Green Vines

This time I wanted to do a monochromatic abstract painting with my colorex paints, and as I had opened the bottle with the green hue a short time ago I went for green. I added some yellow for the lighter greens, and some black and blue for the darker ones. 

It was fun doing it and I am pleased to see what can be done with a limited palette. 

The only sad thing however is that the colorex paints are not lightfast at all. They are not based on pigments but on dye. In this aspect they behave like markers do - and the good thing is that I've got a marker painting which I put framed behind glass and I have it for over three years now and cannot see any change in the colours. Of course I would never sell it.

Ring of Stones

I opened another one of my new colorex liquid watercolour bottles - the green one. It is a very vivid green, especially if you add yellow to it as I did here. For the red-orange stones I went to the palette with my leftover Neocolor II paints, created from the shavings of the watersoluble crayons. As you can see you can work with different watermedia in one painting! 

Troll

This troll is a variation of the pink monster. It has got clothes, and a head, but otherwise the pose is almost the same. However a new colour is used - I opened the colorex bottle with yellow in it and mixed it with magenta. I got a nice vibrant red this way. 

And I tried another thing - producing a kind of liquid gouache: I took a tiny piece of indian red out of the tube into a small container and added drops of water to it, mixing it, so that I got a kind of liquid gouache. Then I grabbed one of my brushes and applied the liquid gouache on top of the yellow red stones. It worked like a glaze. Interesting!

Pink-blue Diamond

I painted this diamond with two colours: ultramarine dark from Ecolline (Royal Talens) and cyan from colorex. I used two brushes - a waterbrush to put the paint on and a watercolour brush to wet the paint. 

Once again I was fascinated by the intensitiy of the liquid watercolours - the ultramarine I took out of the lid of the bottle after I'd given it a bit of a shake, and the cyan was still on my palette from the day before. 

The only thing that I found a bit difficult was to take the proper brush which means only using the waterbrush for putting on the paint and only using the ordinary watercolour brush for wetting the paper and the paint. 

Little Pink Monster

Just now I am working on adding small changes to my drawings. This one here was first traced from the blue monster which I did in December last year and then recreated, traced again and then I transfered the drawing to my watercolour paper. I coloured it in with my new colorex paints which I am still enjoying very much!

Orange koifish

At the moment I am focussing on two things:

1. I am still experimenting with mixing my colorex liquid watercolours. I know that many people recommend doing those colour charts with rectangles. I try to do my colour charts the other way: I am using my own drawings, trace them again and then colour it trying new mixes. Of course this is not as "scientifc" as doing those charts with rectangles, but I am having more fun doing it my way. In this case I used magenta mixed with mars orange mixed with sepia. 
2. I am experimenting with changing my drawings a tiny bit. I trace my drawings and then change the shape of the fins, or the directions of the fins, or whatever comes to my mind. In this case I changed the shape of the left fin a bit. Then, when I am satisfied with the new drawing on my tracing paper, I put up my provisional light table and transfer the "new" drawing on my proper paper - in this case drawing cardboard.

Exit to nowwhere

In the beginning of the painting process (I used my colorex liquid watercolours again) I hadn't any particular scene in mind - I just wanted to find out what would  happen if I add black to magenta. Depending on the amount of black and magenta you can get beautiful shades of violet. 

When the painting was finished and I was looking at it I more and more had the impression of a cave with stone pillars. The cave is getting narrower and narrower, and there is a dark hole at the end of the cave which might lead to an exit to the surface, or to an exit to nowhere.