anika mari

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.

I’ve been working with pens and markers a lot lately. I drew a blossom (below) that also looks like fluttery wings with a rapidograph pen and used various shades of pink markers to achieve a somewhat translucent effect.

I liked the result and took it a little further by creating another drawing of similar pink blossoms and a drawing of purple blossoms with a slightly different character.

When drawing the purple blossoms, I took notice of the smallest center petals. The overlapping lines of the larger petals created a nice texture that was cut through and contained in an interesting way by the central petals, so I created a version of the blossoms with pen only, leaving the petals white.

I made a few copies of the above image, and cut out the smallest center flowers. Then I arranged them on the scanner bed and tried a few different compositions and backgrounds and came up with the following versions.

In some ways I liked the flowers on a white background because it really put the focus on the texture of the lines, but I also wanted to define the edge of the petals.

Maintaining the same composition of the flowers I tried a gray and then a red background.

I liked the vibrant red background which did the best job at enhancing the effect of the texture of the black lines and the edge of the white petals at the same time. I tried two more compositions on red.

I’m happy with where this is going. I can see painting a canvas in vibrant red acrylic and collaging the flowers on it. I just might do that next.

I’ve been following this fun and inspiring site called Doodlers Anonymous. They are doing a neat give away of What Did You Buy Today. To enter one could leave a comment or for extra credit, draw your favorite purchase of the year. “Voodoo Donut” popped into my mind, and I felt compelled to draw it. I’ve been dreaming of donuts lately, so this drawing just had to be done.

I added, “they spell it ‘doughnut,’” after I was finished with the drawing. I decided to look up Voodoo Donuts on the web, and discovered that it is actually Voodoo Doughnut. Doh!

Oh well; it’s a doodle after all. I suppose imperfection is part of its perfect nature.

While I was drawing the donut, I was listening to something that mentioned strawberries and blueberries. Since I was on a roll, I kept drawing, and out poured a little berry pattern.

If only I had a scanner. I think a scan would yield a more accurate representation of what the drawings really look like, but my trusty camera did a pretty good job.

Now that I’m in my new apartment in Portland, OR, I’ve had the itch to do something creative.  Watercolor seemed like a good medium to explore since my quarters are relatively compact, and I don’t need too much space to paint.

I really wanted to try out my new brushes and paper last night, so even though it was late before I could sit down and paint, I spent an hour on my first watercolor pattern.

Watercolor is one of the few art mediums I’ve never taken a formal class in, so I don’t really know all the “official” techniques.  Never the less, I had a lot of fun painting last night even if I didn’t do it “right”.  I love the feel of the paint brush on the paper, and I enjoy the color variations of watercolor.

I think it turned out reasonably well for my first unplanned attempt.  I’ve been thinking about trying gouache to achieve solid color coverage.  Depending on the pattern, I’d like to combine both traditional water color and gouache for textural contrast.

I went to the rancho with the family and there was a good amount of down time, so I started sketching. I’d been admiring the wrought iron work that serve as bars for a lot of windows in Mexico.

A lot prettier than plain iron bars, so I decided to sketch them. At first I copied the different patterns that I saw, but I started to experiment with the same basic shapes and curves all the designs are composed of, but I switched them up from the basic patterns.

Here are the first few sketches I did while at the ranch:

Here are my own variations inspired by the originals:

I liked what I’d come up with, so I decided to take the idea bit further and work with color on a larger piece of paper.

For this image I used brown and red stabilo markers only:

For the blue version of the following pattern, I liked the blue and green, but the lighter stabilo marker that I used for some of the fine lines tends to get lost.  I decided to do another version. For the second version of this pattern I used black for all the fine lines and tried out a few different colors. I used both stabilo and Prisma Color markers:

With the last version, I was satisfied with the overall result and considered this pattern done, at least in sketch book form.