Sheep in Wales Fields

Quite a few months ago there was a WDE on WetCanvas hosted by Jean (aka justjean on wetcanvas), and I liked very much the greenish fields of the English landscape. At that time I decided on a composition combining two of the beautiful photos, and started to work on this little painting (10x7 inches). But, unfortunately, it was only after a long time that I finish it. Have a "green" and sunny day!

Monochrome studies of a seascape

Just trying to keep exercising constantly, as I didn't had much time to concentrate on a larger painting. Some of these were done during the workshop I teach at the Community Center, for the attendants to get the first feeling of the paint moves with the water on the paper. Nothing particular about any of these, just that with each one I was also learning something new about my materials! All of them are rather small, only 7x5 inches, on various watercolor papers.

Little olive tree branch study

Not much time to paint lately, I only manage to make small studies to exercise as often as I can. This simple little olive tree branch was done in less than 20 minutes, but I think it is lovely in its simplicity.

Holding on Summer - Lady in pink

Well, cold days are now here, and I still think of Summer days. One of the last days we went to the beach, I did a very quick pencil sketch of a lady while she was getting in the sea for a swim (the sketch took me 2 min or so). For some reason, her image remained in my head and I decided to do a quick color sketch of that image, which you see bellow. I know it is not what everyone would imagine when thinking of a lady in pink on a beach, but I was only trying to capture the pleasure of that late summer swim rather than a "perfect" body. Small size watercolor, 5x7 inches, done with Camlin paints on Waterford 140 lb CP paper.

My watercolors at Trillium Gallery

I am very happy to announce that my watercolors are now exposed by the online Trillium Gallery! I was very pleased when Maureen Maliha, the curator at Trillium Gallery, send me the invitation and asked me to join the community of wonderful artists exposing at Trillium Gallery. It took me some time to respond to the invitation, due to the summer vacation, but then Maureen was super-fast with preparing my page and publishing. Furthermore, it feels great when the fellow artists welcome you and encourage you! I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude and many thanks to all wonderful peoples at Trillium Gallery!

Camel Artists' Water Color Cakes, 18 shades - color testing

For the workshop that I will teach for free starting from September 2014 at the Community Center here in Patras, I was looking for some rather cheap, but still qualitative, watercolor paints, as we do not have any funds to buy art materials. We are thankful to the contributors to our project on Indiegogo, and to the collectors that acquire my artwork during this period, as 100% of the profit of the my art sales (original watercolors and prints) made during this summer will be used to buy art materials for the workshop.
Luckily for me me, on the watercolor forum on WetCanvas, I came across with a discussion about some rather cheap, but still in the "artist quality" range, watercolor paints which are made in India and are called "Camel Artists Water Colors". They can be found as cakes in a metal box (18 shades) or in tubes of 20 ml, 9 ml and 5 ml. The major problem is that they are sold only in India. On the good side is that most of the e-shops in India that are selling the Camel watercolors are shipping them worldwide and the shipping cost is not very high, especially if you find one that send them using the India Post services (for example, the cost was 15$ for a box under 1 kg, to ship from India to Greece).
My experience with the e-shop from India was very good - they were very helpful and answering very fast to my e-mails. My order included some brush sets and drawing materials, except of the paints.
As for the paints, I ordered one box of cakes (18 shades), 1 box of 20 ml tubes (12 shades) and 2 boxes of 9 ml tubes (18 shades) of the Camel Artists' Water Colors.
I started my tests with the box of cakes, which must be one of the cheapest on the market at approximately 3 US$.
Except of the very low price, one good thing about the box is that is a metal one and one of the two sides, when open, has three quite large mixing areas. Also, the box comes with a Camlin synthetic hair brush from the round series, which seems to be the equivalent of the size 6 of the round series 66 (the size is not indicated on the brush found in the box).

What I didn't like at all about the Camel box of cakes is the plastic part, where the paints are placed. It is very thin and fragile, and while trying to get it out of the metal box the part where the brush is placed just came out in pieces (as you can notice in the photo).
Maybe very important for the watercolorists that are using pans is that these cakes are not of the usual pan-size, the square cakes look to me quantitatively as being the equivalent of about 1/4 of a full-pan.

