eller

No, this was actually not planned, but a funny and very fitting coincidence: finally, my newest homemade watercolor is ready! Today is the best day to publish a paint called "Living Sun", right? Happy Solstice to everyone who celebrates, and a wonderful time to everyone else, too! :D



Filling the pans took a while: I learned that PY159 is a very annoying pigment, even more difficult to work with than the PB71 I already complained about. It loves to unmix and it loves to make awful lumps that no amount of grinding managed to remove: after an hour, new lumps inevitably formed. I'm soooo glad I somehow got this into the pans!



I added a small amount of PY138 because... PY159 granulates nicely but is not a particularly intense color. So, the PY138 (which is a cool and very intense yellow) unmixes on the paper from the (warm) PY159, and it's an effect I'm actually very happy with. Looks much nicer in real life than in the photo!

If there is one color that defines the North German autumn, that would be this one.



Okay, technically, heather season is already over, but... It's definitely not a coincidence that I decided to produce this particular shade of granulating purple. 

In case you were wondering: yes, the Lüneburg Heath has some heather. XD That's a bit of an understatement, actually: heather bloom is such a spectacular view that people track it online so you can find the best spots for heather-viewing... (Oh, and they have pretty pictures, too.) Ah, unique North German hobbies. XD

By the way, the weather models predict the year's first frost for this weekend. Kale, YAY! (The kale plants need frost before they can be harvested and eaten.) I'm so looking forward to kale season! :)

...or: the chemical adventure goes on. I was missing a yellowish color in my little landscape paint set, so, this is what happened. Still very wet; will likely need ages to dry. As usual.




When used relatively dry, the color looks like a relatively neutral "normal" ocher. When used very wet and/or on textured paper it unmixes into warm yellow and (thanks to the PW18, which is a dark dusty rose really) more reddish dark zones.

Pigments: PY138, PY154, PV19, PW18

Another botanical ATC (6,4 x 8,9 cm), and the first attempt to actually use my new selfmade watercolors. Turns out they work as expected, with textures and everything, which is a relief, because otherwise I'd be stuck with a year's supply or so of green paint I hate. XD Of course, I had to use some other (store-bought) greens on this as well, but that's okay. (It's perfectly clear that only two greens are not nearly enough.) I'm just glad I didn't botch things.



Used watercolors:
Michael Harding: Titanium White, Pyrrole Red, Bright Green Lake, Phthalocyanine Green Lake, Dark Morellone Earth
Schmincke Horadam: Dunkelrot
Isaro: Magenta
Nila Colori: Ocra Violetta Armena
My own paints: Living Tree, Living Forest



I didn't need the blue and the brown for this picture (come to think of it, I almost never need blue), but test paintings with those (and, ugh, they really look nicer than in this photo; sorry, bad lighting here) will follow soon.

My newest watercolor-making experiment! Producing this stuff at home is a lot of work, but hey, it gets me some colors not commercially available, so... XD



I wanted a supergranulating multi-pigment color that unmixes when you use it very wet, and I think it worked just fine! On rough (Torchon) paper, it creates these interesting effects. I think I'm going to use it a lot in landscape sketches!

So, I painted the cover of my new watercolor box! :D I received two awesome suggestions and decided to sort-of-combine them: it was castiron's idea to draw a greenhouse with metal parts to match the silver theme of the, well, duct tape. XD And yhlee asked me to draw a field of flowers that uses all the colors in the box... Well, at the time of that post, I had already begun to sketch the greenhouse, but, ALL THE COLORS? Can do! :D

( WIP and materials behind the cut. )

Another ATC! This one took forever, but I'm kind of happy with the result. It was inspired by finding a shimmery dark green in my advent calendar, and, well... What to do with that? Old glass was my first thought. Also, two different light sources (one cold, one warm), just to make my life difficult...



In the end, I actually managed to use all the four different types of shimmer and glitter from my advent calendar in the picture! (Shimmery transparent white on the window and the glass parts of the thermometer-weather-thingy, shimmery green on the bottles and the leaves (because why wouldn't those shimmer? XD), golden gel pen (on the jewelry, thermometer-thingy and fire-thingy), and silver gel pen on the rock samples - I guess those are ore minerals, then...) It feels kind of decadent to have a designated old-glass-watercolor, but hey, I love drawing old technology and lab equipment (and old glass often does have this color - not because people dyed it but because they had no way of removing the iron impurities), so I absolutely needed that one, I just didn't know it yet!

