Well its been a good few weeks since my last blog post as I’ve been a busy bee getting reading for the upcoming WITA (Women in the Arts) Showcase on Friday 8th March for International Women’s Day (exciting! See links on my social media for more info), amongst personal ventures, product testing and getting out and about taking new wildlife photos for Spring artwork. Lots going on and then there’s always the things to find the balance in between! Its a work in progress, but it makes life interesting!
So this weekend I decided to move away from experimenting and go back to what I know and that is watercolour painting. My most recent piece is ‘Kingfisher Dreams’, A4 (approx 11″x14″) watercolour on 300gsm paper, with Pigma fineliner archival ink detail.
The main inspiration for this piece is a dream I had earlier this week (I know, sounds unbelievably corny but bear with me!). I’m not a massive follower of dream analysis, but I do believe that sometimes in our dreams our subconscious brings to our attention things going on in our lives that we need to take more note of, or to change the way we are thinking about something in some way (or alternatively, its just something wacky and wierd that I won’t bother repeating here! :p). In my dream, the kingfisher flew above as me and my family members watched on in awe. I was quite in awe myself having dreamt of a kingfisher – I can’t say I’ve ever dreamt of one before, or had the fortune of seeing one in real life either. If you Google kingfisher dream meanings all sorts of things pop up as you might expect, and it was a surprise to me that they are often associated with marital bliss and prosperity – maybe due to the brightly coloured plummage? You learn something new everyday right?! One of the meanings that really resonated with me though was regarding being content with one’s circumstances, not in an ego-fuelled way, but if acceptance of life how it is, both good and bad, which is certainly an important skill to foster. So meanings aside, it was lovely to just paint something new in the style I am finding that I am most familiar and stronger with. I am also lucky enough to have a friend who is a photographer who kindly let me paint his photo of a kingfisher and above is the finished result. I added my usual coloured splats but deliberately placed in a semi-circle, almost like a crescent moon; a subtle addition which I think suits the title of the painting well. What do you think?
Before I painted this piece I took some time to experiment with producing some handmade cards as experiments and ended up producing three cards, each with pros, cons and something to learn.
The first piece above is painted directly onto an ivory linen card – a beautiful cardstock which has a lovely finish and feel to it. I drew the outline lightly in pencil and then built up the layers of watercolour gradually, using Windsor and Newton Cotman pans. Once dry, I added little lines and flicks of Pigma Fineliner black ink pens, which are high quality archival ink pens and highly light-fast. This piece was inspired from a photograph I took of a robin at Whisby Nature Park in Lincoln. The card held quite well and warped only very slightly as I added a tiny bit too much water – sometimes you have to get a feel for how much liquid the paper can sustain and less is often most definately more.
For the second piece I reproduced the same design but this time painted the robin onto a piece of water colour paper and then glued the paper onto the card. This method was much sturdior and although most people I asked preferred the first robin, this was the most popular format, minus the writing.
This is the first time I had attempted my own handmade fine art cards and deciding what to include and what to exclude is definately a skill in itself. Either way, it gave me the pen and ink practice I was after at the same time.
I also experimented with some pen and wash designs (again from my own photos) on recycled brown card of a bit lower paper weight this time – 240gsm so not quite as thick and luxurious but 100% recycled with matching brown recycled envelope.
The Pigma Fine Liners worked really well and with such staying power, I even managed to do a wash of watercolour over the top, like a sunset sky, without any of the ink running, which impressed me. The main drawback of these cards however is the weight. They are a little flimsy and could do with being a bit thicker for quality purposes. A minimum of 300gsm or higher cardstock seems to be the optimum weight and when you are wanting recycled paper/card, often the quality level drops a notch. I have ordered a 300gsm variant though and look forward to experimenting on that to see if there is any significant improvement (I sense a gap in the market!).
So the eco-friendly search continues as I prepare pieces old and new for my upcoming exhibit at the Showcase. I lool forward to showing you my work, as there’s nothing like seeing art up close than compared to a photograph.
gemmajohnsonart 