  Until then...stay warm and safe.

STONEHENGE

On the Stonehenge Aqua hotpress paper.  Just an imaginary thing.  Not crazy about it (looks too childish), but sometimes it's okay to just get paint on paper.

7 x 10 ROUGH BUT NOT A BIRD

Still playing in my 7 x 10 Arches 140# rough block and my Stonehenge Aqua 140# hotpress block.  


This one is in the 7 x 10 - but not a bird.  Just an imaginary landscape of sea and sky and grasslands.




I know Jennifer hates the pushpins in the edges but I'm no longer pushing them through the paper, just letting them touch the edges to hold it on the corkboard so I can photograph the paintings when they are done :)  

WELLNESS

Well, it's migraine season again for me.  So I'll be off painting for a while.  Just trying to get myself well.  Seems like this happens every spring but it's early for spring here with cold weather and snow flurries still happening daily.  So...I'll return when I'm feeling better for more than 1/2 day at a time.

MERMAID SONG

Mermaid, full length, not just the tail.






I used to love the Shel Silverstein mermaid song:

When I was a lad in a fishing town, an old man said to me
You can spend your life, your whole damn life, fishing in the sea
You can search the world for pretty girls til your eyes are weak and dim
But don't go swimming with a mermaid, son, if you don't know how to swim.

Cause her hair is green as seaweed
and her skin is smooth and pale
and her face it is a work of art
and you'll love that girl with all your heart
but you'll only love the upper part
you're not gonna like the tail. 

7 x 10 ROUGH SERIES

A white pelican from Florida.  
Backlit and shadowed.

SWIMMING ALONG

This one is on Stonehenge Aqua hotpress paper with watercolor.  Added a bit of silver and gold acrylic pen marks to make the scales and outline some areas.  The words are in silver acrylic pen. 


Time to get back to the 7 x 10 Series of birds...

RAIN OFF A MERMAID'S BACK?

With the words added.  Hard to see in the photo, but it says

Just keep swimming!


(I softened out the tailfin.)  This is on Stonehenge Aqua hotpress paper (I'm liking it more, the more I use it.)


And we can use that tagline now because we are having rain rain rain and more rain.  The Ohio River is at flood stage and overflowing streets in Newport and Bellevue on the Kentucky side.  

And more rain predicted this week.


So, keep your head above water (unless you're a mermaid) and more mermaids and birds to come...

UNDER THE SEA

Just another mermaid.

STONEHENGE AQUA HOTPRESS PAPER: MERMAID IN DISGUISE

Walking on the beach on Anna Maria Island, I saw this slender girl in white with bright red (mermaid) hair.  Had to snap a photo and then try to capture her.  Her shadow shows some of her "real" shape she's hiding by walking among us.

A real mermaid?  Or just my imagination?  

7 x 10 ROUGH SERIES: HUMMINGBIRD

Back to the 7 x 10 Rough series of birds in between other things. 

I enjoy switching back and forth between the rough paper and the hotpress paper.

This little hummingbird is from a photo Sweetie took from his trip to Costa Rica last year.

FLUID ACRYLICS ON GESSO BOARD: MERMAID

I thought I'd paint a mermaid on the gessobord I have in my art stash.  I like some things about it, but not all things about it so...

although I was going to glue the scrabble tiles down on the mermaid painting and call it finished, it just wasn't good enough for me to use the only scrabble tiles I have so...

it doesn't look like this because the tiles are just sitting on top of the painting.





Instead, it looks like the last painting and I'll do another on gessobord (I have 2 larger ones I'll try), and hope to be more pleased with the outcome.

The finished piece has some good sections (the blue looks fishy because I made a scale pattern in it: while the paint was wet, I dabbed with a textured paper towel and got the scaled look and the merge from golden to blue created a nice green at the base of the tail before the fins).


The writing was done with a gold acrylic marker.


I'll let this sit for a while and if I really don't like it, I can cover over it because it's gessobord for use with oils and acrylics.  I have a lot of fluid acrylics and regular acrylics I hardly ever use but this seemed like a good time to try them out - I obviously need more practice with the medium.

I should be outside because we are having a heat wave here after our Polar Vortex.

MANGROVES IN AUTUMN COLORS

The bright colors of the mangrove leaves are always interesting and tempting to paint.  I started this one on my hotpress to get the colors to bleed and run and mingle.  

(Not sure why the background looks violet because it's not - it's white paper:  Stonehenge Aqua hotpress paper, 10 x 14, 140#.)