The pigments in the box, from left to write and top to bottom order, are:

236 Lemon Yellow
154 Gamboge Hue
283 Orange
492 Yellow Ochre
393 Scarlet
241 Light Red
031 Burnt Sienna
062 Crimson
032 Burnt Umber
056 Cobalt Blue Hue
436 Ultramarine Blue
071 Cerulean Blue Hue
117 Emerald Green
453 Viridian Hue
391 Sap Green
016 Black
367 Raw Umber
478 White

And this is how they look on the paper at a consistency similar to that of paint out of a tube:

First impression is that I like the intensity and the colors. Light Red seems very close to Burnt Sienna, and Yellow Ochre very similar to Raw Umber. But I need to check them in mixes, to really see the differences. This will take some time to do, and many experiments. I only started now with testing a basic palette of 3 colors: 153 Gamboge Hue, 063 Crimson and 056 Cobalt Blue. First I made value charts of the 3 primary colors plus the 016 Black, and then a color wheel.

I think my selection of 3 primary colors is very good to get a beautiful range of mixes, and now I am looking forward to test it with some paintings too.

Kennedy Range National Park - thank you Ros for the wonderful virtual trip!

We had the pleasure to travel to Australian landscapes, which are quite different of the ones I am used to.  This wonderful virtual trip was offered to us on WetCanvas in the AMAE (all media art events) forum, by our host Ros (aka rozzi on wetcanvas) for the June 28 WDE (weekend drawing event). Among the 16 images, I selected this one of the Kennedy Range National Park, to try my hand at a different landscape - all this stone and desert like land that I never painted before. The painting is done on a 90 lb CP Garzapapel watercolor paper, and has the size of approximately 7x5 inches. This paper is from the samples I received from Garza, and I was looking forward to test it, as I never used 90 lb paper before from any manufacturer, as I prefer heavier paper (140 lb). Although small size, the paper was buckling when a larger area was wet, but the very good thing was that it would get again completely flat when dry. It is quite receptive to paint, and it stays moist long enough to work the washes (I don't know about much larger areas), which I didn't expect from light papers to do. In the future I will consider testing the 90 lb paper from other manufacturers too, as for small sizes seems to work fine.

Tropical Milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) ACEO

During the last weeks I did not manage to participate in the Weekend Drawing Events (WDE) at WetCanvas forum, and I was missing it, especially when looking at the beautiful photos shared by the hosts all over the world. Previous week host, tyree, invited us to paint along with her in Florida! I liked very much the photo with the tropical milkweed flower and buds, and I decided to do a small painting as I didn't had much time for a larger painting. It happen that just a day after tyree posted the photo, I saw one of these plants growing up under a tree on my street! One more reason to paint it. So, the painting is very small, of only 3.5x2.5 inches (ACEO size), and it is done with my usual watercolors (combination of W&N, Daniel Smith and American Journey) on Waterford 140 lb CP paper.

Garzapapel paper testing (3) - foliage and petals of the hibiscus flowers

When the background wash was completely dry I started to work on the green leaves and petals of the hibiscus. The differences in the various papers behavior were not really so big, and the following photos give you an overview of a few more steps and the final little paintings (the order is always the same - Garza, Arches, Fabriano).

First wash of yellow on the leaves:

Building up the greens:

 Hibiscus flowers petal wok - intermediary step:

And the final little paintings, scanned to give the true colors and details:

Now that all 3 are ready, I think it was a very good experience to them in parallel and keep notes while working, as this in the end allowed me a more objective evaluation of all papers, even if I was used to the feeling and behavior of Fabriano and Arches papers. I would say that Arches and Garzapapel are more suitable to work "at once", as they remain moist for longer time, and you can keep working a wash for much longer time. Fabriano dries faster and allows easier the glazing, as you do not need to wait for the next day to lay a new wash. At least this applies for these small paper size that I used.
I would say that the decision to choose any of these 3 papers in the future will be mostly affected by their availability in the retail shops (unfortunately right now none of them is available in Patras), their price and discounts in the e-shops and the shipping costs. Although I find paper as fabulous prices in online shop (i.e. Fabriano in Italy), when adding the shipping costs, the real cost per sheet goes very high, as I cannot stock at once hundreds of sheets.

Garzapapel paper testing (2) - drawing and background wash

Moving further with my test of the Garzapapel, I am going to paint at the same time some red hibiscus flowers on Garza, Arches and Fabriano papers. All 3 papers are of the same (small) size, of 5x7 inches and are of the same weight of 140 lb.
I started with the pencil drawing of the hibiscus flowers on all 3 papers, as follows:

Garzapapel drawing:

Arches drawing:

Fabriano drawing:

I didn't notice any difference in the three drawings, for which I used a 2B pencil.

