Daylily painting

Day lilies

The summer rains have produced prodigious blossoms on the day lilies on my hilltop home.  Down by our little pond, a lovely clump of bright orange flowers inspired me to grab my paints, some (free) mat board and an easel, and create this painting.

I notice that the mat board absorbs more paint, but holds up well to being worked over with watercolor paints & brushes. Now I have a moment of summer captured for the howling winds of winter. That's the beauty of playing with watercolors. An afternoon of splashing paints on paper can still the sunshine and save it for a day when you need to be reminded that July will come again, and with it foliage and blooms and lazy summer afternoons. Blessed are we to have the privilege of being alive on days like these.

Painting down by the pond.

The Inspiration of Free Supplies!

A local framing shop went out of business recently, and a friend alerted me to the fact that the shop owner was giving away mat board, glass and framing materials (Thanks, Kerry!).  I hustled down to the shop, met the owner, Steve, and thanked him.  He seemed pleased to have folks removing the excess from his stock room, as the new tenant of the shop had already moved into the front of the space.  I primarily picked up a bunch of sheets of mat board, including this smaller piece of white mat board.

Something about free materials inspires free creativity.  A sense of playfulness and gratitude rises up, and you can experiment. The white mat board I painted this sketch on reminded me of illustration board, so I tried watercolors on it, and had good results.  No buckling or warping, and no need for taping. It didn't suck up excessive paint, but worked like watercolor paper.  I like the smooth surface.  

You can ask a framing shop to save you their mat board cast-offs.  Most are happy to do so.  You'll have a variety of sizes (usually 8" x 10" and smaller) and colors of mat board to paint on and create with (see the journal making post from May 14th).

 This watercolor sketch (no underdrawing) was made with a Koi Water Colors Pocket Field Sketch Box and Pentel and Kuretake water brushes last night about 7 pm.  The light was shifting, falling so I worked quickly to capture the deep shadows and highlighted foliage.

A Fresh Look for my Journal

Chubby with the finished journal

I keep a written journal of my inner life -- part writing practice, part sorting out my thoughts.  I try to write daily.  After reading The Muse Is In by Jill Badonsky, I was inspired to play with paints and create a splashy cover for the plain green spiral notebook I'm currently using to write in.  I used Dr. P.H. Martin's Liquid Watercolors -- I love the lusciously bright colors -- and just folded the painted paper around the journal, taping it in place with clear packing tape.  Simple!

Paints (in egg carton), paper & spiral.

The back of the journal

The finished front cover.