Mixed media abstract painting

Actually I used three media in this piece:

• liquid watercolors, also called watercolor ink
• acrylic inks
• a black alcohol marker.
  
  This piece is a typical "what does happen when I do that and that" piece. I wanted to experiment with color mixing regarding the acrylic inks, and I wanted to experiment with mark making using a black alcohol marker. All this was done on mixed media paper DIN A 5 size. 

The acrylic inks I used were all kinds of inks: I mostly used Molotow refills and a tube of Titan White from a One Euro shop. 

Some weeks ago I had tried out something with watercolor inks and watercolor brush pens. Then I had stopped working on the painting. A few days ago I was considering throwing the sheet into the bin, but then I felt the urge to try and do something with it. I grabbed some molotow refills, a container with water, a plastic container which once had served as a joghurt container for color mixing and a brush. The result you can see in the image above.
 

Liquid Watercolors

I managed to create five paintings done with markers and liquid watercolors in the month of March. In each of the paintings markers and liquid watercolors play a different part. In my last painting, which you can see on the left I only used one marker for the background and on one or two tiny spots. The rest of the painting is done with liquid watercolors. I absolutely enjoyed color mixing, although I find it much more difficult than mixing with tube paints. 

Abstract landscape

This time I wanted to do something different and painted a landscape in a very abstract and stylized style. I mostly used liquid watercolors with some touches of alcoholbased markers here and there.

Regarding the selection of colors: I had some paint left from a previous painting and wanted to use it up. This is definitely an advantage to acrylic paints!

The Joy of painting with a real Brush

This is the second painting with markers and liquid watercolor I've done in the month of March up to now. Painting with a brush takes way more time than creating AI images. I have to think about the composition, the choice of hues, the relationship between markers and liquid watercolors. And the actual painting process of course takes its time. But: I so enjoy creating art in this traditional way! 

The Man in the Fern

I like to create images with AI which tell a story. 
Looking at the image on the left with a man's face is embedded in a huge fern growing out of a bucket I wonder whether a human has been turned into the fern maybe because he participated in destroying nature and now nature is fighting back? 

Or we see an anthropomorphic fern crying out loud because of all the damage humans brought on nature?

You, the reader, are kindly invited to write your own story when looking at the image.

Skull and cherry blossoms

For a few days now I have been changing the way I create prompts for my AI images. I got a nice little notebook with colored pages from one of my friends, and I sit down and manually write my prompts in this notebook. I do this in the morning while sipping my first cups of tea. 

The image on the left is one of my first results I got while using this method. I wanted to combine an object with cherry blossoms twigs. While a skull stands for death or the end of life, those cherry blossoms represent spring. 

 

Painting with Liquid Watercolor and Markers

 Colorex is Pebeos liquid watercolor brand. The range of hues is amazing, as well as the intensitiy of the color with out thinning down with water. And it is also amazing how many shades you get when you add one, two and even three drops of water. 

What you can do also is to wait till the watercolor marks have dried and then apply an alcoholbased markers. These markers are more or less transparent, and you can get very nice color effects doing it this way. Of course you can also do it the other way: first apply the markers and then add a bit of liquid watercolor to them. 

The only thing you have to keep in mind is that both - markers and liquid watercolors from Pebeo - are not lightfast. They both use dyes and not pigments. What I do is to scan the artwork, put it into a binder and have made prints out of the scans.