Peach and Teal

 I have been laying down blobs of leftover paint into my sketchbook after each of my painting sessions because I feel bad wasting paint. The other day I took a black Posca marker to one of those pages and added some linework and doodles and ended up with these flowers that I really loved. They reminded me of my teenage obsession with the color combination of peach and turquoise or teal.

I decided to make a few recreations on watercolor paper and I think they turned out pretty good too.

Although, part of what I liked about the sketchbook version was the unfinished look of the peach-colored background, so maybe I'll try it again later.

Here is my Ordinary Beauty photo for the week.

Pink

A Couple of Finished Projects

 This week has felt pretty productive. I started and finished a painting. It's not amazing by any means, but it taught me a lot about using acrylics that you can't really learn without actually sitting down to paint. The more I try, the more I learn (sometimes just subconsciously) how to control the viscosity and color of the paint and how to get closer to having an end result that approaches what I imagined when I started setting paint to canvas. In other words, the more I do it, the more I know how to make the paint do what I want it to do.

This painting is very much inspired by the mini embroidery I also finished this week.

I wanted to finish two things this week and I figured the best way to do that would be to not overthink things. Plus I really liked the combination of colors on the swirl on this sun, so I wanted to use similar ones with paint.

Also, here are two Ordinary Beauty photos to catch me up in sharing them.

butterflies

KEA

I know the IKEA one is very corporate, but I enjoyed the colors and the framing.

A Slow Week

 I've had a lull in creativity since I last posted. It's important to me to work at being at peace with my creative rhythms, so I'm not going to get down on myself for it. I did finish the embellished embroidery mini that I showed in my last post and I got started on the next one. 

I'm going to just go ahead and cover the entire face on that sun because... I don't know, I just don't like it.

Back to Embroidery (but just for myself)

 A few years ago I made a little 3-inch embroidery that was just some pretty fabric that I embellished with stitching and beads. I made it for myself, not to sell. Now there's a space on my wall that needs... something, and I think three hoops of that size will fill it very well. So, I need two more. I didn't have any 3-inch hoops, so I deconstructed a couple of hoop art pieces I had made long, long ago (it's fine, they weren't very good), wrapped them in ribbon, and picked out a couple of pieces of fabric with interesting designs in the right size. 

The one on top is the one I made a few years ago. The raccoon is from a piece of fabric my oldest gifted me and has lots of other cute animals with flower crowns, but the raccoon is the only one that would fit neatly in a 3-inch hoop. Here's a couple closer-up progress photos.

Embroidery art through embellishment is very relaxing. A lot of the hardest decision-making is taken care of, because the image already exists. But there's still plenty to think about. Which stitch to use, whether to use the color that's been printed or choose something else, whether to cover the whole area or just part of it, deciding where a little bit of bead/sequin bling might look good.

My hiatus from making embroidery art for the purpose of selling it continues as these ones are for me.

Trying to be smart by slowing down

 So, after my initial difficulties with my early attempts at acrylic painting, I decided to try to be smarter. I know I have a real problem with impatience and expecting any new endeavor to go smoothly right from the start. I can't help it! It always comes out great in my imagination! Somehow I never can get reality to match and that's when the paints and brushes go back on the shelf and gather dust for a few more months. Or years.

So that was when I came up with the brilliant idea that surely no one has ever thought of before to make a test/swatch card. 

I tested each color straight from the tube, with a little water, with a little white, then that with a little water, a little more white, then that also with water. I didn't try to do any mixing between the colors; just with white so far. This has helped me (and hopefully will continue to be a good reference) to better understand not just how the colors work in each of these configurations, but how they look when they are dry. This swatch card is still missing the browns though. Also, with some of these colors there is more variation in the irl view than my camera's phone could capture (especially with yellow).

I did watch a video that talked about color mixing and I learned a few things. There were a lot of concepts that I think I knew on an intellectual level, but had never really used in a practical way. But, that felt a bit too much like a higher level than I'm ready for. I want to put what I've learned from doing these particular swatches into practice before I try that. I really shouldn't have gone bananas with that previous painting.