In order to keep things as simple as possible, I decided to go with a limited  palette of only 3 colors from Sennelier, namely: Sennelier Yellow Light, Rose Opera and Cinereous Blue. And I am using two Pentel brushes, small and large. The materials and a test of the colors are shown bellow:

I started with the background washes, by wetting first the bigger area with clean water and starting to drop in paint.

Garzapapel background wash:

Arches background wash:

Fabriano background wash:

Garzapapel and Arches absorbed water well, while the Fabriano paper did not absorb very well. The wet-in-wet pigment movement was similar for all 3 papers. The Fabriano paper started to dry out very fast, and didn't give me the time fully work the background in one wash, while Arches and Garzapapel remained wet even quite some time after I took the photos. The Garzapapel and Fabriano papers started to buckle at some point, while the paper was wet, while Arches had bucked edges when dry out.
After a while, when trying to add some more washes to the background, the Garzapapel was more difficult to work with, like the paper wasn't completely dry.
I left all 3 papers under a pile of books over night, and they were all 3 very flat again the next morning, ready for more washes (to be continued in the next post).

Garzapapel watercolor paper - sample testing

It was a very nice surprise to find in my post box the sample from Garzapapel only a few days after I order it from their website (www.garzapapel.com). There were two sets of 3 sheets each for the two types (300 and 180 grs) of this hand made watercolor paper, which is 100% recycled cotton with four deckle edges and a very special extra white texture. Each sheet of paper has a size of 14x20 cm, which corresponds to approximately 1/16 (app. 5x7 inches) of a normal sheet of watercolor paper (usual size of 22x30 inches). The sample sheets were carefully packed, and as soon as I open the envelope I was surprised by the extremely white paper. As I have used papers from many manufacturers before, I think this one is close in color to the Kilimanjaro paper, but I do not have anymore of it to compare it. However, I do have many other papers to compare, as you can see bellow. I compared the 300 grs (140 lb) paper, as I do not have "light" paper (180 grs = 90 lb) from other manufacturers.

Garzapapel vs Arches White CP

Garzapapel vs Arches HP

Garzapapel vs Arches CP

Garzapapel vs Fabriano

Garzapapel vs Waterford

The texture of the Garzapapel watercolor paper looks very close to that of Arches CP watercolor paper. The Garzapapel is not that hard (board-like) as the other papers, and if I didn't knew they are the same weight I would think this one is lighter.
I put the paper on a light box to check how easy would be to transfer a drawing, and it seems a bit more transparent compared to Arches and Fabriano.

Following, I will do a comparative test of how the paper react to water/paints, doing similar paintings on Arches and Fabriano at the same time.

Anacamptis papilionacea - the Mediterranean Butterfly Orchid

During spring time I was surprised by the large variety of orchids that I was meeting at each step in our village (Kampi Village, Zakynthos Island, Greece), all of them so beautiful and delicate! I got many photos, but it was like never the light was the best, or the location of the little flower, etc. I think this will go into a small series of paintings of orchids from Kampi, and it will not finish very soon as I need to do some field studies for each species. However, here it is the first "portrait" of the so called Butterfly Orchid, although there are many species around the world with this common name. The actual species is Anacamptis papilionacea (syn Orchis papilionacea), and it might be the sub-species Heroica as it has quite big white "wings", but I am not sure about it. The painting has a size of approximately 10x10 inches, and it is done with W&N and Daniel Smith watercolors on Waterford 140lb Rough paper.

Pitharia - large-sized ceramic storage jars from Minoan era

These huge ceramic-made storage jars, sometime one meter tall, which are called pitharia in Greece, have been used since the Minoan era to store cereals and olive oil. They are still crafted in Greece, but currently are used for decor, to plant small trees or flowers, especially in the villages.
Our host for the May 30 WDE on WetCanvas, Athena (from Sparti) shared with us a lovely photo of these pitharia. I did some changes in the background, and I did try to capture the hot summer sun on the big jar. This watercolor on paper is about 7x10 inches in size.

