Consummate V's

Chinese Dragon done in henna impasto technique, with Swarovski crystal eyes. He's headed for an art contest this weekend :). This is 6x6 panel and he will be for sale after the contest.

Personal Power

Dragons and flame keep coming up in my art and meditation lately... for me these are potent symbols of raw power.

Women often tend to give away their personal power, taught to remain silent when they are in pain.  I certainly tend that way myself.  Whenever they turn up in my psyche, it's a sure sign that I need to reclaim some of that power for myself... and remind myself that I possess it.

This is a 6 x 9 watercolor painting that you can buy on the For Sale page of this site.

Six more hands today for the 50 Hands/Feet challenge.  I had a good bit of difficulty settling in today; I'm still a bit out of sorts.  I almost didn't fill this page but here they are.  They're still a pain in the butt :)

Smaug's Eye

Original ACEO watercolor/pen and ink. Click to purchase.

This one's inspired by that tantalizing shot of Smaug's eye at the end of the Hobbit.  I expected it, didn't you?  they weren't going to blow the surprise and show you the beast in the first of three movies, but there was that foreboding shadow as he attacked the village in the history part, and of course at the end he wakes amid his piles of gold...

Dragons completely fascinate me, and i suspect they'll frequently be the subject of the challenge I've set myself for next month when the 30 Paintings in 30 Days challenge ends... I plan do do a lot of sketching with an eye (pun intended) toward painting.  So you'll be seeing a lot more dragons from me, but for now, just like the movie, you get a tantalizing glimpse of an eye.  ;)

Watercolor Experiments

I figured if I'm going to manage to do anything in watercolor this month, I could use a day to just mess around with the paint and see how it behaves. So first, a color chart like the one I did for oil.

Next, I experimented with random brush strokes and different degrees of wetness. 

Then, some washes. 

 

And finally, I wanted to see how it works if I start with a pencil sketch and actually tried to make watercolor do something recoginizable. So I painted this dragon's eye on ACEO watercolor paper. I plan to ink in some details later.

Brought to you by that oh-so-tantalizing glimpse of Smaug's eye at the end of The Hobbit movie. Waiting for the second movie is torture.

So there you have it, my no pressure experiments with watercolor, really the first time I've played with it at all. I plan to play with two books this month as far as my watercolor attempts... Stephanie Pui Mun Law's Dreamscapes: Creating Magical Angel, Faery & Mermaid Worlds With Watercolor (I have been a fan of Stephanie's work for over a decade), and Step By Step Guide To Painting Realistic Water Colors by Dawn McLeod Heim.

Let the challenge begin!