It's Tulip Time Again

Another alcohol ink painting, this time a group of red tulips. This style is so far outside my wheelhouse I'm not sure where it came from but I had fun painting it.

Batik Tulips~Completed

Ta Da! It's finally done. Last night I removed all the tape and finished the centers of the tulips. Today I looked at it and thought I could've done a better job on the tulip in the lower left corner so I retaped a few areas and applied another light wash. I got some very nice bleeds on the tulip and the background and thoroughly enjoyed this process. I would definitely try this again. It's a bit tedious applying the tape but more fun than a chore. Kudos to Sandy Maudlin for creating this technique.

Batik Tulips~Update 2

Here I've applied my dark wash over everything. I used Indigo as a base color. I added some Phthalo green in a few areas, perm. yellow in others to get a mix of warm and cool.

Everything is now covered in masking tape. This process was actually fun! Kinda like putting a jigsaw puzzle together.

I masked off some leaves and one bud and here I've removed the tape from those areas so I can put even more tape on.

I had hopes of completing this today but it seems like it's taking forever to dry. The tape as well as the paper has absorbed a lot of moisture and it's a bit humid here today so I'll just have to wait...but it's hard. I'm dying to start tearing off tape to see what's underneath.

Batik Tulips~1st Update

I'd call this the ugly stage. Every painting seems to go through at least one. I've added color and now I'm beginning to add more tape. Then more color, more tape and so on. It's my understanding that before it's completed the entire piece of paper will be covered in masking tape. I will reiterate...I have no idea what I'm doing. I'll add that I also have no idea what my end result will be. I think it's going to be like opening a present on Xmas morning...a nice surprise or a big letdown. I'm still excited to what happens either way.

Batik Tulips~WIP

This is as far as I got before the big 'boom' and the flames. I used artist's tape to mask the areas I wish to keep white in hopes it will not allow any bleed as I add the next layers of color. I will be switching to a regular brand of masking tape to complete the painting. Bleeds will be desirable now. Just a note: I really have no idea what I'm doing yet. This should be interesting.

My working drawing.

Here I ramped up the contrast in my photo editor and greyscaled the image to get a better handle on the values.

This is a crop of a photo submitted by Lorenz on Paint My Photo. I cropped it quite a bit to create a macro.

I've been so impressed by Sandy Maudlin's masking tape batik watercolor paintings I decided to try my hand at it. See Sandy's batik poppy Here and the work of some of her students Here.

I chose to try tulips as my first subjects. Fairly simple shapes to contend with. For my reference I'm using a photo submitted by Lorenz on Paint My Photo, a site I found and joined through Facebook where photographers and artists share their work without worries of copyright violation. I haven't gotten very far yet as my hair dryer decided to burst into flames when I was drying the first wash so until I replace it, it'll be slow going.