A new Art Journal page for the Jane Davenport's Washi Tape challenge and giveaway

I belong to the Jane Davenport facbook group and she is having a giveaway and the only rules are you have to do some sort of mermaid and you have to incorporate one or some of her washi tapes on the page.  On my page her washi tape is used in the hair of the large mermaid and the face of the small mermaid is from her washi tape.  Here is my entry into the giveaway:

New Watercolor of a Butterfly titled "Transformed"

I decided I wanted to try my hand at a butterfly pen and ink with a watercolor wash.  I wanted to have a lost edge somewhere so decided to leave the left edge of the wing to fade into the background.

I used bold, bright colors of Orange, red orange, lime green, yellow and a touch of blue.

What I find that is the easiest for me to do is to draw a 5X7 rectangle on a scratch piece of paper.  Then draw my image within the rectangle so I know where I want the placement of my image.  Then I scribble graphite onto the back of the image, line the rectangle up with my 5X7 watercolor paper, and then using a stylus, I trace over my image and transfer it to my watercolor paper.  That saves me from erasing on my watercolor paper and disturbing the fibers.

All of my artwork is for sale on my facebook page #DKJartoriginals

Shinhan Professional Water Color Review

I decided to do a review of ShinHan Professional Water Colors.  First of all let me say I am a definite novice, beginner, self-taught watercolorist.  Secondly, I have a very limited budget to spend on my art supplies.

I do scrapbooking, cardmaking, additional crafts such as making wreaths when I need one, fabric crafts, I LOVE doing counted cross stitch and then about 4 years ago, my husband and I took a cruise on the Queen Elizabeth and I took the watercolor class onboard and I was hooked.

In the class you can buy the "kit" they offer if you do not have your own watercolor and watercolor paper.  

I did not have any so I bought the kit which included the tiny Winsor and Newton travel palette of watercolors with the little brush.  It contains 12 basic colors.  I painted for a couple of years using this same palette as I bought a few more on additional cruises.

When I was running low on watercolors, I priced replacing my Winsor and Newton set with the tube paints and was shocked at the prices of all of the name brand paints here in Australia.

Sooooo, long story short, I went to ebay and purchased the ShinHan Professional Watercolor set and have never looked back.  I love them.  My only complaint is all of their browns have a reddish tint.  There is no true Burnt Umber (in my opinion) but I mix it a bit with paynes gray and get a color I am happy with.  I've also purchased a metal palette that holds 39 colors so I have the option of adding a few more colors of other name brands if I choose.

I hope this helps if you are thinking of purchasing this set of watercolors.

A new watercolor just completed of a pair of Ladybugs titled "Lady Luck Too"

Have you ever had one of those days when you see something or you go somewhere and the inspiration hits you to paint something?  Well, that's what happened to me today.  This is being done for the Doodlewash April 2018 challenge - paint something you loved as a kid.

I happened to be in the garden at our house and I had a ladybug land on  my arm.  I love ladybugs.  The are so brilliantly colored and those distinctive black spots so perfectly shaped on their backs always amazes me.  

I was told as a child that if one lands on you, you should hold perfectly still, make a wish and then let it fly off and your wish will come true.  LOL, well I am not sure that is true but I still get great pleasure out of them landing on me.

So, long story short, I decided to paint a ladybug (or two) in watercolor.

I have to be honest though, this painting started out as a 5X7 and I hated the bottom two inches of it so much I cut it off to make it a 5X5.  I show it as an example in a 9X9 frame with a mat.  I'm particularly happy with the leaves on this.  I wanted the blue background to be more opaque so I painted it with white gouache and then dropped in indigo and green and let them mix on the painting.  I love the effect.

"Original Watercolor painting titled "Flamingo Rising"

I decided I wanted to do a watercolor painting of a Flamingo.  If the Flamingo spirit animal appears in your life, it means it's time to turn to your emotions and use them.  Whatever you do, you should follow your heart because it will help you choose the right way.  I named this watercolor "Flamingo Rising" .  I wanted to use bold bright colors as if the Flamingo were rising from the flames.  I started the background first with several washes of bold colors and painted the flamingo in colors of red, fluorescent pink and flaming orange, leaving touches of white.

