Wednesday Watercolors – Zen

Posted bydebirileyPosted inart, inspiration, painting, photographyTags:, , , , ,
Zen Drawing with a brush, watercolors, debiriley.com

Zen.  The brushstrokes filled with rich pure color slid across the paper’s surface with beautiful intent and purpose.  Each stroke a calm, measured, purposeful action.

Zen Drawing with a brush, watercolors, debiriley.com
Watercolor Zen

 

Zen of Watercolor

 

 

The rich, rich blues were created with french ultramarine, melting cad red light and snippets of cobalt teal blue.

Normally,  I don’t advocate cad red with ultramarine as its just too easy to get mud.

But, the student was very adamant he really wanted these specific colors. It was their artistic choice.  I was nervous for them, but didn’t let on…..   good thing!

 

I love the way he allowed the brush to dance and move on the paper. No nervous nellie, but big and bold and brave.  Maybe,  its easy to be that way, when you’re still a child and haven’t yet been conditioned otherwise.

The ‘drips’ that occurred,  he disregarded. I was secretly pleased.

 

 

Watercolor Paints

french ultramarine is a great color,  rich, warm and deep.  granulates.   mixes well with most colors.

cobalt teal blue.  I think we all might be just a bit in love with this one!   I’m going to have to develop a new love soon,  else bore you readers with more cobalt teal paintings.   This color is just gorgeous, perfect for foliage, water, buildings,  nearly anything my mind says.

cadminium red light.  An Opaque.  Scary paint for beginners in that it can make mud at the drop of a hat.  That the student above, didn’t is a true feat of fabulous sure brush work. This color is quite a bright and lovely color by itself;  mixing – is the real problem.   Opaques do not take kindly to willy nilly scrubbing and stirring and mixing!    They just go muddy.

If you’re judicious,  though,   a lovely purple grey can be obtained with cad red and ultramarine.  Use less paint.  Much more water.

 

Fiddling with watercolours might be a great post to review;  Watercolour Tips for the materials and mixing posts.   Ultramarine Blue  could be handy as well.

 

UWA  extension  Zen of Drawing  course coming soon March 2016 in Perth will emphasize the zen approach of using calm, measured, purposeful brush and markmaking strokes in inks, pastels, inktense pencils, graphite,  conte and charcoal.  Should be fun!

 

 

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Published by debiriley

The act of creation, in any media is a fascinating and magical process. I simply love to create. Expressing in color, line, tone, texture - as if, they were words upon a page. Creating a uniquely me, interpretation. Enjoy More of my "one-of-a-kind" expressive art at society6.com/debiriley and, redbubble.com/people/debijriley/shop

20 thoughts on “Wednesday Watercolors – Zen”

  3. Pingback: Wednesday Watercolors – Zen – Jacob Russell's Magic Names

    1. Hi Jodi! Thank you very much for your lovely comments-Limited computer access is making it tough to do my replies, but will do so upon return! Cheers, Debi

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  9. really beautiful in colors and composition, nearly looks like a graphic character. But it seems as if he knew what he did. Great.
    Hope you are fine, Debi. We had -7 and snow storm and I made a trip with my bike. Cold but beautiful. 🙂

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    1. Mitza, hi and thank you for your comments! Will have a chance to reply when I get back soon. I agree, the image is very strong, very graphic.no monkeying or fiddling around with it! We are boiling here, you are freezing!

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      1. that’s not nice to hear, hehe. We are really freezing. I feel like an icecube on legs. The streets are completely icy. Very hard to ride my bike. But this morning the trees were covered with frosty rime in front of a very beautiful dark blue sky. So beautiful.

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