anika mari

A few days ago I finished up a watercolor painting that I wasn’t satisfied with. I decided that I’d add some drawing to the pod shapes in the hopes of salvaging the piece.

I started by doing some sketches to figure out what patterns to use on the final painting. I worked with variations on a scalloped pattern, some simple, and some a little more complex.

Because I am planning to redo the same composition for another watercolor painting to try to get the original effect that I was after, I used a pencil and some tracing paper to copy the shapes.

When the outlines were traced, I thought it would be a good idea to try out some more variations of the scalloped pattern.

The above photo didn’t turn out great because it was back lit and the paper is translucent. It was windy so I have to use a lot of clothes pins to get it to hang straight, but I thought it looked kind of neat.

I put off drawing on the watercolor for several days because I got distracted by a few other drawing projects, plus I hadn’t decided exactly what patterns to draw. Finally I just went ahead and started. As I filled in the pods, I decided to vary the size and shallowness of the scallops.

The result is definitely what I was after. In a way it amuses me that I spent as much time as I did working on preliminary sketches, but I suppose it helped me rule out the more elaborate variations, and probably did influence the final result. In any case, I like it, and I consider the painting salvaged!

After I finished my latest sea urchin print and the squashed caterpillar byproduct painting, I had the novel idea to do an actual non-experimental painting. Watercolor is a relatively new medium for me though, so I ended up experimenting anyway.

I started out by drawing what seems to be my favorite shape in a scattered pattern across the rough surface of the paper. I used watercolor pencils to create the pointy ended ovoid shapes. When I do watercolor paintings that start off with a drawing, I like to use watercolor pencils. They are forgiving in that you can usually dissolve errant lines and marks with some water and not affect the overall painting when all is said and done.

I began the actual painting by smoothing out the drawn lines with water. I then added some blues and greens and got some really cool textures.

The painting was done, but the bright white background bugged me. I figured that I could painstakingly color in the background by carefully working around each blue shape, but I wanted to figure out an easier way. I reasoned that it didn’t really matter if I messed the whole thing up, so I could try something new.

The idea was to color in the background as quickly as possible. To achieve that end, I used a paper towel. First I dipped the towel in water and swept it across the painting, back and forth until the whole surface was moistened. The blue shapes bled a little as I expected they would, but still maintained their delicate textures. It was working! Then I dipped the paper towel in the light green color I had prepared, and using a similar stroke, I applied the color to the paper.

To get an even coat of the green, I had to work the surface more than I had when just wetting it. Sadly, the blue paint bled even more and blended with the green and dulled down the whole painting.

So my experiment didn’t exactly work, but I attempted to salvage the piece by re-painting the blue shapes. Because the entire surface of the paper was pretty wet, the darker blue paint bled out from the edge of many of the shapes. The watercolor texture isn’t quite as pretty either, and overall the painting looks somewhat dull, so I plan to add some ink drawing to the shapes which I think will help save this particular painting.

Since I had the paper towel out and ready, I used it to create a pretty light green wash on a new piece of watercolor paper. It worked great on the plain white surface. The color is bright and cheerful and not at all muddied. I’m discovering that planning is often my friend when I’m working with watercolor. I’m going to create a similar composition of blue ovoid shapes on the fresh light green background so I can see if the painting will turn out how I planned from the beginning.

It’s always hot in Saipan, but the past few days have been incredibly so. I think it’s because of all the rain we had last week. It cooled the island off while it was raining, but now the humidity is as thick as lentil soup. It makes it hard to get a lot of work done, but I’ve been making progress, if a lot slower than usual. I was thinking about starting to work more at night, but the bugs come out, and swarm all around when there’s light to attract them. There’s nothing more annoying that working carefully on the details of a painting or drawing when termites start landing on my arms or ankles.

That said, I finished a print of an all-over texture that I created using a large-nubbed sea urchin shell fragment.

I kind of love it, and it kind of creeps me out a bit. I’m not sure why, but I have the strong desire to cut it up into little circles and make a collage. Maybe to make the impact of the pattern a less intense. Somehow that seems like faulty logic, but that’s what I’m feeling about it.

Perhaps I should try the technique again. The reason I find the print a little unsettling could be that it seems a bit unbalanced and a somewhat overwrought. I’m not sure it is strong enough as a standalone piece of art. I’m having a hard time imagining my signature at the bottom and a mat and frame around the edge.

I created another “byproduct” painting when I applied the watercolor to the sea urchin piece as it rested on another sheet of watercolor paper. It wasn’t very interesting, so I got a little experimental with it. I applied a wash of water over the sharp, jagged little brush strokes. The water took up some of the pigment and created a really pretty light turquoise color. There was an excess of liquid pooling on the paper, so I had the idea to let it drip down the empty side of the paper. It made a mess of the floor, but the effect is pretty neat.

The final painting reminds me of a squashed caterpillar. This unsettles me a lot less than the above sea urchin print. Go figure.

The clouds were thick and gray on Tuesday, giving me enough cover that I decided it would be ok to go beach combing in the middle of the day. It was still steamy and hot but bearable without the sun beating down. I made my way to Lau Lau Beach where I’d had good luck finding lots of little white cowrie shells on my previous visits. Oh my, how things have changed in 6 years.

Instead of a beach littered with shells, I found myself picking a path through plain old litter. There was trash in the water, up on the beach, everywhere!

