Taking a moment for a bird slideshow

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I am unwontedly proud of myself for figuring out how to do this slideshow myself ^^

Ok, so these are birds that I painted last summer. I would have posted them before but I just never seemed to have the time to photgraph them and all.

However, this week I am delayed in posting what I am actually working on due to general incompetence on my part ;) so I am posting these instead.

What I am actually working on are some colorful studies of some pears and apples. They are testing me to my meager limits in terms of color use and washes, so it is taking me longer than I wanted to finish. But I should still be done with them in plenty of time for my next posting.

Peony - dramatic?

Last week my quest for color carried me to peonies. They are quite dramatic in this season, and I found them pretty absorbing.

On the right are some images showing the process of layering the chinese watercolors. I have to say I like the glow of my home-made colors better. I'm not sure what the difference in

binder is, but I can't argue with the convenience of tube color.

Above and below you can see the end results, some

nice peonies if I do say so myself.

It's all fun and games to me

This is a game I started playing with myself when I was in about the second grade. That was right about the time mice were becoming cheap enough for regular folks to buy and our new computer had paint (or was it paintshop?) on it.

I remember I used to spend quite a bit of time playing with freeform line and plopping colors around.

Now I'm doing some on paper. This is probably why I am so bad at using color realistically. I just can't take the darned stuff seriously ;)

Better late than never

It's a month late and way overdue, but I still want to do a New Year's Resolution. I was totally unplugged the first week of January, so I think I will do it now.

Last year, I resolved to try to double the amount of time I spent painting. I didn't do quite that good - high goal! But I did work longer and harder. I'm pretty confident I can say I did more than 1500 hours working on art last year.

Not too shabby.

So why am I not an even better artist already? Hanging my head just a little I have to admit that I've got a fool for a teacher - me.

I know me: stubborn, thickheaded, slow to figure things out. It's a real nightmare having someone like that pretending she knows what she's doing while teaching you out of her ass ;)

But I have been making progress.

Enough progress that I have a new ambitious Resolution: This year I am going to tackle adding color to my ink paintings. I have never been a colorist. I have always focused on tone. But I have determined that I will find some way to work color into my paintings.

I have already begun by trying to learn the working properties of my colors. I am making them myself and while it may seem a no brainer to just mix them up and used them, it's not quite that simple.

First of all you need to figure out which colors mix well and which turn into a muddy, nasty mess.

Second, this paint needs to find a happy medium where it will hold onto the paper without bleeding when re-wetted but not so water resistant that it turns to flakes.

On the right you can see I have been working on some color charts. I fear there could be many more of those. Some of them came out quite beautiful, actually. In addition, I am also reformulating my paint. I am trying a couple different formulas that will hopefully cure enough to be useful by summer. I hope I can strike that balance between adhesion, water resistance, and beautiful color.

Once I work out the details the real work of making color a more natural part of my style begins. Look forward to that @@