Watercolor Adventures and Cyanotype Play

I continue to explore painting with my

Watercolor Adventures

This week I worked through a series of Angela Fehr lessons on painting loose florals.  Then I tried combining one of the paintings with photos of flowers that I made this week. The image above is the watercolor-photo combo. The image below is the original painting. As usual, the painting falls short of my desires for it. But I tell myself I’m putting on brush miles.

In one fun line-making exercise from the class I created the following image.

I love playing with colors and brush strokes in this free way. It reminds me of the mandala painting I did recently. The painting below was my attempt at following an Angela Fehr demonstration lesson painting apple blossoms. Again the result was disappointing but the process was fun. More brush miles.

“The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust—and those elements are universally accessible. Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

And finally something entirely different — after the rain stopped I managed to create my first experimental sun print (also known as cyanotype) on the deck. Though the sun went under a cloud for part of the time I was exposing the print, it turned out fine. In fact, I was surprised this morning when the blue color of the print had deepened overnight.

Here is an image of what making the print looked like:

I placed a piece of cardboard on the deck topped by the blue sun print paper. Then I placed a crocheted doily, a feather, and a leaf on the paper. Finally I topped those with a sheet of clear acrylic (that came in the sun print paper kit). The instructions said that I was to leave the paper in the sun until it turned almost white (1-3 minutes) being careful not to over-expose. Hmmm, how do I know it’s been over-exposed?

I waited and waited and the paper paled a bit but never really looked like it was almost white. Finally I brought it in because it felt like more than 3 minutes in the sun. I rinsed the paper under water for a minute as the kit instructed. Then I let it dry. Finally, I used my scanner to scan in the final print.

I love the cyan blue color of cyanotype images.

Now the challenge I face is figuring out what I want to create using this paper. Though my experiment showed me a bit about how various objects will show up on the paper, creating a pleasing and interesting composition with this media will take some thought and planning.

“Anyhow, what else are you going to do with your time here on earth—not make things? Not do interesting stuff? Not follow your love and your curiosity?”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

My walks in the woods may take on a new purpose of finding materials for sun prints.

After some experimentation in Adobe Lightroom, I found I liked the following separate images better than the big one above.

When was that last time you did some watercolor play or experimented with something entirely new? Maybe today is a good day for it?

May you walk in beauty.

And with a little Photoshop layers play