I kept walking down the beach and eventually came to an end of sorts where the beach gives way to coral rock. I glanced in the water and saw what I thought could be a broken sea urchin. Looking around, I saw some bits of broken plastic lying on the beach that looked remarkably similar. I decided I wouldn’t wade into the knee deep water unless I found some actual sea urchin pieces on the beach or in shallow water.

After surveying the area, I did indeed find a few urchin fragments, so I rolled up my shorts and waded in to check out the suspicious collection of shards. They were all pieces from sea urchins! I gathered them up and soon had a nice handful in a variety of shapes and colors and textures.

I had planned to cut up the green print for my next art project, but after I found the sea urchin pieces, my wheels started turning in a different direction, and I decided to create watercolor prints using a similar technique to that used when making palm prints.

I knew I would have to adjust the process slightly when working with the brittle sea urchin fragments.

I painted a little area of the sheet of watercolor paper with clear water. I then applied relatively saturated watercolor paint to the nobby side of the first sea urchin piece. I carefully placed the piece paint side down onto the wet paper. I used my finger to firmly push and roll the curved portion of sea urchin shell against the paper’s surface. The piece snapped right in half. Despite the now further fragmented shard, I continued printing in a horizontal direction across the paper, wetting the surface, painting the two pieces of shell, and pressing them down individually. I cautioned myself to be more careful with the next pieces.

I chose a new sea urchin piece and a new color for each subsequent horizontal band in the print (see below). All but one of the fragments broke into smaller pieces while I was making the print. So much for being more gentle. Truthfully, it would have been hard to get a good enough print from the delicate texture if I hadn’t used firm pressure, so I doubt the breakage could have been avoided. When all was said and done, I ended up with another byproduct painting that’s quite different than the pods piece that I added drawing to.

I took the photo of the splattered final byproduct with the pieces of sea urchin resting on the paper. The sea urchin shards are dry and porous. They sucked up the paint and are essentially dyed blue or green now. When I’m finished printing with them, I’ll have to find some way to showcase the actual pieces of shell.

When I started creating the sea urchin print, I was pretty much winging it in terms of composition and colors. I didn’t have a specific goal in mind at the start, but as the piece progressed, I decided to create a variety of textures as the color changed from blue to green.

I’m most happy with (from the top) the first and fourth bands of color/texture. The bottom row was kind of a disaster that I managed to salvage to some extent. The watercolor that I apply really has to be pretty thick. Then the wet paper can do the job of drawing out the paint to create an interesting texture. Using gouache instead of watercolor might the right consistency. For that last green band there was a lot more water in the paint, so when it met with the wet surface of the paper it bled like crazy. When I tried a drier surface, it still bled a lot, but a totally dry surface wouldn’t pick up much, if any of the paint.

I certainly haven’t perfected this sea urchin print technique, but I want to keep working with it. I really love the pattern and texture achieved in the 4th band. To create that unique result, I used the only shell fragment that had a more pronounced texture with larger nobs than all the other sea urchin pieces. The larger points held a good amount of the watercolor while keeping the flat surface of the shell away from the paper. It was the only piece that didn’t break too!

In the process of experimenting with watercolor prints, I inadvertently created a unique watercolor painting.

While working on the print, I rested palm fiber cutouts on another sheet of watercolor paper in order to apply the paint. The different greens created an outline around the center white space that was covered by the cutouts. I liked this byproduct, but I also felt that there was something missing. The shapes looked like little empty pods that were just begging to be filled with ink drawings.

My next step was obvious, but since I only had the one painting, I explored a bunch of different patterns and textures in pods that I drew in my sketchbook.

After filling two sheets of paper with patterned pods, I was pretty happy with a number of them. When I sat down to do the final drawing the next day, the second page of sketches was mysteriously missing! I honestly have no idea where it could be, or how it could have gotten to wherever it is. I couldn’t remember all the pod patterns from the missing sheet, so I started a new set, scribbling down the ones that I could remember first and then adding new ones. I ended up doing one more page after that, for a total of 3. The missing sheet will have to remain a mystery to us all. Unless of course it turns up at some point.

If you want to take a look at the 3 pages of sketches in more detail, you can check them out here, here and here.

Perhaps it was lucky that my second page of sketches went missing since I ended up using a couple of patterns from the last 2 pages that I hadn’t developed in my first round of studies. I examined the different pods in the painting as individuals and as a group to decide where to draw the different patterns. I wanted to include a variety of patterns and textures that are each unique enough to add interest when viewed in detail, but that also share a similar visual “weight” so that no one pod would jump out from the others.

I (almost) accomplished achieving uniform visual weight amongst the different patterns. From further away, the one that sticks out is the chevron or braided pattern. When viewed closer, I don’t think it stands out quite as much.

Now that it’s done, there are a few adjustments I would have made if I could start over, but I’m going to leave well enough alone and call it done.

This was a fun and relatively easy project. What surprised me the most was that watercolor paper is actually very nice to draw on with rapidograph pens. I expected that the rough texture of the paper would make the act of drawing equally rough, but I was able to maintain very good control. The paper seemed to love the ink, and it didn’t bleed a bit.

For my next work I’m going to draw on bristol board and combine the drawing with cut up pieces of the green print since I wasn’t happy with the final result of that piece. I’m curious to see if it’ll be easier to draw on the bristol than the watercolor paper, or if I’m in for a surprise since the watercolor paper provided a surprisingly delightful drawing surface.