Free Coloring Book Pages

My daughter's been on a coloring kick lately. And now that she discovered I can draw what she requests....

Well, for those of you with little girls who also love princesses, fairies, butterflies and flowers (or for the inner little girl in you), here's some downloads.  Click on the images to access the pdf files for printing.

Natural Plant Pigments

I spent the day at the Berkeley Botanical Gardens, at a workshop taught by Judi Pettite on the making of, and use of plant pigments in dyes and inks. To those of you who have been following me for a while, you know I'm a big fan of the natural plant pigments that Kremer Pigments used to sell. They've since discontinued that line. But something about plant pigments has really drawn me in. I've been meaning to try and make my own Nettle pigment at some point, and after this workshop, I definitely want to make it, as well as many others.

Generally, you take plant matter, make an infusion in water, reduce, dry, grind, to create pigment. From there, various binders can be added to create the paint medium of choice (Gum arabic, for watercolors). I was surprised at the range of plants that could be used, and rather pleased that one of the banes of my backyard gardening existence (oxalis) can be used to make a very pretty yellow color, simply by soaking the flowers in water for a couple of days.

Japanese maples can be used for a variety of colors ranging from browns and reds to purples.

 

Oak galls, or black walnut hulls can be crushed and soaked in water for a week, then boiled, reduced, and dried, for a deep brown or black.

The artist geek in me was very happy to play with all the bottles and jars of powders, pastes, and dyes.

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Watching a demonstration of how to apply the pigment and make it into a printmaking ink. This involved grinding and mixing with gum arabic, water, and sodium alginate (an emulsifier that adds a kind of tacky viscosity to the ink).

Experimenting. Eye-dropped some oxalis dye onto a wash. I liked how the yellow droplets gleamed like gold.

Further experimentation. Crow quill pen dipped into brazilwood ink, wet in wet with eye-dropped oxalis dye.

Playing with linocuts. Quick little birdy, charged up with indigo ink.

 

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At the end of the day:

Effervesce

Effervesce

Size: 9x13 inches

Medium: Watercolor

Prints ($16.95) & Detail closeups -available here-

She is a creative force, coaxing forth growth, both the physical evidenced in the unfurling leaves, and the spiritual, embodied by the butterflies. She bathes in the life-giving warmth and light of the sun. She is partnered in her dance and song of creation, with the sun. She IS the sun.

"Effervesce" is a commissioned painting, meant to be a companion piece to "Lightness".

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Some of the in progress sketches:

Initial figure sketch & some various thumbnail ideas for the background and composition. The figure came pretty easily for this piece. Sometimes I have to struggle with the concept a lot more. Her pose is an echo of Shiva's dance of creation (and destruction).

Client wasn't really going for the background proposals, so I had another thought, which is what we ended up going with.

Scanned and pieced together sketches in photoshop to get the rough idea of the placement and proportion of various elements.

Final sketch ready to paint.

Allegro

 Allegro

Size: 8.5x14 inches

Medium: Watercolors, ink, metallics, gold

Original painting ($925.00), Prints ($16.95) and Detail closeups available -here-

The tempo increases, and we must follow, drawn on by the rhythm and the music that beats through the earth into the soles of our feet.

The next part of the Stag Sonata Cycle series:

 

 

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Some of the in progress sketches:

The initial thumbnails and composition brainstorming.

Scanned from sketchbook and the fiddled around with more definitive composition with rough lines in photoshop.

Final prepared sketch ready for painting.

About Art References

"Ships Passing in the Night"

Prints ($16.95 & $26.50) available -here-

A question I was asked recently:

How much do you use references for animals in particular?  

At this point, I mostly do birds from my imagination. Other animals I usually need at least a few reference pictures. I don't ever draw directly from any one photograph. Here's a pinterest board I use for gathering references on any one particular piece that I might be working on at a time: http://www.pinterest.com/puimun/references/

You can get a pretty good idea looking there, what my painting of the moment is. I like to gather a lot of angles and really start to form a picture in my mine about how something moves, because movement is always utmost important to me. I want my paintings to be active in some way, even when the subject is still, there is movement in all the interconnected elements.

Often photos are of static poses just because of the nature of what it is - a photographer waiting for a moment, and the difficulty of capturing spontaneous movement. For example, it's very hard to find any reference of a bird flying AT the camera because usually a bird will be seen in profile, or flying away from the photographer. You're also not going to be able to find lions pouncing out at the viewer either because...well...that might be the last photograph the photographer would ever take.

So I have to examine the anatomy and figure out how things would look from angles that are not seen. If you scroll down through that pinterest board, you can see that I've got a ton of stag photos currently, and going back a few weeks armadillos, owls, moths, chinese junks, monasteries, running children...etc.

Fermata

Fermata

Size: 7x14 inches

Medium: Watercolor, metallic pigments, gold leaf

For prints ($12.75), original painting ($650.00) and detailed closeups, -click here-

In musical terminology and notation, a fermata means to hold a tone or rest beyond the written value. It is a sustained moment beyond that which the meter or rhythm would normally accommodate.
Incidentally, a fermata is also sometimes known as a "bird's eye".

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Some of the in-progress scans and photos of this piece:

Initial sketch. I was scrawling in my sketchbook and the idea took shape as I went. So when I reached the upper edge of my page, I taped another sheet above to keep going.

 Scanned that and modified some aspects in photoshop. I wanted him to be standing on a rise, and so changed the angle of the haunches to better reflect that, as well as some of the lines of face and neck. It's mirror flipped so that I could get a better idea of what changes I needed to make. Sometimes when you look at a piece too much, you no longer see the flaws. Flipping it gives a fresh perspective.

 Finalized sketch on my painting surface. The birds were added just before painting and were not a part of the initial conceptualization. But something was missing and once I added them in, they felt right.

Two days of painting later.

Cherry

Cherry

Size: 18x18 inches (Fully framed size)

Medium: Mixed Media - Watercolor, Ink, Metallic Pigments

Original painting, fully framed, available for $550.00

The past month it has felt more like the middle of Spring than the early December Winter that it should be. I was inspired by the profusion of blossoms on all the cherry and plum trees, and by the Lunar New Year to paint some blooms.

I was recently at the Berkeley Botanical Gardens to see a Botanical Illustration show, and fell in love with the pieces that were done on a surface called Dura-lar, which I found out was a brand that made translucent vellums and other acetate surfaces for drawing and painting on. I bought a couple pads. I found out after I got home that I had accidentally bought one that was just clear acetate. Colored pencils didn't work on it, and neither did watercolor painted directly. Though ink did work quite well, and my watercolor gesso worked too. So I set about playing with it to see what I could do.

Painted the watercolor ground in silhouettes of the blossom branch.

It was quite fun to see the finished branch on the transparent surface.

I tried out various backgrounds to set it up against.

And finally settled on painting a textured surface of metal leaf, metallic powders, watercolor, and sealer. The result looks bit like beaten copper.

Sandwiched the acetate and background with mat board for the final piece.