anika mari

I haven’t been too on top of updating this blog during what I figured would be the transition time from this blog to my new one, a is for anika, so I thought I’d offer a little update.

I’ve been testing out Daniel Smith watercolors lately, in preparation for ordering from them–which I did, and I should get my new paints next week!

Here are a few of the images I’ve created and written about lately:

If you are still subscribed to this blog and want to check out what I’ve been up to lately in more detail, stop by my new blog and say hi!

An artist friend of mine commented on the recent stone print I completed and mentioned that she never would have thought of doing it. She then expressed and interest in borrowing my brain for a day. Well, I’m not sure how I’d lend out my brain, but it got me to thinking about what thought processes I went through when creating the stone print, and I realized I glossed over those thoughts in the last post. Consider this a little expansion.

The process that I undertook when creating the stone print embraces the randomness that comes when in the midst of creating art. When I set about to create a new piece, I generally have one of two starting points: either I have a subject I want to depict, or I have a set of steps that I want to take. While the former sometimes incorporates some of the random unfolding of ideas, the main distinction is the spark of the idea. When I start a painting or drawing with process in mind, generally the results tend to be more abstract, and I have no idea what I’ll end up with when I’m finished.

When starting a process focused piece, I might begin with a framework in mind, as I did when creating the black and white drawing below, or the recent tapestry drawing I completed.

in this drawing I started with the v shaped framework and added the details as I drew

The other starting point is a specific kind of mark that I want to make, and the piece unfolds from there. That’s what I did when creating the stone prints–I decided that I wanted to see what would happen if I painted a stone with watercolor and pressed it onto paper.

After the print marks were dry, I added the “cocoons” around some of them, only because they looked a little bare, and not as round as some of the other prints.

I added the lines because there were a few little splattered drops of watercolor that had landed here and there, and I used them as starting points from which I drew lines to connect to nearby stone prints. Can you spy the little green dots from which the swooping lines are drawn?

I filled in the resulting shapes with gray watercolor because the compositions needed a little more weight; something to anchor the piece together.

Hopefully that provides a little more insight into the inner workings of what my brain is doing when I’m making art. It’s not very mysterious; generally I just take it step by step, responding to whatever happened previously, but I must admit, sometimes the results surprise even me!

I just got back from a wonderful week spent in North Carolina with my mom, 2 of my brothers and their families. We rented a house right on the ocean in North Topsail Beach. It couldn’t have been a better vacation. It was beautiful and relaxing and everyone was happy.

One of my favorite things to do, besides swimming in the ocean, was wandering along the shore to collect lovely, ocean rounded pebbles. There were so many pretty ones that I must admit I got a little addicted to collecting them. I went on at least 1 walk a day to search for pebbles. It was slow, painful work (not used to crouching down to pick things up repeatedly), but I couldn’t get enough.

At this point, I probably have way too many stones to know what to do with, but I had a lot of fun gathering them up, and I’m looking forward to sorting through them and thinking of fun things to do with them. My brother wants me to fill a mason jar with a selection of translucent stones. I filled one with random stones as a handy way to transport them, and he liked the way it looked.

Besides that, I’ve already done two artsy things with some of the stones, and I know there are more ideas waiting to be discovered.

One quiet afternoon at the beach house, I sat at the kitchen table and started fiddling with a few stones. Arranging them on some bristol, I traced them. Then I painted a light blue-green background, followed by the gray of the stones. When it was dry I finished by adding the line texture.

I cropped it into a square since the edges were a little uneven. I’m not sure which I prefer. I like how the square format makes it easier to see the detail in the stones, but I also like the uneven painted edges of the original format.

While waiting for the painting to dry, I picked up one of the stones and smooshed some watercolor onto one side, then pressed it onto the surface of a new sheet of paper, making a little “stone print”. I repeated the process and added in some lines and texture details. Finally I added the gray paint to some of the resulting shapes to give the composition a little more heft.

It’s maybe a little odd, but I’m sort of fond of this one. I really love the depth and variation of the green-blue color in each stone print.

I plan to explore the “stone printing” method a bit more.

I also have some more photos of some of the stones I collected that I’ll be sharing in the near future.

I never finished the Creativity Boot Camp. I still want to, but other things came up.

I went on vacation to the beach for one week. Of course when I had time to relax, my body decided to get sick, so it wasn’t the most enjoyable vacation ever, but it was restful at least.

I brought some art supplies with me to the beach, but never had the energy to work on anything. As I was unpacking my supplies, back at home, I decided to make a few watercolor sketches. Watercolor is a little tricky, and there are certain techniques that I still haven’t mastered. For my first attempt, I drew a few blossoms with pencil, and then added layers of watercolor.

The color is still a little muddy. I think I need to work on being more patient so that each layer thoroughly dries before I add the next layer, and I also need to make sure I keep the washes pretty light. I think on some of the flowers, I started with too much yellow pigment on the first wash, so the other colors built up too much and look caked on.

While waiting for the layers of paint to dry, I intuitively painted various small marks and dots and later added some small details with pen.

While then waiting for both of those paintings to dry (I was rather heavy handed with the yellow), I painted a simple texture with crossing lines to create a woven pattern. As I painted, parts of the lines would dry while the other end would stay damp. As a result, when painting the next lines that overlapped perpendicularly, some of the color would bleed a bit. It adds and interesting dimension to the pattern.

I next did a simple composition of some swooshing lines to play with transparency (one of the things I like the best about working with watercolor), then added in some texture with a pen when the color was dry.

I wanted to do more with transparency, so I started out by painting some blob shapes on the paper in what I thought was a gray color. As the paint dried, it had a decidedly purplish hue, and suddenly the shapes reminded me of sea urchins. Instead of adding more overlapping blob shapes, as I’d originally intended, I added a few more similar shapes in a grayish green color.

When dry, I added in the urchin details with a pen.

Later on in the evening, an idea for a shape popped into my head, and I drew it using the implements that were nearest to me: watercolor paper and pen.

I might go back later and add a wash of color to the background and might possibly paint the shapes themselves. Good thing I used waterproof ink!

It’s funny how creativity sometimes comes in bursts. Six images in one afternoon, after nothing for over a week. Hopefully my next post will be about the next theme in the Creativity Boot Camp, but who knows? Maybe another unexpected creative burst will come along instead.

When I was at the art store recently buying myself some new markers for Christmas, I got to browsing around the store. I found a display with “watercolor panels”. The surface is prepared with clay, and has a nice texture to it. The description said that it can be framed without glass. That sounded interesting to me, so I decided to buy a set of 4 6×6 panels.

I prepared the background of the panel with a warm yellow color, then I used watercolor to create the composition, adding the line work in when everything was dry.

The panel definitely felt different than paper under my brush. The flat hardness of the board was the first sensation, and then I became aware of the subtleties of the textured surface. It’s not as absorbent as paper, but there is absorbency. The color layers pretty well, but I decided against doing a 4th layer on some areas since the paint seemed to be building up on the surface.

Oddly enough, the surface was still absorbent enough to suck the ink right up. I’m not sure if it’s because parts of the painting might not have been 100% bone dry, but the lines spread and bled a lot more than it usually does on paper. This was the most disappointing part of the process because I thought the thick black lines were ruining the whole painting. I was definitely going for a more delicate line, but if I overlook that initial intention, I think the piece holds up pretty well. In the future, I’ll either have to use a thinner tip than I normally would, or make sure the painting is as dry as it can be.

I’m looking forward to painting up the remaining 3 panels. I could well imagine that the next ones will get better and better, technically speaking, as I get more used to working with the clay surface.