July 2023 Paintings and Projects
Painting inspiration, Coloring Book Progress and Other Updates
Sometimes you have a month where inspiration is hard to come by because of the day-to-day things kind of weigh you down. July was about half that; where it was hard for me to sit down and create new things. So I revisited some previous ideas and decided to make a series of it. That is my mountain+water series. I am lucky enough to have a friend that sends me photos of his daily adventures which inspired “Marsh View: Flower Sky” and “Coloring Book 25.” I still want to do a painting of CB 25 and will work on that this month.
I experimented with alcohol markers in Marsh View: Flower Sky and liked how it turned out. There is a page dedicated to the painting where I tried different techniques with the markers, watercolors and colored pencil. This was fun and it helped me with understanding how to use alcohol markers better. I must say though, that the Copic markers were the best of all the brands that I have in my collection.
I have several brands of alcohol markers - the Copics layered and dried better. I have Tombow ABT, Artist’s Loft, Marabu and some other random ones that I received in my Artsnacks boxes. The Tombows were more translucent and layered well over the Copics. I will practice more with these markers as I *now* have a large collection of them. The learning curve is different from my usual watercolors. I’ll probably be using them in mixed media pieces with watercolors.
In other news, my ankle is healing up nicely and I’m out of the boot. Yay! But I’m still struggling with getting back into walking exercise. It seems that when you don’t exercise for 2+ months, your legs don’t like it when you do start exercising. I did not know that falling out of shape would be so fast, and getting back in shape would take a bit. So I’ve been taking time to do my physical therapy exercises which takes time away from fun stuff like painting.
