Tartan Patterns - Painting with natural inks.

I was always attracted by Scottish patterns, specially by TARTAN. When I obtained my natural inks, in my mind I've planned something like tartan patterns. Today I show some of my results.

More flowered patterns.

Here I present two variations of flower patterned painted papers. Really, this kind of work made with natural inks, gives to the paper a special feeling. I like them!!

Flower patterned handpainted papers.

Here I show two of my flower patterned papers I've painted. There are more combinations and patterns. They are painted with natural inks obtained from flowers and vegetables. A wonderful work!.

The power of natural inks.

Yesterday was the first of typical autumn days here... Cloudly, a bit of rain, and cold... My work day begun with my cup of coffee, listening soft music, and preparing my day work in my studio. I've read some info days ago about natural inks, obtained from natural products as flowers and vegetables. I worked a bit on the matter, and obtained some colored liquids and decided to use them for paint papers.

The result was these gorgeous patterns. Nature is a wonderful reservoir of life, colors, intruments and ideas. You only need to use them with love, with magic, ever remembering that we came from the same nature. In this way you can transmit positive energies to you work and your mind will relax and explode of beautiful ideas.

First Experience with Natural Inks.

Today I want to show an experiment I've done this weekend. It's about experimenting with natural inks obtained from some vgetables and flowers, as parsley, carrots, pumpkin, cabbage, eggplant, then mixed with water into glass pots. I added water to dilute the mixture and shaked the content very well until obtain an homogeneous mix.

I took my wash brush and put over the bristles an amount of the mix ink using a dropper. Then I brushed on the paper randomly until I see all the surface covered with the ink and the "waterous" color was completely absorbed by the paper. Then I laid the papers to dry slowly and naturally.

The result was a wonderful collection of 44 painted papers plenty of colors, like pastels!.

Black Beauty.

Talking with a friend about potencial of black color in paper decoration, I decided to experiment the effects of contrasting black - white. Then, I prepared a black paste and went to paint my white papers. Finally with some combs I removed the paint to evidence the whiteness under. The effect is really amazing, it's like the paint moves while you see it with attention. This is the classical effect of optical visions. Here are some of the papers I've done.

Mono color & Mono stroke - Part II

Here are more examples of the application of one color tone and one type of brush stroke in making paste papers. For all colors I used black to get darkness.

Mono color & Mono stroke - Part I

Although these papers were painted with one color tone, can you determine which colors were used for each one? I give you a hint: in every one I used black.

As you can see, for paste papers a single brush movement can give very special effects. Soon I will show other examples.

How mix primary and secondary paint colors.

Today I want to tell some notes about the use of primary and secondary colors of the color wheel. See at the following simple color wheel:

 

The primary colors azul (blue) - rojo (red) - amarillo (yellow) are placed in the center as a triangle. If you mix EQUAL parts or proportions of each color pair on each side of the triangle, you can obtain the corresponding secondary color (orange - green - violet). Then, for example, you don't need to buy these secondary colors, and only focuse on the three primary ones. It means:

1 part yellow + 1 part red = orange (naranja)

1 part yellow + 1 part blue = green (verde)

1 part blue + 1 part red = violet (violeta)

Continuing with the mixing, if you mix equal parts of primary and secondary colors, you can obtain the tertiary ones. It means:
 

1 part orange + 1 part yellow = yellow-orange (amarillo-nararja)

1 part yellow + 1 part green = yellow-green (amarillo-verde)

1 part freen + 1 part blue = blue-green (azul-verde)

1 part blue + 1 part violet = blue-violet (azul-violeta)

1 part violet + 1 part red = red-violet (rojo-violeta)

1 part red + 1 part orange = red-orange (rojo-naranja)

The tertiary colors are mostly present in nature, and them are mostly used in art works. Varying the proportions of the colors you can obtain different hues, and if you add white you can obtain soft or clearer colors. You can use also more primary or secondary colors to obtain more intensity in your mix result. Some people uses black color to obtain more darkness. My recomendation is to not use the black to obtain intensity because it not funtions well; the black usually dirty the color.