This is also a 5X7 and fits in an 8X10 frame with a mat.  It is painted on 140lb/300gsm premium watercolor paper.  All of my paintings are for sale on my facebook page DKJartoriginals

Cyclamen pen and Ink watercolor times 2

I decided that I wanted to do a pen and ink watercolor of a fuchsia colored Cyclamen.  I had never seen one before and on our first trip to London, I saw them in window boxes everywhere.  At first I thought they were fake flowers because it was so cold and they were so stunning and perfect.  I saw some in window boxes outside of a pub and finally went in and asked them what type of flower they were because, spending most of my youth and adulthood in Virginia, for some reason, I had never seen any grown there.  

Anyway, I wanted to try my hand at painting them.  The above photo does not do the painting justice as I scanned it and the scanner did not seem to pick up the beautiful fuchsia color well.  The framed photo below is what it actually looks like.  This is a 5X7 and fits in an 8X10 frame with a mat.  It is painted on 90lb/190gsm premium watercolor paper.

Ok, so now I have a fuchsia colored Cyclamen and I wasn't sure if I was happy with it or not, so I decided to do something different with the same drawing - I'm not sure this would be considered an abstract, but it is definitely different.  I decided to put a triangle in the center and only paint what was inside the triangle.  The rest I just left my pen and ink drawing.  I'm not sure what I think about it, the jury is still out!  And again the scan of it does not show the true color of the fuchsia I used but the framed photo does.  This also is a 5X7 and fits in an 8X10 frame with a mat.  It is painted on 90lb/190gsm premium watercolor paper.  All of my paintings are for sale on my facebook page DKJartoriginals.

Thank you for looking!

Mixed Media Canvas Fanny Pack

I had an old fanny pack just gathering dust - I think it was probably 20 years ago that I might have bought this.  Back when I was doing tole painting.  I decided to do something with it.  I had drawn and painted some faces following Jane Davenport's Beautiful Faces Book in my journal.

I decided that I wanted to do a mixed media piece with it so this is what I ended up doing.  I traced the paintings of the "ladies", scanned them and then reduced their size.  I then traced them onto Muslin and went to my sewing machine to sew in all of the details.

Here I show what they looked like and then I applied watercolor paints to give them life!

I then trimmed around each one and placed them between two sheets of baking paper and heat set them.

This is what all three looked like after heat setting:

This is the canvas fanny pack that I had.  It was not pre-primed so I primed it with gesso, added some Liquitex modeling paste through a stencil that I have from Decoart Americana ASMM39-K Short Circuit stencil and added some Indigo and some green watercolor for the background.  I also added some Ranger Jet Black archival ink through my mini "Art Is" stencil from Crafter's workshop.  There are some touches of Mango oxide inks from Tim Holtz as well.  I thought these colors would compliment my ladies!

 I then decided I needed a pop of black so I stitched on some black twine. 

 After I had added the black twine, I decided I need to add some beading and I wanted vines/leaves and flowers so I found a video on youtube showing how to make these flowers and this long winding leafy vine here by Jill Wiseman called Ramblin' Roses and I thought it was stunning so decided to give it a try - here is an image of the vine so far:    

Once the length of the vine was established and I had an idea of the placement on the bag, I decided to finish the vine and add the leaves.  Once I had completed the vine and roses, I layed them on my bag with the Ladies and took a photo so that I could remember the placement when I stitched everything on.  Here is an image of the placement I decided on:

After I was happy with the placement, I lightly traced around the ladies and took everything off.  I put fabric glue on the back of the muslin keeping away from the edges because I knew I would be reinforcing them with stitching.  Then I added some organza and netting bits behind each image, stitched on the vines and flowers and tacked down the images around the edges.  

These are images of the finished design:

Thank you so much for taking a look!