Happy Memorial Day

Hope that today is a lovely day for everyone who has served, or had loved ones and/or friends who have served to keep our country safe and free.

This won't be a long post, but I wanted to share something that I had a chance to test out this past week. I bought my grand kids some of the Crayola Brand watercolor paints. I just happened to purchase them from Target, and no, neither Target, nor Crayola are paying me to say this. This is strictly my personal opinion, but I was so delighted with the results. The colors of the pigments are terrific and judging by working with these pigments everyday for a week, they mean what they say when they claim that they are washable. (They do cover themselves with a disclaimer that there could be something that might stain under the "right" circumstances). However, we didn't end up with stains on anything. Now these may not be archival quality paints, but with toddlers, you are looking for safe use and easy clean-up - not archival. If we really wanted archival, we would probably hire our kids/grand kids to paint our houses - but that is not very likely to happen.

At any rate, we had so much fun and with none of the stress and worry of ruining clothing or carpet. I was even amazed at how well we could "lift" the color off of the paper if we didn't like what we had applied. So, if your kids are bored today, you might want to wander over to any store selling the Crayola Brand of watercolor paints and give them a try. Each palette had its own self contained brush and the price couldn't be beat.

The Valentine T-Shirts

Remember the Valentine T-Shirts? You know, the ones with my grandkid's favorite cat on them? I wrote a blog about it: Valentine's Day Is Coming. Well, I promised you that I would get a picture to show you. So here it is - their Valentine T-Shirts with a copy of my painting of their cat attached:

Can't get any better than this!

That Girl is Always Playing With Her Paints and Goofing Off

Sounds like me!

After working on my waterfall series, I didn't really feel like working on a "serious" project. I did want to keep painting, and I wanted to try something abstract. Also,it just so happens that I had just purchased a wonderful set of french curves by Alvin & Co. from Amazon. I wanted my next painting to have flowing graceful lines and I wanted to just play with the paints and colors. This particular painting is watercolor. I tried to bring the different colors together with one very light glaze of New Gamboge (to try to pull all the wild colors together a little) but I didn't want to totally lose the stained glass effect. I am not sure that New Gamboge was the best color to try over the Cerulean, but that is what I tried. And so, just for fun, I painted this:

French Curves

Left Over Paint

Because I had left over paint, I had to try to use as much of it as I could. Saving acrylic paint is not easy (although it can be done). Luckily, acrylic paint can be layered. Because this is an experiment, that is exactly what I am doing, and because this is an experiment, if it doesn't work out, it's not a problem.

Still working on it

Glad this is an experiment. The comments below will clarify why.

What NOT To Do When Painting With Acrylic

Unless you want to create a dress with polka-dots on it, do not, I repeat, DO NOT answer the phone while painting with acrylic, especially if you have any Thalo Blue paint on your brush. Why? Because, if you are a watercolorist, you will instinctively grab a tissue to dab up the excess paint and with every dab you will create terrific little dots - like you would want only on a polka-dot dress, and not in the sky of a landscape painting.

So, now I am back to square one with this painting and seriously thinking about the merits of the trash can. All is not lost. The upside of today's work is: I have learned how to add subtle polka-dots to a dress, and I started another painting, which so far, I have not managed to destroy. Now, if necessary, I can ignore the lack of color harmony on the bottom portion of this painting - unless somehow I can figure out how to add fifty zillion birds to the sky.

Other Possibilities:

• There is always Gesso.
• I can buy acrylic medium and use this as the base painting for another experiment!
• I can tear this painting into funny little pieces and use it in a collage.
• I need new wall paper for the bathroom. (not an option - The painting isn't large enough and I would probably have to add pterodactyls to the sky in order to cover the spots.)
• I can paint the sky white and see if that makes things a million times worse.
• I will figure out something.

One last thing, be sure to edit your post before hitting the "post" button. You will almost always find errors.

Worked On The Painting Some More:

Above, I have my original composition.

Above, I tried turning the original composition upside-down.

Just Having Fun

So, what did I do with the leftover acrylic paint last week? I grabbed another piece of watercolor paper, more water, and I played with my paints!

Playing With Leftover Acrylic Paint

No expectations, just having fun figuring out just what my paints will do.

Just Had To Try This In Acrylics

For those of you who have followed my series San Antonio Japanese Garden Waterfall, I have one more painting that I did - this time in acrylics. I have kept this to the same setting in order to get an idea of what I can manage to capture in the different media and what I need to work on in each one. That seemed easier to figure out if I kept all the paintings basically the same. The first was more of a drawing, in Prismacolor markers; the second, watercolor; the third, oils; and the forth, acrylic. It was fun and at times exasperating - especially when I had to remind myself to work with the qualities of the particular medium I was using, rather than battle it and try to make it work like another medium. Someday, I hope to simplify it down to a simple pen and ink drawing. That may be awhile.

So here is the acrylic:

San Antonio Japanese Gardens Waterfall - acrylic