( List of art supplies behind the cut. )

This ATC was for the advent calendar, so, I drew this some time ago, but I'm posting it now after the fact. Maana is a character from a story/project of the person my calendar was for. :) A lot of fun, especially because it's not the kind of thing I typically draw at all! (As in, she's clearly not a plant... LOL) Leaving my comfort zone at least occasionally is a good idea, I know! XD

So, this is for an advent calendar game thingy... You know how much I love those. XD We have 25 participants, everyone draws 24 inchies (yes, little 1x1 inch drawings) and sends them to our victim organizer, who then builds advent calendars for all of us... With one inchie from each other participant. YAY! (Holy crap, I'm so f*cking glad I don't have to pack those letters!) These are the 24 inchies I drew. The topics are varied because I looked at everyone's profiles to find something that a) they will like, and b) I can actually draw. (Occasionally, that was one small Venn diagram.)



My favorite is, of course, the bog landscape - out of principle. (Yes, someone asked for that. Can do... LOL) I was also surprised that someone requested minerals, because, hey. XD From a purely artistic standpoint, I'm especially happy how the dragonfly and the fern turned out.

I used Staedtler fineliners (different tip sizes), watercolors, Posca white acrylic pen and Sakura white gel pen on KREUL mixed media paper (which is one of the very few "mixed media" papers that actually work for wet media).I don't know why the scan is so blurry - maybe something in the scanner settings.

...better late than never, right? XD So, this is the Art Toolkit Pocket Palette.



I received this cute little traveling watercolor palette as a gift from yhlee ages a few months ago and... uh... was at first unsure what to do with it. Not that there's anything wrong with it - it's a great concept, little magnetic pans that can be filled with paints, very practical - except, of course, I already have this super awesome handmade watercolor box (also from yhlee) in use and (obviously) don't plan on replacing it.

So, I couldn't use this little thing the way it's intended, for a basic color selection... Instead, it had to become something that adds to my basic color selection (which is, essentially, a selection of very bright pigments - the finest of organic chemistry - because I need those for botanical art) so I have more paints available on the go. (You can never have enough watercolors... Right?!? RIGHT.) The problem was... There were so many possibilities to choose from. Do I turn this thing into a glitter paint palette? Am I going to be boring and add more bright organic pigments for the fun of it? So many possibilities!



In the end, I decided to make this essentially an earth tone palette. I almost never use ochre and granulating colors and stuff (which is why those are not in my basic set), but occasionally I find myself missing them. Having small amounts in my bag at any time seemed like a good idea.

These are the paints I decided on:



Large pans on the left: these are the two ochres I find myself missing most often.
Phoenix Yellow Ochre (PY42): Ironically, my favorite yellow ochre is a super cheap one. These paints are sold as student grade (!) and, indeed, most of that series suck, but.. The ochre doesn't. It's (somewhat surprisingly) an awesome product.
Renesans Orange Ochre (PY42): Oh, this one is invaluable for skin tones! The only reason it's not in my basic set is that I don't draw people very often. Diluted, it becomes a light flesh tint, and in thicker layers it's also good for painting medium-brown skin. Very useful.

Second row from the left: Nila Colori earth tones.
These are awesome earth tones but I don't really like filling them in pans because they don't re-wet very well... It always takes a bit of time to dissolve them again. Still: if I do an earth tone set, I want the nicest earth tones, and, well, these are it. From top to bottom: Ocra Dorata Armena, Terra di Siena Bruciata del Monte Amiata, Terra d'Ombra Naturale, Ocra Violetta Armena.

Right half of the palette: Daniel Smith PrimaTek.
I'm still somewhat sceptical because of the obviously incorrect pigment labeling, but I have not experienced any lightfastness issues with these colors, which is what matters in the end... And, I mean, they granulate (and unmix) very nicely. I've wanted to use them more often, except whenever I found myself wanting one of these, I didn't have it available... Heh. Which is why they ended up in the tiny pans. These are really small amounts (dots, basically), but for rarely-used paints, that's prefect. From left to right, top to bottom: Bronzite Genuine, Serpentine Genuine, Green Apatite Genuine, Garnet Genuine, Diopside Genuine, Jadeite Genuine, Purpurite Genuine, Amazonite Genuine, Zoisite Genuine, Amethyst Genuine, Sodalite Genuine, Black Tourmaline Genuine.