Monkey Business

  

               gorilla                                                                   chimp

The gorilla is done in ink and watercolor. The chimp is all watercolor.

Leaves and Ink

I painted these leaves last year in the park.They were those huge leaves that grow so tall. This particular grouping stood taller than me. I was intrigued with all the curvey line and how their colors flowed together. After painting them, I couldn’t decide what to do with the background, so I stowed it away for a couple months. Later, I read an article about filling in background with india ink and tried it. I used several different size brushes and very carefully washed the ink into the background being careful to overlap strokes while the ink was still wet. I let the whole thing dry overnight. There were some streaks but not many. The last thing I did was use Lamp Black Watercolor to go over the ink. The author had suggested this as a tool to soften the india ink. It did just that and balnced the two mediums a little better.

Leopard

Have you ever had a painting where the whole thing was just fun to do?  This was one of those for me. About the only thing I had to spend time thinking about was how to do the spots. Some of them are burnt sienna.  The rest are brown and black ink. Another thing that made this fun is that I chose a tall and narrow format. I like doing that once in awhile.

“Left Turn”

This is a loving little dog owned by the sister of a good friend and fellow artist, Tracey Hyde. Her name is Sammy. She was born with the left ear pointing to the left. Her nickname is “Left Turn”. I drew her in ink continuous line prior to watercoloring her. Tracey was kind enough to send me a picture of her to share with all of you.

  The Real Sammy

Saran Wrap and Watercolor

I used saran wrap and watercolor to create the foliage. I drew the trees in india ink. The roadway was painted wet-inwet.

I used wax resist, sponge and printing to create the scene surrounding the race horses.

I enjoy working in ink and watercolor. The following three are examples of this.

Elephant

Devil

This is a fun picture I painted from a picture my daughter in law took.

Cheesecloth was used to print the tree shape. You can find a lesson in gauze printing on Beth Parker’s Blog. I also scratched in the surface of this painting with a razor blade and rendered the detail with colored pencil.

Beth has painted another painting using gauze, here.