anika mari

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.