Water, Water Everywhere

Last weeks Diva Challenge was to do some Zen tangling with water. I have a few VERY different renditions that I drew last week and each has a very different view of water. This is my most challenging piece as I had been knee deep in water the better part of Tuesday. I pulled out a coffee-stained watercolor paper from a different challenge a few weeks ago as that's what color the water was all around my house. I didn't post this or any of the others to the challenge as I was kind of pre-occupied.

 

This drawing is fairly representational of the chaos we were experiencing and my general state of mind. That the coffee stains were a mess to begin with just adds to the tension here. I'm not too happy that the weather wonks have been forecasting more rain today, thunderstorms and more flooding. So far, that hasn't happened, but the day ain't over yet!

Paper Batik

I took some time away from the Zentangle a day with Beckah Krahula. I just had to. Her book is great and was my first introduction to the drawing method. BUT, as I've found with EVERY book on the subject I've read so far (and it's a LOT. I like to read how-to books, inspirational and art books. I like to read, I guess)...EVERY book so far has a chapter on color theory. Don't get me wrong, there needs to be an understanding of color by every artist, but it needs to be theory for the particular type of color an artist applies. Oils are different from watercolor and different from Copic and computers and on, and on....I like that she separated the warm from the cool colors and in particular, showed how to 'make' purple from different primaries.

But, I got my back up and got bogged down by yet another color wheel to study, an exercise I totally skipped. Besides, how many different sets of art materials do I really need? The paint, pens, paper, pencils, brushes...I can't find most of my vast collection of stuff and a good bit of the paints have all dried out. Then I see that I'm not all that excited about the tangles-of-the-day. Sigh.

So I did all those tangly challenges instead. And there's the flood mess to clean up which I'm also avoiding, for now.

But I tried her paper batik technique with what I have, including a new clear glitter gelly roll. The first go around, the glitter disappeared and the colors of watercolor were just too precious, too cute for my taste. So I dunked the whole mess in leftover coffee and tried it again, with a different glitter pen. Better, but the glitter still smeared.

I'll give it another try, perhaps with the exact complements of art supplies, especially a clear pen so the paper shows the design, like it's supposed to. I really appreciated that I had to slow down to get the pen to put ink on paper. Thank goodness it was a very small square of paper.