Catching Up

It's been a busy week here. We're getting the house ready to host 4 students from Oklahoma State tomorrow evening.  Lots of extra cleaning, cooking, and bed-making.  Oh, and getting my book finished.  It should be here tomorrow.  I'm so excited.

Here is the art I've done for the last 3 days:

Zentangle tile with Auraknot and Bunzo

ATC ZIA

A study in colored pencil:
base layer is metallic pencil
then covered with red and white Prismacolors
highlights with pink watercolor pencil
burnished with white Prismacolor
I'm debating whether or not to smooth it out by adding water to the watercolor pencil. I think I will have to sleep on this before deciding.

Trying Something New

For years, I've been thinking I should make greeting cards. I have scrapbook supplies; I have stamping supplies; I have art supplies; I have youtube. But, alas, I made no cards.

Today, that changed. I decided that if I was going to create art every day, I really should do something with it. Turning my art into cards seems like the perfect solution.  So, today, I made art, and I made a card. Here it is:

My inspiration was a project from:
Unfortunately, after collecting a bunch of watercolor books, I realized, after an hour of searching, that I have no transparent watercolors!  All I have at home are opaque gouache paints.  Amazing. So, I for this project I used acrylic, thinned with water and floating medium to try and make it at least look like watercolor.  Regardless, I like it and hope you do, too.

Watercolor Sunflower ATC, revisited

Since I didn't like my watercolor sunflower and I have been liking the results of mixing Zentangle and watercolor, I thought I'd see what would happen if I did some tangling over the ATC from a few days ago.

Before: a sloppy watercolor sunflower

After: I'm still not digging it.
But I do like the background.
The inner critic is back. <sigh>

Working Backwards

Yesterday, I started by tangling and then adding watercolor. Today, I did the opposite.  I put down a little wet-on-wet.

But, I thought it needed more texture, so I put down another layer of watercolor. I've decided I really like putting down colors and just watching them blend and seeing what happens. It is very freeing.

Then I tried to find tangles the emphasized the paint designs. It was hard to pick just the right tangles and I'm not sure I completely succeeded.

Here is the final result.

I think it might need some more color on the tangles.  What do you think?  Is it done? Please comment and let me know.

No Judgement Day

Today, I refused to listen to my inner critic. I wanted to do something fun and free-flowing and colorful.  Lately, every time I sit down to do art, I hear this little voice in my head telling me how bad it is. She can be very persuasive and it sucks the joy out of painting. So, today, I declared it a "no criticism day." Every time that voice started, I just told her to shut it.

It worked.  I was able to have a blast on this piece and I really like the results.

My favorite part. I think it looks like a mermaid tail in a beautiful blue sea.

Phiclops, a very fun new tangle. After painting and shading this, I used a white Gelly Roll pen and then covered the whole thing in Glaze.  

The whole piece: 5x8
watercolor, pencil, Sakura micron, Sakura Glaze pen,
white Sakura Gelly Roll pen

Sunflower Take 2

I thought it would be fun to see if I could recreate the Sunflower ATC from a few days ago in watercolor.  I was mistaken.  I don't know if it is because

• I spent 1/10 of the time on the watercolor
• I need more practice in watercolor
• I just prefer more detailed work

In any case, here is the watercolor version.  Not my favorite, but I'm still glad I made time to paint today.

The Muse is Feeling Overworked Again

I used up all of my creativity working on the back cover for my book.  Writing the book was 1000 times harder than I thought it would be. I have no idea why I thought doing the cover would be any easier.  For what it's worth, this is my creative output for the day.  No flowers again. Such is life.