Happy New Growth

 Um, so if you leave tomatoes sitting on the counter and they get covered with holiday presents, sometimes they don't go rotten.

These ones grew.

A nice reminder we are half way out of the dark and spring is coming.  Be warned.  

Farmlife photos

 Just some colourful farmlife photos.  It would be fun to paint these one day.

Hobbit for the holidays

 

Another in the hobbit hole series with the limited palette handmade paints.

This guy is only three inches tall but packs a punch.  

Happy Holidays

 

I've been following youtube tutorials - sort of - and the limited Zorn Palette in handmade watercolours.

Occasionally, I add a bit of the winter nights blue with sparkles when I can't get a green just right.

My favourite is the hot chocolate.  

This might be a mistake

 Possibly the beginning of the end of gelly gouache for me.  

Poor chicken.

But festive. 

Beautiful hen

 A friends chicken but for some reason, I just had to paint it. It's a comfort thing now.

I probably would have eaten chocolate instead if I had any in the house.  But I'm glad I painted a chicken instead.

Regular watercolours, a mix of student and professional.

I just love the way she glows. 

Perhaps something more Shire

 

I'm playing with a new limited palette which is very like the one I created from beam paints only this time from commercial paints in tubes that I can pour into a more portable palette.  

Caput Mortuum, Indigo, and Hansa.  I feel the need to add a green to this, but haven't found one I like yet.  But it can do a lot more than I expected with just those colours.

But still, something's missing.  So I added some lines with a dip pen and trying out sumi ink.

I like this much better

I don't always get it right

 I like to imagine that I get it right more often than not, but um... maybe it's closer to 50/50.

By "right" means that it's the best I can do with my current skillset and feel good about it.

Today's disaster is of a local folly and waterwheel in Himi Gelly Gouache.  It's really sad that I even used a protractor to get the angles right.  Although looking at it now, I can see some of the error is from the post concussion vision issues that won't go away.  

Hobbit happy

 Yesterday I shared my new limited palette of handmade watercolours.

This little sample of watercolour paper is 3x4" and for the longest time I couldn't figure out what to paint that small.  

Small

hobbit sized?

My own Shire palette from handmade Beam Paints

The more I explore Beam Paints, the more I love what they can do.  

I want to stress that these are NOT like mass manufactured paints.  These naturally sourced pigments tend to be heavy and have some very interesting behaviour.  

I've been using my Zorn palette for a while now, but decided to try another limited colour palette.

I've also included white in this.  It's probably the one colour I'm most disappointed with as it's a problem to activate.  It sucks up all the water and gives me almost nothing back.  It's fine if I paint with it for a few days in a row, but trying to wake it up... it resists.

But it's useful to make the paints differently opaque when needed.  Well worth exploring what we can do with it.

 

The angry gardener

 So I got something wrong.  She's never this annoyed.  But I do like playing with indigo for the background.  

Every painting is practice and a step towards getting better.  I learn something every time.

Washing the gardener

 She's Gardener because she's the only one cheeky enough to sneak into the garden and dig up my plants.  

Personally, I think she just wants the hug

Regular watercolours.  Nothing special about that.  But I love the way the first wash behaves as it dries.  It's still wet here.  The "drying shift" of watercolours is fun to watch, but also increases the challenge.  

himi gouache eh? But can it paint a chicken?

 

A kind of chicken, yes.

I used ink for the line work and himi gouache for the colours.  There's a charm about him, but also he's too generic to be a chicken I know.  

I forgot

 His closeup

Considering I don't know how to paint people yet, I really like how this turned out.  Five colours it all it takes (and some gold)

Beam handmade watercolour paints - it feels like The Holidays have begun already

 

For santa, I'm using the Zorn palette I talked about before, and Beam Paints.  This time I'm adding Winter Nights as it has some sparkle and I was having trouble getting greens I liked for the holly.

Have a look at how it swatches and mixes with the other colours

Still very subdued but that's exactly what I want.  

One thing I love about zorn colours is it's a very classic movie look for us.  We learn about limited colour palettes by watching TV and films.  And have you noticed if something is set in War Time England, the urban scenes almost always follow the zorn palette so any touch of green or blue really stands out?  Foils War is a good example.  

Zorn is classic in our zeitgeist.  

I kind of like how we can use colours to pull up old programming in our brains.  And sparkles.  

I may have "accidently" added some gold in there too but that qualifies as a kind of yellow ochre, right?

It's that time again.

 

Santa begins.

These are some handmade watercolour paints from Beam Paints and their pre-black friday sale (their mailing list lets you know the sales)

More on that next day.

Year of the...

 First time playing with gouache.

Rabbit footprints and a dragon door knocker (so you don't have to try to figure out how to politely ask what it is)

Last year was rabbit.  This year, dragon.

This is himi gouache which is a very affordable paint set.  Over 1 kilo of paint for what a small 15ml tube would cost of professional gouache.  But I'm already unsure if I like it as my mind is firmly enjoying watercolour style of painting.

Generic hen

 I don't seem to be very good at keeping things in frame, but meh, maybe it's my style.

She's a pretty hen.  I don't know if I did her justice or if it's a bit abstract.  But I'm happy. 

so begins generic hen

 her name is actually "generic hen".  Not to be confused with "generic red hen" and "other generic hen".  I wish they would have more creative names.

so begins the first wash.  Back to mass manufactured student and professional grade watercolours.  I'm running out of student grade, especially yellow ochre.  That one seems to evaporate or something.

coffee in charcoal

 First attempt at charcoal.  Not bad.  Not great.

But also from memory.

