Experimenting

I am experimenting with some lovely watercolors, absolutely awesome pigments made by US Seattle based paint company Daniel Smith. I buy these pigments when traveling in the USA and when I stop by my parents house, they keep the delivery for me and I pack and bring it home in my suitcase, watercolors not being problems to carry. I usually open them right away to have a play, the colors are great !

This said, watercolor is not my favorite medium...not for things that require much precision. Makes one wonder why then I am buying watercolor paints ! But for more fluid and abstract paintings, maybe they are ok. I am experimenting using them on some Fredrix watercolor canvas wrapped around a timber frame, so they don't need special framing. I should be able to use a good archival waterbased varnish to finish them off.

Here is the latest experiment with this, part of a series I have been working on called Healing Heart. I love the vivid sea colors around this and also the rich reds of the heart. The dark green on the right is Daniel Smith's Genuine Jadeite, from their natural mineral series of paints. This paint is STUNNING ! Deep green and beautiful, rich, and mysterious all at once. It inspired the sea colors surrounding this heart, which is being healed, its scars and hurts being soothed by the deep and calming blues and greens that give it hope and live to carry on. The light blue shown on the left of the heart is a special paint with iridescent properties, called Cabo Blue Duochrome. It is also gorgeous and looks really good with the darker turquoise and blues next to it. I have created texture also with rough sea salts, that were applied when the paint was wet and left to dry. Some of them stay embedded in the paint and glint and sparkle when the light catches them. Other grains get brushed off and leave little organic marks, symbolising the unique and changing nature of individual beauty of our lives.