Lupine Seed Pods

Lupines have such pretty flowers but I find their seed pods interesting as well.  I recently took a photo of its seed pods.  The photo on the right is a bloom from earlier this Spring:

The seed pod was the inspiration for this mixed media painting that I started yesterday:

I started by randomly dripping three colors of Dr. Ph. Martin’s India Ink in Van Dyke Brown, Tangerine Orange and Aqua on top of my page.  The paper is 100% cotton rag, 140 lb cold press Khadi paper.  (www.khadi.com)

I dripped one color at a time and tilted my paper to allow the drips to run down the page over an old newspaper.  I sprayed some of the ink with water in a spray bottle.  This was very fun!  I did it outside since the ink stains.  🙂

After it dried, I used my photo as a reference but followed the ink lines to create shapes with a black Stabilo (All) pencil.

I will post the progress I make on this piece on Thursday, August 25 – so stay tuned!

Happy Creating!  🙂

Clowning Around

I was drawing clowns in my sketchbook this weekend with a Stabilo “All” pencil.  I have heard good things about this pencil and so I wanted to try it out.

I decided to try “printing” watercolors on top of my drawings with a small Gelli plate and watercolors.  Here are my supplies:

I experimented with watercolors first by applying 1-3 colors to my Gelli plate and then pressing it randomly on the clown face:

I liked how the pencil bled with the paints.  It was spontaneous FUNZA!  So I tried some gouache paints:

I experimented on 140 lb cold press and hot press paper.  The last one I tried to create some emotion to my sad clown:

I like how the paint adds depth to the clown faces and hope to play more with this technique.  I’d love to hear what you think!

Happy Experimenting!  🙂