Chinese Brush Painting

The Very Beginning

For Christmas I got this set, so eventually decided to try it.

It had a practice sheet that lets one use plain water to practice brush strokes, then dries again to be re-used – a handy thing.

One is supposed to grind ones own ink from this stick, not an easy procedure.

The included book gives step-by-step instructions for a handful of paintings, starting with this leaf piece...

....then a seahorse – with pattern included.

Then there was the lotus boom and dragonfly (I see now I never finished the vertical leaf)....

Then I tried this bird lesson.

Obviously my strokes are not very Chinese, but it was interesting to try. I like the look of Chinese painting and might incorporate some ideas into my work. I do not think I will devote the required time to mastering the strokes, but a class some day..... maybe.

Cellist and Ballerina

From Leah:

I finished this commission for a lady I know. This is her playing her cello. She loved the picture! I'm making her a couple more cello pieces.

From Sarah:

Last week, I tried out another drawing app on my phone, just exploring the brush options and layers and such, not paying attention to the proper forms of ballerinas or of humans in general...

...and then I threw together a mock-graphic-novel-page, using another app, just to see how easy it would be to make something like that on my phone, not paying attention to the best word choices or other details...

I was going to do my January "life drawing" yesterday, but I got one of my nasty headaches. I will get it done this week, and hope to post next Tuesday! :)

Watercolor 221

Tropical Tölt

Snowflake Time

In Winter Cold

Watercolor 220

Another of Water

Watercolors 218 and 219

These are telling me that I need to leave this phase and get back to some serious art. Not good and little progress.

Damaged paper doesn't help the other problems.

Watercolor 217

Snow Bunnies

A very small piece

"Pixel" Art

I was away visiting some family the past week, so all I managed to create were some "pixel art" doodles on my phone with an app I found:

Watercolor 216

Big on Little

Percheron Stallion, postcard-size painting

Winter Creativity- Flower Arrangments

I am visiting Katie and her family in Michigan and she asked me to help with a special project.

Many years ago I was given a large supply of silk flowers from a church in Hood River that had an over abundance (given to them when Walmart cleared out their inventory). I sent many of those flowers to Katie's church and she has been using them to create arrangements for the altar and to decorate at Christmas time.

As a busy pastor's wife with six children she desired to have some permanent arrangements that could be available to save her time when preparing for services. 

First we separated the flowers into color piles to better see what I had to work with.

Katie had found pairs of glass vases at thrift stores which she spray painted in white, gold and a bronze color that made the inexpensive glass vases look like pottery.

I used some floral foam to keep the stems of the flowers in place

I cut many of the flower clusters apart with a wire cutters in order to have more flexibility in arranging them.

I made a set of arrangements for each season, trying to make matching pairs. These are for autumn.

Winter

Spring

Summer

Red flowers for Pentecost and Reformation. These can be easily removed so that the gold vases can have white silk lilies for Easter.

 The winter arrangements for today's church service.

When I make any flowers arrangements, real or silk, what I always look for are variations in bloom sizes, petal types and "textures". I had an enjoyable time arranging these flowers because I had such an abundance of types and colors to work with. There were enough flowers to make many more arrangements!