Obsessed with autumn leaves

I have a few posts in my head and since the first snow has fallen today, it’s the last time to write about autumn leaves.

I love the autumn colors every year, but this year I was completely obsessed. When I was not looking at the overall composition, I carefully inspected the shapes and colors of the individual leaves along the path.

I tried to paint the leaves by memory several times, but finally I kept bringing colorful trophies from my walks, according to which I drew and painted mostly with watercolor or ink pencils.

Hope you will like some of them!

With love and warm autumn greetings,

Ivana

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Done!

A year ago, I challenged myself to regularly draw or paint a picture every week according to predetermined list of topics. Any technique allowed. Being inspired by the inktober event, I wished to improve my skills on regular basis.

So I put down 52 topics to be processed in any order, which really helped. Sometimes I easily painted even more pictures on a selected topic, sometimes I had to force myself, which was pretty obvious from the result. Step by step, week by week, 52 artworks are done.

Big thanks to the friends, who supported me along the way! At the moment, I am grateful for all the support as well as I am proud to have completed my challenge. It doesn’t mean that I am proud of each of the artworks. That’s why I started to get another 52 topics. Almost at the end of the list!

I decided to share the results of my challenge, even there are so many. When I see them together, I see that I have no style of my own. So far, I am still trying different things and looking for what suits me best. One thing seems to be obvious. Using black contour line makes me more confident, whether I then use colored pencils, watercolor or ink pencils.

Perhaps next challenge will help to discover other facts or feelings that will lead to my own style. Your comments or recommendations on this matter are welcome!

With love and hugs,

Ivana

• 

  drink

• 

  fish

• 

  star

• 

  glow

• 

  fruit

• 

  wreath

• 

  wood

• 

  captain

• 

  tree

• 

  prayer

• 

  bird

• 

  smile

• 

  rainbow

• 

  gate

• 

  man

• 

  snow

• 

  power

• 

  wheel

• 

  bridge

• 

  pair

• 

  cacti

• 

  sky

• 

  landscape

• 

  hand

• 

  leaf

• 

  order

• 

  ribbon

• 

  galaxy

• 

  bubble

• 

  path

• 

  feather

• 

  animal

• 

  sea

• 

  flower

• 

  boot

• 

  winner

• 

  woman

• 

  puppet

• 

  crown

• 

  net

• 

  hat

• 

  mill

• 

  portrait

• 

  bang

• 

  hair

• 

  child

• 

  instrument

• 

  fashion

• 

  still life

• 

  group

• 

  celebration

• 

  eye

How many colors in my palette?

I am celebrating one-year anniversary of watercolor painting. Even in such a short time, I gained some experience, some of which surprised me a lot.

For example, I would never believe how much difference in results paper makes! At the moment, I am still balancing on the edge of price/performance rate, letting exclusive brands for later.

But what about paints? I love colors! Do I need to buy every existing tone? NO!

Today I’d like to share how my experience with color selection developed.

Yellow – most popular, most used

I used three full-pans of yellow in a year! Mostly because of mixing greens. After that I decided to add green to the palette, the yellowish-green to be more exact.

Anyway I consider practical having two yellow pans in the palette at the same time. One for mixing with blue and the other for mixing with red or separate use. Otherwise you will wash the pans and money too often.

Both of my yellows are cadmium lemon – not really cold, but certainly not a warm tone of yellow. Although it is nice to have a warm yellow to mix with red, it is horrible to get a nice green with it!

Originally, I had yellow ochre in the yellow scale. I won’t fill it anymore because it can be easily mixed just like orange.

Red – hell or paradise?

If the cold/warm definition matters somewhere, it is definitely red. I am not completely satisfied yet, but I am in the process of trying. On the warm scale of red I am currently using Ruby (PR 170) and it may be subject to change in the future. I am open to your experience and recommendation.

In general, warm tones of red are suitable to mix with yellow to get peach and orange tones, but it is almost impossible to get nice purple with it. Then you need a cold red, whether it is called rose or magenta.

I have Quinacridone Rose (PR 122) and I am extremely satisfied! It can be beautifully mixed with both blue and yellow, even if you don’t get a strict orange.

Blue – my source of green

As a person, I am not a fan of blue. I like turquoise and love everything green, and that’s what my paintings look like.

Originally, I bought only Ultramarine (PB29) and suffered from trying to mix a nice green. Impossible, because Ultramarine has a reddish tone inside. It is better to use it solo or with magenta/rose.

Soon I added Azure Blue, which is turquoise tone of blue (PB15+PG7). I love it solo and in the mix. There are beautiful tones on both, yellow and red (magenta) scale with it.

Today I added Cobalt Blue (PB28) to the palette, which will replace Ultramarine in the future. Cobalt Blue doesn’t have the reddish tone inside, so it is more suitable for mixing. Hopefully.

What’s left? Not necessary, but sitting there

Brown. Originally, I had umbra in my palette, but I was disappointed with its greenish tone inside. That’s why I used to mix brown from red and black. Today I added Mars Brown to the palette and we will see.

Violet. Easy to get it from Rose and Azure Blue. Anyway I added Quinacridone Violet (PV55) today – to complete 12 pcs and to try.

Black. As I said, I used to mix black with red to get browns, and black with azure blue to get misty green like for eucalyptus or sage leaves.

Gold. Metallic color of the Aztecs for special effects.

So, how many of colors do I really need?

Yellow in two pans, red and rose (magenta), azure blue for sure, cobalt blue perhaps. It makes 6 pans. The other 6 are for pleasure. It means you can get a huge number of colors even on a limited budget.

