Painting Papers

Spent a beautiful warm sunny day outside yesterday painting papers to restock my palette.

Living in New England I don't have the luxury of mild year round weather...and I would much rather paint outdoors to keep the art room clean. So, that means grabbing those great summer days as I can get them.

I took all of my rice papers, book pages, etc out with me along with watercolors, acrylics, and some twinkling H2O's for an afternoon of fun!!

Luckily I have a great glass top table that is perfect for this. I can get it wet and messy and simply clean it off with the hose. Can't do that in the art room..lol

As you can see...I got quite a bit done. Now.... I need to find more time to actually do some paper making next. I'm starting to run out of those nice hand made pieces. That too is a messy process, so I'd rather grab some outside time for that as well.

That's also fun because you end up with papers you never even dreamed of creating!! Pure inspiration!

Watercolor vs Acrylic

I tried doing two similiar postcard sized painting in pretty much the same design but in different medium. (click to enlarge)

The one on the left is watercolor on watercolor paper and the circles done in ink. I love watercolor and the variations you can get with the wet in wet painting. There is a lovely glaze of twinkling H2O's all over her tail and wings as well...but the scan doesn't pick that up very well.

The one on the right is all done in acrylic on top of a book page adhered to bristol board. I decided to make the background paint layer cover the text and only have it show through on the body itself. With the more flat type of finish that comes from the acrylic, I think the text adds a nice variety and interest. The circles were done in acrylic as well this time.

I must say that I'm not really sure which one I like better now. They both have their fine points and things I like about each one. I just found this to be an interesting exercise and may do this more often. There is always something new to be learned each time.

Zettie

Ahh...yes. Managed to get another piece done.

This one is for a "zettie" themed postcard trade.

I went with a red and white stripe this time instead of the traditional black and white.

Sadly the scan doesn't really show the shimmer on the body from the twinkling H2O's I used.

Just feels good to be getting a few things done that aren't related to the real estate right now.

My prize package

arrived today!! This was the package of goodies I'd won for my Halloween postcard design at MailArtWorld. Since the prizes were coming all the way from Australia, I knew they would take quite a while, so I wasn't worried and knew they'd show up at some point.

Well....today was my surprise. It was just like a bit of an early Christmas. There in my mailbox was a package. At first I wondered if it was merely a package from some of my early online Christmas shopping...but upon pulling it out....WOW...it was for ME!

How wonderful. The goodies were even gift wrapped!

There were two brown kraft books for altering, two watercolor blank postcards, a white pen, a "mail art" stamp, and YES....24 Twinkling H2O's!!!

Just look at those yummy colors! Love the shimmer of these little beauties. I had invested in just a couple of basic colors at one time to give them a try....so what a delight it was to receive these!!!

Thank you MailArtWorld....and to all the members who voted for my card! With sooo many fine artists at the site, I'm especially honored to have won.