Flowers a flutter

I finally finished the piece I've been working on for the past week or so.  It has a very summery kind of feel to it.  The color palate is very similar to my last painting  with the orioles in it.   I think they would go well together.

The part that took me the longest with this painting are the leaves.  It's probably hard to tell on the monitor, but each leaf segment is a separate piece of paper.  There are a couple segments per leaf in which it is watercolor right on the paper, but otherwise they are cut from either painted tea bags or coffee filters and then glued to the paper with gel medium.  It took me a full day to complete all of them. The flowers were created with painted tea bags and then I dipped the edges in a darker paint. The flower center is coffee filter and the stamens are with black ink.  The little butterflies made from tea bags and then painted with acrylic and black ink.

I'm starting to feel the call of spring.  The days are starting to get longer, I've noticed the birds are singing a little bit more and my chickens are much more active and they walk around with a happy little cluck.

Have a Happy Weekend!

Playing around

I love reusing tea bags in my artwork.   Fortunately for me there seems to be no shortage of them at our house.  I love the look, transparency, the feel and their durability.  Sometimes the color of them can be a challenge.  In my head I wanted these flowers to be a brighter pink, but many times with the tea bags you get a darker color.  Of course it depends too on what kind of tea was in the bag.  My morning Chai makes for a darker tea bag, while my afternoon  green tea is usually very light colored.

When I want a truer color I choose the lightest tea bags as possible.  These flowers were painted with watercolors and then I used acrylic paint and white ink for the stripes.  Usually I paint them with a very watered down acrylic, like the brown circles in the painting.  When you use acrylics though you loose a lot of the transparency. 


 
                                                                            Print available here.


My goal for this painting was to just play around a little bit with the tea bags and  especially with patterns.  It started out feeling very rigid and tight, but I feel like I got over that and I'm feeling happy with the results.

Back in January

I thought I'd share just a few paintings that I did back in January, they are definitely not my favorite.   I wasn't feeling very inspired at the time.  I don't mind the butterfly painting, but the jellyfish one was rather disappointing.  I had an idea in my head and it didn't turn out anywhere near what I imagined.   Isn't that frustrating when that happens?  It almost feels like a waste of my time, but I know that's part of the whole process of growing and learning as an artist, but it's still disappointing to spend a lot of time on something and not like it in the end.  It's crazy how I find one week where I'm over flowing with ideas and inspiration and then the next week I can barely find the motivation/inspiration to get anything started. I think I need to keep track of when my inspiration flows, is it hormonal? is it the moon? is it stress?   lack of Vitamin D ! because I find at the same time I'm when I'm having a hard time coming up with new ideas to paint, I'm also really unmotivated to cook and nothing sounds good to eat.   Hmmm...
The little squirrel I did  on a day where I was totally uninspired but I still felt like painting,  talk about frustrating!  That day I saw a squirrel sitting on the fence and walla, there  was my idea!   A very simple painting that satisfied my urge to paint that day.

IF: Swarm

I have a little "swarm" of butterflies this week for Illustration Friday.  There are all sorts of layers to this one.  I started with a pink checkered background I painted with watercolors, then added flowers drawn with india ink, next came all sorts of scrap papers and acrylic paint, followed by stitching to the butterflies at the end, all done on watercolor paper.  I had a blast creating this piece and found it hard to pull myself from it this past weekend and do more important things such as cooking meals for my family! 

a little fairy goodness

 
here's a sweet little fairy that i finished up today.  i'm really happy with the results.  i've noticed that a lot of my paintings have turquoise in them, so i tried to use a different color palette.  the little butterflies in her hair were a complete accident.  i used painted coffee filters for her hair and after it dried,  some of the darker pieces formed a little butterfly on the left side in the most perfect spot, so i then repeated it for the right side.  don't you just love it when accidents like that happen?

have a wonderful weekend!  i know ours is going to be a snowy one!