Veggies

I decided that I would start every day with a pencil and wash drawing of some vegetable(s). The first day, I went to the fridge and took out three out of the four vegetables that are cooked every day (the fourth being onions): ginger, green chillies and tomatoes. Some small eggplants were lying in the bin, so I added one of those as well.

I started with the ginger, and tried to pay very close attention to all of its knobs and ridges. I was pretty happy with it.

Then the chillie. It was harder, because it had fewer features, and I had a difficult time making the colours intense enough. I started with an underglaze of yellow, but after several washes of greens, trying to get the colours right, I lost the yellow, so had to go back and add it again. Then I lost the highlight... sigh.

The tomatoes were even tougher, especially the one on the left - did you know that that was meant to be a tomato? No particular features, and that incredible red/ orange...

Finally the little eggplant, which was more satisfactory.

Drawing and painting these vegetables was so intense and satisfying! I got into that wordless mode where one is very focussed on what one is doing, and was very sorry when I fell out of it again, into the noisy world.

Peppers

I am happy about this drawing -- I corrected the lines as I went, and felt that I had done a good job of capturing the shapes of the vegetables. I decided that I'd better scan it before painting it, in case I screwed it up later. The lines are darker than in reality:

What is it about red? First I had a problem getting the tomatoes to look right; the red pepper was even worse. I like the way the yellow one turned out, though:

In September 2004, I had tried painting a green pepper for the first time. It has a certain tortured, expressionist look to it, for which I feel a certain fondness. I've gotten looser since then, and more in control of colour and the watercolour medium:

A Journal Page

I started by just putting colours on the page. The next day I started fiddling with an old picture of myself - 1983, sigh - in Photoshop. When I was done I saw that the colours fitted well with my journal page. I fiddled some more with the page - with pen and some more watercolour washes, and glued on the picture.

Then I wrote a few things about that time in my life. I had passed the Foreign Service exam, and was waiting for my security clearance. I knew that I was going to begin a new life, but there was still time to appreciate the old one. It was a happy time for me.

Oh, and there's a not-very-flourishing ficus, from the coffe shop I visited today.

An Experiment

I decided to try several things that were unfamiliar to me all at once. I painted the same picture on an acrylic background, using gouache; watercolours; and watecolour pencil. Not happy with the results, but I've learned a few things. First of all, the colours bead up on the acrylic -- though it happened least with the pencils, because I used a very small amount of water just to dissolve the colours which I had put on dry. Then, I wasn't able to get intensity from the watercolours at all. And the gouache, though it went on darker, somehow turned to mud. I might add that I'm not good at painting flowers in the first place - so that's another part of the experiment. Well, anyway, here they are, my blobby flowers:

Gouache on gold acrylic

Watercolour on gold acrylic

Watercolour pencil on gold acrylic (my acrylic layer was thinner and smoother for this one, which may have helped the pencil to adhere more smoothly)