FEBRUARY PAINTING CHALLENGE / MARCH CHALLENGE REVEALED

The month of February even had an extra day this year and I managed to paint only two paintings! I had hoped to explore my challenge a little more but I think I will move on. I hope you enjoy the paintings that were sent to me by some of the followers of the blog inspired by this month's challenge.

For March, I wanted to start with a drawing and turn it into a painting. One of the exercises in the "Learning to Draw..a creative approach" by Kaupelis is my choice to start out the month. I may add additional drawing challenges later. Using watercolor paper, wet the paper (you can experiment with different degrees of wetness) and draw on the wet or damp paper with ink. You can use a pen or any instrument that will make a mark. You can use more than one drawing tool on the image. The wet paper will cause interesting effects. He suggests India Ink but I think I will use either acrylic ink or liquid Hydrus watercolor because I want to make a completed painting from this start. You can just do the drawing or continue to work with the image into a more finished piece.

I just received a great painting from Barb Sailor which is a more complicated variation on this idea. I am posting her description of the process she went through plus the image.

Hi Myrna,

Just wanted to send you this painting because I got the idea for the Elegant Writer from you and wanted to show you my results.

I finished this painting a couple of weeks ago. It was actually started about 4 years ago when I painted a picture of an Ohio barn with lots of trees in a sunset. I hated the painting and it has been sitting around for 4 years. A while ago I decided to cut up the painting into assorted squares and rectangles and glue it to a piece of illustration board fitting the pieces together into an abstract design mainly in the colors of a sunset. A couple weeks ago I collaged white tissue paper over the design and then, when it was dry, I dry-brushed white gesso over the top of the collaged tissue paper, catching the texture and allowing some of the sunset color to glow through. I then drew my portrait of the woman with a black Elegant Writer Calligraphy pen and completed the painting by spreading the black ink with watercolor brush and water and some davy's grey watercolor paint. My source for the drawing was the body of one person and the head of another which I cut and pasted on the computer to create a 'new' person.

Thank you for the creative idea.

Regards,

Barbara Sailor



You might want to try a painting of your own with this idea. If you think of other variations that interest you, go for it! This challenge is meant to be a stimulus for creativity. Let the March madness begin!