Posts Tagged ‘black paper’
Night Blooming
Friday, March 7th, 2014
Three flowers shine under the midnight sky full of silver stars or, as one person suggested, floating fireflies. The flowers change colors depending on the angle, pink to purple for the thistle, gold to green for the amaranth and gold to a richer orange-gold for the little wildflower down at the bottom, with the greenery going softly blue like moonlit leaves at some angles.
Gorgeous and ethereal, this painting makes the flowers seem ghostly as the bloom out of their normal cycle, bright against the blackness of the paper.
Night Blooming, 7″x5″ duochrome watercolor on Arches cover black paper.
Above, you can see the thistle from two angles, purple-blue as it catches the sunlight on the left, and pink and green on the right under more normal lighting. Below, you can see the piece in a frame, with a few more eternally blooming flowers from my bookshelf for company.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes
Tags: black paper, duochrome, iridescent, nfs, sold, watercolor
Maleficent
Monday, March 3rd, 2014
Maleficent has a texture like layers of scales carved by the pen into the painted surface. The painstaking detail invites closer examination, especially in the different ways in which the paint mixed with the red ink to add an extra layer of color along with the surface finish.
This painting is named after the villain’s dragon form in the original Disney Sleeping Beauty, majestic and powerful but still, in her heart, flawed. You can see that flaw under the scales, almost the exact shape of the crack in the universe from Doctor Who.
Some of you followed along on Instagram during the week I spent working on this piece (hi!), so now you can see it in all its strange, obsessive glory. I keep wanting to run my finger over it, but I resist, because I don’t want to turn my fingers purple, or ruin the painting by accident.
Maleficent, 6″x4″ pen & ink and Japanese watercolor on Arches cover black paper.
Above, you can see a close-up of the texture, and the furrows the pen made as it pressed into the painted surface. I had to re-draw some of the arcs half a dozen times to get the effect I wanted, because the pen was constantly getting clogged with paint it picked up from the paper. Below, you can see it in a frame with my phone. It’s wee! So wee, and so painstakingly detailed.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: black paper, japanese watercolor, nfs, pen and ink, purple, sold, watercolor
Fairytale Sky 8
Monday, January 13th, 2014
It’s the last day of the Floating Gallery, and I’m rounding up a week of art with another Fairytale Sky.
I used a different palette this time, a rich orange harvest moon that lights up the mist below in swirls of the same color. There’s a soft silvery green shimmer in and around those orange spirals, and a few little silver stars manage to peek out above the thick fog.
Everything about this painting is better in person, of course, from the shimmer of paint that changes color when the light hits to the soft texture of the black paper.
Fairytale Sky 8, 6″x4″ duochrome watercolor and Japanese watercolor on Arches cover black paper.
Above, you can see the mist lit up with golden sparkles by the last rays of a sunset. Below, you can see the painting in a frame, with the phone that took the picture above. It’s quite a small piece, and could go on a desk, cubicle wall, or tucked into an odd corner of architecture to bring a smile whenever you glance into that little hidden place.
Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: black paper, duochrome, fairytale sky, for sale, iridescent, japanese watercolor, moon, orange, spirals, watercolor
Death of a Comet
Wednesday, January 8th, 2014
This painting feels a little like a Rorschach blot to me — I look and see ephemera, fleeting beauty, something that will melt or shift or fade away. Frost on a dark window. Clouds lit up against a midnight sky. Or the comet ISON that it’s named for, breaking up in the blackness of space after flying, Icarus-like, too close to the sun.
What do you see?
Death of a Comet, 7″x5″ iridescent watercolor on Arches cover black paper.
Above, you can see the way the iridescent paint seems to float above the black paper. This paper is made by setting off a chemical process in the paper pulp rather than dying, so the color will stay a rich, soft black for years. Below, you can see it contrast with the shining paint in sunlight, blossoming in the simple frame.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery
Tags: black paper, iridescent, nfs, sold, watercolor
Pollen
Monday, November 4th, 2013
Continuing with my new tradition of reworking old art, this piece has very little resemblance to its forebear. The soft black paper is entirely covered in a dark, velvety red like old blood, and each little salt pool has a halo of iridescent garnet. The salt pools, originally a dull pink from the Himalaya sea salt, have been dyed a bright shimmering blue to match the tentacles. They reminded me of glowing motes of pollen drifting on the breeze, which is how I got the name.
I’ve got to admit, I really hope I don’t ever have to inhale these alien grains of pollen. I’d hate to see what kind of allergy attack they’d produce — or find blue tentacles growing in my brain.
Pollen, 5″x5″ salt and watercolor on Arches cover black paper.
The big central crystal in this formation refused to be dyed blue, so it’s the only bit of the original pink left in the piece. Above, you can see the shimmering iridescent paint fading into the deeper background color — a natural-mineral paint called, appropriately, bloodstone. Below, the piece has been tucked into a frame with some extra tentacles to make it feel at home.
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Tentacles
Tags: black paper, for sale, iridescent, more cowbell, salt, tentacles, watercolor
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