What this means is that my homemade charcoal can draw coffee.  

mmm... coffeee... can't blog, need coffee.  

One day I will paint this

 I haven't the courage to try.

The thing is, these colours are far more vibrant in person so it's pretty hard to make it look real.

charcoal - way easier to make than it looks

 This is willow charcoal I made.  The willow trees need coppicing (chopping down) each winter and I took some sticks and pealed the bark off them.

This is an old tin something, maybe chocolates?  With a nail, puncture the hole in it.  fill it as tight as possible with sticks (green is fine, dry is better) and wrap some stiff wire around it to make sure it stays closed.  Toss it in the woodstove at the end of the day.  It's ready by morning.

Considering, with shipping and stuff, it's about a dollar a stick to buy this kind of willow charcoal, I expected it to be more difficult to make.

I painted a house (or a small part of one)

 There is more than one kind of painting going on these days.

I like the other kind better

light, shadow, lopsided

 Playing with opaque watercolours, lights and shadows.  I don't really like it, but it was fun to paint.

the one that got away

 Here's one that didn't get very far.  She's a tricky hen and I thought maybe the colours beneath the feathers... 

Nah.

Need to work on brush control more.  

Sometimes the chicken works, and other times it's just not ready to be painted yet.

armistice day

 

Today is Remembrance Day as they call it here.  

It's a bit of a shit day now.  It doesn't mean much except everyone under the age of 19 has to know the poem about the poppies.  Everyone gets a holiday unless you are in the military then you have to either work or go to stand in the cold for whatever ceremonies (unpaid) for hours.  It feels more like punishment to those who serve.

And I can't help but think how important their work is.

Here in Canada, the forces do more than practice with guns.  They are involved in search and rescue, medical evac to the remote artic when conditions are too cold for civilians, they help with floods and fires, they even go into old age homes and change dirty nappies when the government fails.  

To give a country the best years of their lives, only to get tossed aside at the end?  It's getting better for those retiring these days, but they still fail those who retired before.

Sorry.

shitty day.  

not a day many people remember except to take one of the 'free' poppies at the grocery store and have a day off work.

Also, I forgot to paint (or steal) a poppy.

still a mystery

 

I only saw her on photo day.  But yes, she was that mean.  I took her photo, she bit me.  Seems like a fair exchange.  

who is this hen?

 I don't know this hen.  I've never seen her before.  But she showed up on picture day.  And was never seen again.

Oh well.  I'll begin with a wash.  

golden zorn

 I wonder if I could paint goldy in Zorn?

That's pretty!  I wish I could remember how I got the different shades of red.  I want to try this again. 

tutorial failure

 

I don't know why, but tutorials are probably the worst way for me to learn.  I feel like I'm copying a painting or even steps of a painting.  I think I would do better if I could have the steps but work from life or a phot rather than follow someone else's painting.  

Anyway, this never amounted to anything.  It's also the wrong time of year to be thinking of cherry blossoms when I'm having to keep the frost off the humming bird feeders.  

Goldie

 

Painted him for a friend.

First time using caput mortuum (beautiful rich, granulating opaque watercolour, earth red) but I lost some of the glow so I used some gold paint to give him back some shine before the final layer.

I tried a thing, it kind of worked.  

Trick or Treat

 

You know how I worried I bought the wrong colours in the last post?

Well, it gets worse.  This trio is secondary colours - what a crazy challenge I set myself to paint something with this.  

Same lifting problems as last time.  I tried to use it to my advantage, but I just couldn't get the deep darkness I wanted.  Adding layers to make it darker, lifted the old layer and made it lighter.  It's like opposite to what I would expect watercolours to do.  

The reference I used for this is a photo I took a few years back in the local park.  Dappled light through the leaves and a face that caves in on itself.  Brilliant.

After Halloween, thousands of pumpkins, carved, melted, burnt, and rotting, appear in one of the local parks.  It's a marvelous thing to see.

We like to pretend wildlife eats them all, but in reality the tax dollars clean them up.  Money well spent.  I wonder if the weather will let me go with my paint set instead of just a camera this year?  

deceptive handmade watercolours

 These should be so beautiful.  I had such wonderful results buying handmade watercolour so far, that I thought I would try a different seller on etsy.  They get great reviews.  

They swatch beautifully!  

Not sure this is quite cut out for a chicken.  How about one of my other obsessions?  A hobbit-ish house?

The first layer started off well.  Blending is lovely.  Got some good strong colour right away.

The problem comes with the next layer.  See that window on the right.  Smudge city.  

The paint lifts like crazy.  One layer painting is fine, but I like to layer.  sigh.  They feel like they aren't bonding to the paper like regular watercolours.  Some watercolours lift a bit, but it usually needs more than a hint of water.  These feel like they don't have enough binder.  But maybe I just choose the wrong colours?  

I wonder, how about this limited palette?

 Again with the Beam Paints - more and more I fall in love with them.  Lucky for me the price is about equal or less than most big name paints in the local art shops.  

And my new favourite limited palette.  

Timberwolf (paynes grey)

Mars (caput mortuum)

and Fall Popular (hansa yellow)

For this one, I included a bit of graphite, but meh.  It's not the right addition to this trio.  

(and yes, this is totally a variation on Handsome - glad you noticed.  I use him to try out new colour combinations but mostly I give him back his comb points because poor fella) 

Forever handsome

He used to have the most beautiful comb!  But alas, he's not the wisest when it comes to battle.  But the hens love him and that's what counts in the end.  

I think this is one of my favouite examples of how much personality handmade paints can add to the picture.  I don't think I could get the feathers half way close without it.  

Painting feathers are hard (is hard?)