When you mix, take in acoount that is more easy to make a color darker than clearer. For this reason I recomend to begin the mix putting the clearer colors at first and then add slowly the dark colors and mix very well during the addition to see the resulting color you are obtaining, and then stop adding when you reach your desired result. For example if you want to obtain orange color put first the yellow (clearer) and then add slowly the red (darker), but not the entirely part of it, only a small quantity at once and mixing to homogenize the mix.

The hint is to practice, and experiment with color mixing to create your own color palette, indicating the amount of paint used for it, and the order in which you added the colors. An important thing is to consider the color of paper where you will paint, because it intracts with visual effect of the final color paint.

Hope these few explanations can help all of you in your work. Good painting to all!

Paint Mixing Tool.

When you need to select colors for a paint work, and don't have much experience, you go through the internet seeking for a good tool thats help you in your trouble. Then you see that there are lots and lots of pages, articles, color palettes pics, and many other things. Then the first big doubt is about what is the best choice?... Try to search and you will be in agree with me!.

Reading a bit into the field of color theory, you can learn that one thing are the mixing color palettes for LIGHT COLORS, and another thing are the mixing palettes for PAINT COLORS... Then, if you don't be careful you can make a mistake using one palette with other purpose!.

Mixing color world is bigger than you can imagine! For example, consider the fact that, if you are talking about mixing oil paints or acrylic paints or watercolors, inks, dyes, crayons, etc, each one of them brings different results even you are using the same colors!! This is due the medium used to make each kind of paint and also it depends on the pigments, because them are very different for each type of paint!.

Another variable that you need to consider is the support for the paint (in this case the paper). There are white papers and also colored! Then, the original color of the paper interacts with the final color you want to obtain!.

As you can see, there are a lot of things to consider ni the moment you are preparing colors for your art work. Then be patient!. Make experiments, take notes and go!

Searching on the internet I've found a javascript tool which I consider is very powerful, because it refers to PAINT MIXTURES!. I've added it in a page of my blog. You can find it clicking here: "Paint Mixing Tool". You can see that is very easy to use and is a very very close approach to real colors that can be obtained with real paints. Please read the brief explanations to undestand the use of this tool. Experiment with it, and of course, comment!

The CREDITS for this tool are of:

Stephen Chapman, About.com's Javascript Guide.

Markov on the Moon.

If you ever look carefully at the moon, you will see that there are bright lines that run from pole to pole. On this particular, there is a short story that I want to share with you:

When my mother and my father were children (and this happened long time ago in the earliest 1930 - 1940) it was said that there was a man named Markov. He went on the moon and he stole some straw ... While he escaped carrying the straw on his shoulders, some of it was dropped on the way. The rays of sun lit up this straw and made it bright as gold and could be seen from all sides of the Earth... From there came the story of the signs on the moon ...

Remembering this story, today I want to share with you an origami model of the moon by Atuko Kawai and folded by me, which I wanted to paint in shades of gold, recalling that straw ... and the face of the moon, remembering the Markov's face ...

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Si alguna vez miran a la luna con detalle, veran que hay lineas brillantes que la recorren de polo a polo. Sobre este particular, hay una pequeña historia que quiero comartirles: 

Cuando mi madre y mi padre eran niños (y de esto ya hace mucho tiempo a principios de 1930 - 1940) se decia que habia un hombre llamado Markov. El fue a la luna y robo algo de paja... Mientras escapaba llevando sobre sus espaldas la paja, algo de ella cayo por el camino. Los rayos de sol iluminaban la paja y la hicieron brillar como oro y podia ser vista desde cualquier lado de la Tierra... Desde alli, viene la historia de los signos sobre la luna...

Recordando esta historia, hoy quiero compartir con ustedes un modelo en origami de la luna de Atuko Kawai y plegado por mi, que he querido pintar con difuminaciones de oro, recordando la paja... Y la cara de la luna, recordando la cara de Markov...