Weekend Plain Air Studies

On Sunday we went out with my boy to a play ground, as we usually do in weekends, and for the first time I took with me my small field box. It is a Cotman field box, but now the Cotman paints are long gone and I have replaced them with various artist grade paints (W&N, American Journey, Daniel Smith) from tubes and let them bone dry to be able to carry it in my purse. I also have a Pentel brush, which allows me to go out without a water container - it holds enough water for small studies (7x5 inches). So, my son and my husband were playing, I did a fast study of one of the pine trees near by. I liked the leaning profile of the tree against the blue of the sea and sky. It was a direct paint application, without any preliminary pencil drawing, and I was looking to capture the tree "portrait" and the light.

Latter, at evening, I noticed the strange combination of sunset colors and close dark clouds while looking on the other side of Patras Bay, the Antirio mountain land. And did another small study with direct paint on the paper without any pencil drawing. I am starting to enjoy very much these small plain air studies!

I must get another one of the last done in the studio, with much stronger sunset colors, as they were in reality. Somehow, much of the color intensity got lost while drying.

Sweet Temptation - Figs on a Branch

I already mentioned in my previous post that I was going for this larger painting of figs. Due to other projects running in parallel it took me quite a few days to finish it, but I like it very much. The freshness of the figs on the branch, against the blue sky that filters between the big green leaves is very inviting! And these are indeed a very sweet temptation during summer in Greece (and in all Mediterranean countries I believe), but you have to think seriously about the risks before having too many of them! As summer is going to start in just a few days, I wish you a sweet time! The painting is about 10x7 inches, and it is done with Winsor & Newton and Daniel Smith watercolors on Waterford 140 lb CP paper.

Figs - the summer Greek temptation, but what after?

The fig tree has been cultivated since ancient times and it is a common encounter in the Mediterranean area, and Greece make no exception. Due to the sweetness of the fruits, birds love them and spread the seeds all over the place, and it can easily grow-up with no care even in urban areas (not much desired, due to the aggressive roots).
One of my friends (client too) living in US had a vacation in Greece a couple of years ago, and when she saw a tree full of figs while taking a walk outdoor she couldn't resist the temptation to pick a few of them. She didn't take into account that figs have a strong laxative effect, and you can imagine what followed after enjoying the delicious fruits!!! Thus, take care when you see the fresh figs in front of you, as you must seriously consider the consequences!
I have done two small ACEO paintings of figs, and I think I will go for a larger painting too very soon. These are both about 2.5x3.5 inches in size, and are done with W&N and Daniel Smith watercolor on Arches White 140 lb CP paper.

Elderly Women In Patras Learn Watercolor Painting

I believe that either you are 5 or you are 50, your life and mental health will highly benefit by having access or the opportunity to take part in arts.  I am born in Romania, but currently living in Greece, having now my own family here. When my mother got retired I understood the value of a supportive community and opportunities that older woman could have if we all help a bit. This was the trigger for my decision to volunteer to teach a 30 weeks workshop (1 session of 2 hours per week, ) in watercolor painting to retired women (aged over 60 years old) at one of the community centers in my city (Patras, Greece). The workshop is foreseen as 1 session of 2 hours per week, it will start in September 2014 and will end in June 2015. The number of ladies expected to attend in the first group is about 15 (10 already confirmed).

The community center has space and infrastructure (room to host the workshop, furniture, etc) to support the project, but there are no any funds to support with the necessary materials, like watercolor paper, paints, brushes, sketch blocks, pencils, etc. Due to the crisis, it is almost impossible to find any governmental support for this workshop. Also, I cannot afford to pay these by myself, thus I am trying to find alternative ways to raise the necessary funds.
One of the first things that came to my mind is crowdfunding, and in order to make it worth and rewarding for people around the world to help with this project I am offering some of my Open Edition prints and my free time and painting abilities to create custom floral watercolors (subject choice and directions of the contributors to the fund raising campaign) as rewards. If you would like to find out more, please check my project titled Elderly Women in Patras Learn Watercolor Painting on Indiegogo. Even if you cannot contribute yourself, I would really appreciate any pins and noise you can make about it!

Calla lilies - the painting following the ACEOs little studies

This painting is based on the same reference photo as the two little ACEOs I did a few days ago. Thank you once more Li Newton (aka lisilk on wetcanvas) for sharing it with us! I was trying to get even more of the interesting calla shapes into this one, and push the colors further. It is done with my usual watercolor paints (W&N and Daniel Smith) on Waterford 140 lb CP paper, and it measures approximately 7x10 inches.