Preparations for the Group Show in July #1

This year again I will participate in the group show in Buckow (Markische Schweiz, near Berlin) in July. And I will participate with new paintings. Last year I didn't manage to hang new paintings due to the amount of work I had to cope with at the Berlin University of the Arts.
Due to the fact that I have been pretty creative during the last year I asked my friend Claudia to help me select a certain number of paintings. It was fun sitting there and going through all the stacks of paintings, and in the end, after quite a reasonable time, we managed to get a selection of paintings, some acrylic, some watermedia, and all very colourful!
Now I have to find frames for them (I already got some ideas), and to frame them. This is quite a challenge for me. I'm not very good with my hands. At least, this is what I think. My friend Claudia had framed my paintings two years ago, and she did it in such a quick time that I almost could not believe my eyes. However, things can be learnt, and there is enough time till the beginning of July.
However, time runs, and so the first thing I'll do is to set up a plan. I'll keep you posted about how things proceed!

Rhapsody in Blue and Green

This painting was done with Acrylic paints, acrylic ink and - in the end - some strokes with a PITT Artist Brush pen. I was aiming for as many different shades of green I could do with mixing the green I had (Hookers Green) with white and blue ink.

Jumping dolphins

This pair of jumping dolphins was painted on a piece of cardstock which I had "primed" with two coats of white acrylic paint. I used the paint because I don't have gesso in my flat. It worked to some extent and stopped the cardstock from sucking in too much paint. However I didn't apply smoothly enough and thereby the texture was a bit too rough.
The other thing which went quite well was mixing a nice strong red colour out of the magenta acrylic ink and the yellow acrylic paint. And it was fun playing with paints and experimenting - even if the result was not perfect. It is a way to learn and to practice!

Under the Sun

When I did this painting I had a certain scene in mind: Sitting in a kind of bamboo hut, with the sun shining through the roof and the spaces between the single bamboo stems.

In order to get that red I mixed the magenta and the lemon yellow. As the magenta is quite strong it takes a lot of yellow to get that orangey-red. I finished the painting with inking some of the lines with my staedtler pigmentliner, a fineliner which has waterproof ink.

Hot and Cold

I used cyan (acrylic ink) and vermillion (acrylic paint) for this painting. It is amazing how many shades of blue you can get when you mix those two colours. 

I had a very rough sketch on the watercolour paper, but during the process of painting I more and more digressed from the original sketch.

Puma

It has been a long time since I did the last drawing or sketch. Somehow to draw means to leave my comfort zone. I love to sling colours, be it with gouache paints, acrylic inks combined with acrylic paints or liquid watercolours. Actually it is one of my art goals to do more drawings - but having goals is one thing and having fun with paints and colours is the other thing. Well...

Green Koi

Acrylic ink creates a very smooth surface - ideal for going over with coloured pencils, as I did here. Acrylic ink also can be used in a wet-in-wet-technique, which I did with the water in this painting. I used one clean brush only for wetting the paper, and a second one for applying the paint. As acrylic ink dries up very fast on the paper, you have to be quick if you want to prevent sharp edges, and you have to be careful with your brush strokes, but then you can achieve an effect similar to ones you can achieve with watercolours. 

Tent in the Storm

I used three colours for this painting: magenta, black and lemon yellow. I changed between using the paint / ink as it came out of the bottle and adding water to it. In the beginning I had some geometric shapes, and then while working on the painting something like a tent in the storm emerged. I learnt that adding yellow to magenta makes a very strong red, and that it takes a lot of yellow to turn it into something slightly orange!

Blue Violet

First there was the blue violet and the two leaves. I did the sketch, transfered it via transparent paper and my window pane onto the watercolour paper and blocked the colour in. I tried to get a nice violet mix by adding some drops of magenta to my cyan blue, but, as you can see, the amount of red is still too little.

For the loose landscape I diluted the permanent green with some drops of water, wetted the paper a bit and let the paint flow in. Same with the sky. I then added some strokes with polychromos coloured pencils in the middle. 

After having done all this I took a step back and wasn't totally satisfied with the result. Would some ink lines help? Or would they destroy the whole painting? I took a scan of the painting as it was and then proceeded with applying some loose inkstrokes.Well, I felt better after that...

Rainbow Rectangles

I did these colourful rectangles with my new acrylic inks, using cyan. lemon yellow, and magenta. Besides playing with various geometric shapes I tried to practice colour mixing and adding ink lines with my staedtler pigment liner.

The green patches which you can see are not painted with a green but created by putting yellow on blue.