Abstract

Turned the 6 year old's abstract art into a bag. Acrylic paint, squeegee and cotton canvas.

Blank cards

Before I got a bit preoccupied with sewing, I started out wanting to make giclee prints of my watercolour illustrations. But there was a lot to consider. A good printer costs a bomb. Archival ink costs a bomb. 300 grams acid free paper costs a bomb. In other words, I just couldn't afford it. I also thought of getting them printed professionally but to keep costs down I'd have to print in bulk and I did not want to get stuck with too much stock. 

Now, I think it may not be such a bad idea after all. So, today I made a few mock up blank cards of my little birdies. I printed on the Toddler's art paper, then cut and pasted them onto some of my precious watercolour paper. 

These cards are W 4.5" X H 7" when closed. They are blank on the inside which makes them perfect for writing or ummm... painting whatever you want.

What do you think of this combo?

Wipeout

It's been so long since I last painted. I think you can tell from this piece. The bottom half wasn't going quite the way I imagined it, so I grabbed the white acrylic and ... wipeooouut. Sort of. Leaving it as it is. It's done :)

Illustration Friday - Lush

 

From sketch to ...

Lush.

Acrylic, poster colour and pen on paper.

Inspired by Laurent Moreau.

Note: She's biting on a flower because I smudged her mouth :)

The Village

I bought some stamp pads yesterday and had to test them out so I made more stamps and put them to work. And they worked like a charm. The colours are limited but I was so happy I found them. The stamp pads I see featured in a lot of the blogs I read are beyond my budget but these were really affordable. Excellent!

As usual, I had no idea what I wanted to do or where I was going with all my random testing. This village scene grew from trying to cover the mess I was making :)

Bold!

... or trying to be :)

Poster colour, acrylic and Chinese brush pen on paper.

Tiger

I am having loads of fun with my new stamps :)

Stamping!

I found these wooden blocks at Daiso and immediately thought of making some stamps. At first I tried carving them but that didn't work out. Then I remembered reading a post about using foam. Luckily I had a roll stashed somewhere. I laid it out and cut up a bunch of shapes using a blade and scissors and pasted them onto the blocks with white glue.

I figured I've got to get the most out of the blocks so I pasted on every side!

I got the idea to create the tree branches using only one simple shape from Making An Impression: Designing and Creating Artful Stamps by Geninne Zlatkis.

My stamps are a mess because I used a brush to paint on the poster colour instead of using stamp pads or a roller. For the girl I used a Chinese paint brush pen. It works almost as well as the Sakura Pigma Brush Pen. Unfortunately the bristles come off easily. I guess that's why it's cheaper :)

Illustration Friday: Jungle

I really liked this week's topic because I got to explore an old obsession of mine - plants. I came across a quote on Pinterest - "Draw what you see not what you know" and I realize the problem I get stuck all the time is because I don't exercise my observation skills. So, for this piece I did a sketch first and looked up some pictures and the plants outside my window as reference and for inspiration. You can see it's quite different from my usual style. It took time to get out of my comfort zone. Didn't think I could do it but ... :)  Learnt a lot!

Note: The last time I did anything for Illustration Friday was November last year!

Chinese painting watercolour

 I was introduced to Chinese painting watercolour by a friend of mine many years ago. After abandoning it for acrylic and regular watercolour, I bought a set of Marie's Original Chinese Painting Watercolour a few months ago and left it on the shelf. It sat there staring at me until finally, I took it down and used it for this piece. The paint is creamy and the colours are rich with a slight "aged" feel to it that I like. My D & R watercolour set is in the picture too but I didn't use it much.



The toddler got her hands on my brush and added some... blue... streaks. Waaa!

I almost wanted to start on another piece from scratch but I ploughed ahead and it went quite well I think :)

 The great thing about Chinese painting watercolour is that you can still dilute and mix it even after it has dried up on the paper unlike regular watercolour stains which can be a bit stubborn. But since I liked the texture of the blue streaks I decided to leave some in. 

Oi! #5

Tween Art

The tween was in a rare mood to draw when she did this. Her inspiration - a Maroon 5 CD cover :)

Toddler Art

The tween was a prolific doodler, drawer and painter from the time she was a toddler till she was about eight. These days she'd rather bury her head in a book or surf the internet.

Sweetie #2 on the other hand hadn't shown much interest in sitting down with a pencil and paper until recently. Sometimes she would come up to me swishing her arms around and say "Draw, draw!" 

Here are a few paintings she did this morning. When she thinks a piece is done she would say "Dah" which means enough or done. Haha :)

Acrylic paint on watercolour paper.

Happy Family 2

Here's another version I sent to my friend J for her book project. 

I went back to watercolour for this one. I gave the donkey an eye patch because I had smudged his eye beyond repair. I must say I like it. Troubleshooting! 

Happy Family

I did this piece at a friend's request. It's for a book project she is working on. It took me quite a while to finish since I could only grab 5 or 10 minutes here and there before the little one started climbing on my lap and knocking things over. 

I've been wanting to try gouache for quite some time so this was the perfect excuse to get myself a set. It was surprisingly not easy to find. Hmmm.

Stuck

I started this piece about a month ago, got quick sand, neck deep stuck and stopped painting ... anything... completely (except for Pouch #17 which doesn't count in my book).

Picking up the brush suddenly became overwhelming and scary. Maybe it's just a phase but dealing with this silly paralysis head on was the only way to move on. So, today I dabbed on some paint here and there, layered on colour upon colour and doodled on some plants. I figured I should at least work on it to the point where I kinda like it. Yes, kinda like it would be fine. 

And here I am now. Do I like it? Hmmm ... I don't know :)

Oi! #4

Poster colour on 300gm watercolour paper. 18" X 12"

Oi! #3

Poster colour on 300 gm watercolour paper

Birds in a tree

Watercolour and acrylic ink on 300 gm watercolour paper.

Illustration Friday - Whiskers

A cat named Whiskers just had her breakfast :)

Back to people

 I missed painting people :)