remembrance

Here is the latest oil painting I've finished. I created it for a friend's mom in remembrance of her mom's father.

I'm a bit annoyed with a few things, but overall I think it turned out great. Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures - the lens on my phone is scratched and it just doesn't do justice to the way things look.

the arboretum pond

PC and I went to the Arboretum on campus yesterday for a couple hours. We sat in front of this pond (which has huge freaking fish in it, by the way. and also frogs. lots of frogs) and he drew in his sketchbook and I painted with my watercolors.

We watched the geese meander up and down the hills and in and out of the water while we sat with our shirts off (and some of us in a swimsuit) on an old blanket in the warm sunshine.

I think it's kinda cute for a quick study of water (which I'm not at all good at painting yet, but maybe with some more practice?). But anyways, we both decided it was a good use of our time. We got to spend a couple hours in the sunshine flexing our artistic muscles. Even though we are both very different, we have some very neat similarities.

all your watercolor are belong to me

Normally when one paints with watercolors one mixes the paint with water and applies it to wet or dry paper depending the effect one desires to achieve. Sometimes when one is painting with watercolors other methods of painting can be involved.

Say, like printmaking, I suppose.

Today we combined two of my favorite things, watercolor painting and printmaking. Instead of painting onto paper, the process was more about creating a monoprint. You can paint with the watercolors directly onto a piece of Plexiglas, and while you can't get the range in saturation that you can achieve with a watercolor painting, you can get some pretty neat affects because of the press.

In order to get the watercolors to transfer from the Plexiglas to the paper they need to be pretty saturated, so you don't need to mix them with a lot of water. Think more of a milky/creamy consistency rather than a tea or coffee like consistency.

Then, once you've painted on your Plexi, the paper enters a bath for all of about five or ten seconds depending on the kind of paper you have. After you blot the paper (dry off the excess water) you run the Plexi and the paper through the press.

The result is the above photo. I got a little bored with landscapes, and so I tried painting water. I think the water is my favorite part of that picture, all the different blues and purples and the reflection. It's kind of childlike to me, but then again, I tend to make pretty childlike artwork I think. Not childlike quality, per se, but just childlike ideas and content. It's my style, yo.

So, true to my style I decided to do a mech (robot). I googled a picture on my phone and set to work. I came up with this:

But my paper wasn't wet enough, so it came out a little lighter than I thought it would. I really like it though, I think he's pretty neat looking. So I repainted him and made his weapons fire. I let my paper keep a little extra water in it the second go round as well, so he came out pretty dark, which I love.