NOT WHITE ON RICE

Hi Everyone!

I've spent the last several days enjoying the company of my BFF.  She arrived mid-day on Thursday. As always there are lots of art supplies to be unloaded from her trunk as well as art books and a ready supply of snack goodies and clothes of course.  We spend the afternoon in the pool chatting and catching up on our lives, the latest happenings, etc. Bonnie is finally officially "retired" and she is adjusting to what-ever that means. Making plans and figuring out what she will do with all of her free time now. 

We plan a zillion things to do when she is here but as always, time runs quickly away from us and we rarely get to everything we planned.  Oh and the rain...the rain....it interferes with our outdoor plans.  But we make do with it and stand under the shelter of my patio and paint anyway.

Bonnie working out her design

The curlicue design in purple ink

 We experimented with rice paper and it was Sooooo much fun! I really got into it!!

 Rice paper is rather thin and when it gets wet well.... the color just explodes on the paper making the most incredible spidery (is that a word?) designs, the colors run freely and there is little to no control.

I laid down purple waterproof ink on the wet paper (above)  making a few curlicues with a brush. 

Adding watercolor in the background

A dash of yellow in the background and a touch of red in a few spots and to sharpen it up a bit, then watch the colors spread across the paper. After adding the watercolors I came back into the drawing with black ink over the purples to define the final design. 

Final design 

 It is pretty exciting working this way, but maybe not so much for the faint of heart and definitely not for those who need more control in their work. I happen to love the unpredictability! Jumping up and down and clapping, oohing and aahhhing as each color spreads its way around the paper.

My friend on the other hand was not as pleased with the unpredictability and was ready to give up on her piece so I asked if it would be ok to "play" with it and see what would happen. With permission and a sense of wild abandon, I added blues and greens to the background and then used black ink to redefine some areas.  

Reworking Bonnie's design

I really liked that Bonnie followed the directions of wetting her paper and crumpling it before drawing; it gives the paper a batik look and once it is flattened it will look pretty cool.

The next in my curlicue series of paintings was this design.  It reminds me of an old fashioned garden fence or gate like my Granny had at her house.

Old fashioned garden fence or gate

 What better way to spend a rainy afternoon than to discover the joy of a new medium and color?  Oh, and Bonnie did another one too, this time using waterproof markers to outline her shapes for tighter design control. 

Using waterproof markers for tight design control.

I think it came out lovely, don't you? 

That's just the beginning of our little adventures, won't you come back next week and see what else we were up to? 

Grab you paper and pencils and go sketch/draw something this week! 

Bee Creative!
Suzy