Author: -N-

WWM #8: Flying High

If you have ever seen a sky full of Monarch Butterflies, you know what it is like!  Nothing can describe it.  The #WorldWatercolorMonth2019 prompt “Flying High” brought to mind this event, and so here we have a resting butterfly to be admired, and the rest are on their way to their next habitat.

I had planned on doing this with watercolor pencil and other water-soluble media, but we have a studio problem – things are packed up because of a slab leak!  Hopefully it will be done by the end of today, and for a reasonable cost, but the result is that 95% of my art supplies are out of the studio, packed safely away in boxes and such.  I couldn’t find the pencils anywhere.  Perhaps it was for the best, as I pulled out my Japanese watercolors, gansai, and enjoyed working with these old friends once more.

WWM #7: Shiny Things

Shiny things . . . like a magpie, we are all drawn to things that glitter and glisten.  But what to paint, and in gouache?  In watercolor, perhaps a metal spoon or bowl, complete with sunshine glinting.  In gouache, though, the possible deepness of color as well as having a few metallic paints, I thought of water.  Water is always shiny, at night with reflected lights, during the day as the sun and clouds pass overhead.  Even when the weather is foul, water reflects and shines.  Painting this was a rather sensuous experience, which is perhaps why I am enjoying gouache more and more . . . and water is certainly so on a warm summer day.