Dead Leaves & Walnut Ink

4/1/2012

I did a little tweaking. I warmed this up with a wash of Quin. gold deep and added some Lumiere Super Copper fluid acrylic.

It's now titled 'Fall-en'

I got out my homemade walnut ink yesterday and some dry leaves I had saved from last Fall. I coated the back of the leaves with masking fluid, then using the mask coated leaves as stamps, I pressed them onto my paper. I had to work fast or the leaves would stick. After the masking was dry, I did my first pour. Next I removed the first masking, did another stamping and then another pour. When the last of the mask was removed I added some phthalo turquoise watercolor and gold metallic fluid acrylic. The result is a bit on the abstract side but I think it evokes a feeling of dry forest floor, possibly tree bark. Anyway, I like it!

Daisy Peeper Quartet ~ Complete

I started this painting last year, then ran into a snag so it needed some tweaking to save it which I put off until just recently. I finally put it back on the easel a few days ago, made some adjustments and hopefully it's now ready for framing. I'll have to do my 'sit and stare' time with it to make sure it all works. This is a full sheet and I rarely work this large so I was praying I could rescue it. The thought of wasting a full sheet of w/c paper makes me feel ill.:( Thank God for heavy body acrylics.

Le Chat Retourne

The title translates roughly as The Cat Returns. I thought it would be fun to translate my usually boring titles to French. It sounds a whole lot better.:D

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I took the reference photo last summer during a hot, sunny afternoon when one of my cats came inside to escape the heat. After downloading the image to my PC I noticed it contained some fascinating shapes, shadows and colors. Amazingly the slice of door on the right and the cat are both white but reflected light(or lack thereof) and surrounding colors inside my home greatly changed the hues of both. Also it was interesting that the cat is casting two separate shadows...forward toward the viewer because of the light entering the window in the storm door and also to the left because of the same light reflected off the white surface of the inner door.

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For a palette I started with the three primaries, in this case Quin. perm rose, permanent yellow and phthalo blue. I later added some tinted gouache and watercolor pencil as well as Quin. violet.

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Note: I hope these images are somewhat close to the originals. I have a new OS and have struggled to adjust the colors on my old monitor.