Menagerie of Creativity » Art

Barred Owl

Alicia — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:48:34 +0000

This is 5″x7″ watercolor and ink on paper. I’ve seen a couple Barred Owls in the woods around here, plus the wildlife center has one and they are amazing birds close up.

Close up

Tomatoes

Alicia — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:32:18 +0000

This is 7″x5″ watercolor on paper. I think I posted some tomatoes last January also. I miss the really fresh ones this time of year.

Close up

Carolina Wren

Alicia — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:11:40 +0000

This is 7″x5″ watercolor and ink on paper.

Close up

Snails

Alicia — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:18:29 +0000

This is the Christmas painting I did for my other sister. It is 5″x7″ watercolor on paper.

Before I painted this, I drew it in black ink.

close ups

April Bear

Alicia — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:26:18 +0000

This is a bear in the month of April. It was a Christmas present for my littlest sister April. She said to paint her something purple, so this is what I did. It was painted on a 9″x12″ piece of watercolor paper and was matted at 8″x10.”

close ups

Here is the butterfly.

I like how friendly the bear looks. You can see the fur is purple and gold.

I was a bit worried about the grass, but I think it turned out okay in the end. You can also see some of the fur tones in this close up too.

Elephant Sunset

Alicia — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 01:09:00 +0000

I wasn’t going to post this until after Christmas because it’s for my friend. But when I talked to her it sounded like she was curious to see it and wanted me to ruin the surprise, so I am. This was painted on a 12″x9″ piece of paper, but it’s shown cropped to about 11.5″x7.5″ which is about what it should be matted for.

I was asked to paint whatever I wanted for this one. It is somewhat inspired by the fact that when my friend went to Africa a couple years ago she came home to find out that most of her photos were lost. I don’t know if she saw elephants or yellow, orange and purple sunsets, but as I mentioned, it’s only somewhat inspired by that.

I am painting other Christmas presents this month, but I probably won’t post them until after Christmas.

Close ups

New paper

I used some new paper I have never used before for this one. I bought an Arches Watercolor Block and I think I love it now. It’s great paper that can really stand up to lots of washes of color, which means they can be really saturated and bright if you want them to. You can see from these scans that the colors are pretty bright. It took quite a few passes with the same colors to make that happen.

I have had some trouble with my paper starting to disintegrate by the time I am finishing up on the cheaper stuff. This is pretty expensive for watercolor paper at about $1.40 a sheet for 12″x9″ but it’s well worth it.

With a watercolor block they all come glued together in a stack and you have to cut the finished piece off with a razor blade which is sort of scary. But, the benefits outweigh the fear of slicing through a finished picture.

I haven’t tried any frisket (masking liquid) on it yet, but if it can hold up to that being painted on and rubbed off I will be even more happy.

Orchid Snakes

Alicia — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:08:03 +0000

I haven’t been able to think of a good name for this yet. It’s a 7″x5″ watercolor and ink painting.

Close Ups

Idea Progression

Sometimes my ideas start with a quick sketch like this. Sometimes they don’t.

When Crisin was here visiting over the weekend, I painted this 3.5″x2.5″ watercolor based on the sketch. When I was done she suggested I put a top hat on the worm thing. I liked that so much I decided to explore the idea with snakes.

Bird Bath

Alicia — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 01:05:27 +0000

Birds like bubble baths.

This is 7″x5″ watercolor and ink. I may look at this again in a couple days and add some very minor finishing touches. I can’t look at it any more today though.

Book Snails

Alicia — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 01:09:04 +0000

It is not only worms who read, snails read too.

Here are a couple close ups.

Lemurs

Alicia — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:06:15 +0000

On Saturday morning I went to the Duke Lemur Center and did their Walking with the Lemurs tour. It was pretty neat. I got to hang out with some ring tailed lemurs while they ate for probably 30mns or so, but it felt like 5mns. I am considering doing the tour again with a different type of lemur.

I painted this lemur after the tour. There are also some photos below.

I only took about 90 photos while I was there because I wanted to just watch for some of the time. I got a few good ones.

I had to take most of them using manual focus which is still sort of new to me, so I am impressed with how well the focus was on some of them. The reason for this is that while cameras are pretty good at knowing what to focus on when you are taking a photo of a person relatively close up, they don’t really understand what you want to focus on with wildlife. If you wait for the camera to figure it out, the animal will often be gone.

I think this is my favorite photo.