Then, you can spend the money for high quality paper!

In the picture above you can see factory color codes as well as the code of their pigments. The rest are mixed colors or better to say some of them.

Love and hugs,

Ivana

P.S. Since beginning, I have been using the White nights brand of paints.

Leaves mania

Recently, I’ve been practicing how to paint leaves, spending many hours and several nights doing so. To catch the routine, I endlessly shifted from the light touch of the tip of brush to a wide stroke and smoothly back.

It took me a while to get beautiful delicate leaves of natural shapes and colors in transparent layers. Then I was so excited, that I would like to show the result on the street 🙂

A mixture of joy and pride make me think if it could be arranged somehow. YES! I could paint leaves on a T-shirt! Who cares that working with watercolor is not the same as working with paints for fabric! The idea was there and I wanted to make it happen immediately.

The colors arrived before T-shirts, so my impatience made me paint some panties first. Good practice that stimulated my eagerness 🙂

Finally I painted a few T-shirts with the same motif in different variations of colors. Fortunately I have friends to help me wearing them 🙂

Next time I will be challenged by flowers, because a young lady surprisingly asked me to paint a T-shirt plus a summer skirt for her as a set. She looks like a dancing fairy, so flowers are a must. Hopefully I won’t disappoint her confidence in my beginner skills, but I’m already looking forward to the painting that will be seen in the gallery of life.

So far, here is a picture of some T-shirts and panties with painted leaves, taken by my shaking hands.

Love, Ivana

Painted by Pebeo Setacolor that are more challenging to mix than watercolor 🙂

Ten Commandments

Perhaps I live in a small world, naturally influenced by the culture of Central Europe where I was born, educated and where I developed my knowledge and skills. And no experience from traveling could change rooted paradigms such as the Ten Commandments are known to everyone in the world, regardless of religion. At least they exist and that it was God’s message to people, a sort of moral code.

Was it completely stupid? It looks like it.

Currently I’m discovering nooks of deviant art. Everyone knows and I’m wondering. Hey, contest? I want to participate! I have never experienced that!

So I met the Magic contest and it was the topic why I decided to submit one of my works. I chose among several favorites and the winner was the picture To be connected – full colored drawing with Hebrew manuscript of Ten Commandments. First, I like the picture so much that I have it as wallpaper. And second, I consider giving the commandments to Moses to be a great magic. Naturally it must be magic as it came from God.

Satisfied with the idea, I submitted for the contest. I didn’t expect to win the prize because I have healthy eyes and I see a tremendous amount of talent and experience of other artists. But also I didn’t expect the content could be questioned.

Today I’ve been asked for precise translation of the Hebrew manuscript to English because not everyone knows the Ten Commandments.

As if the translation could clear the overall message. Or as if any words could clear magic which was the topic of contest.

This little intermezzo turned me back to the ground. I found the translation on internet and fed a hungry dog. Additionally, I found the second version of my Ten Commandments drawing as above. Should I submit it for the contest as well? Of course with full translation! 😋

Back in an optimistic mood,

Ivana

Sitting in darkness

The wind storm came last night suddenly, shortly announced by lightning and rain. After a few minutes the electricity supply went off, so the options what to do became limited. No light, no tea or coffee, no internet and unfortunately the low battery level on my mobile at that moment.

What to do in the middle of darkness besides lightning candle if you have one. First, I used the rest of battery for reading e-book, hoping to get electricity soon back. But one hour later I was still in the dark, the phone completely dead.

I wasn’t sleepy at all, so I took a paper and my set of color pencils, wanting to draw an intuitive picture, a small candle next to me. I must say that was an interesting experience!

I picked up pencils blindly and had only a rough idea which color has been used. After two hours of layering colors, I had tired hand and tired mind, but still I was sitting in dark. No chance to see the result before bedtime.

Fortunately, the electric people worked overnight and the supply was restored early in the morning and life has returned to normal civilization mode, if we can call it that.

But that leads me to the question: What would you do in case of blackout, home alone? Yesterday I really suffered from lack of inspiration, please give me some tips I might use next time. Thanks a lot!

Love, Ivana

Reading colors

There is no doubt, that colors affect our lives. We are surrounded by colors, and even if we do not realize it, their selection mirrors our personality and even our mood.

Last time I gave you a game with associations, which is pretty easy to play and read. And before I tell you about more sophisticated method of reading colors, I owe you a solution of my associations.

Looking at the picture, I always look for the weakest point first. At the moment, it is the orange for sure. The sun occupies just a little space and has no companion. So I would guess for a little joy.

To be sure, look at the opposite side, at the level of the complementary color, which is blue. Despite of the blue nature, this part of the color pie is smiling or it seems to me like it. It means that some deep topics of blue take a part of joy away. I would recommend to be less focused on sadness and more to be surrounded by orange in any form (even as a fragrance), which could help to light the darkness.

In general, the axis orange – blue is nicknamed the axis of relationships. So you can assume that the field of relationships belongs to the weak points of the author and it probably brings a portion of deep or sad emotions currently.

It calls for transformation, and this is nickname of the axis yellow – violet. Looking at these colors, we learn how much is the author ready to make or accept change.

And I don’t see much hope. Although I feel a lot of yellow available, it means there are tools to break the darkness, there is a dust on violet side. So I would recommend thinking less (which is the yellow part) and be more focused to the faith (which is the violet part). The picture says, that the current problem couldn’t be fully solved by logical brain. On the other hand, the honest faith of heart could do it.

Last, but not least is the axis red – green, which is nicknamed the axis of the balance of life. The words and picture reveal that the author is somehow afraid of the life fragility, but it is balanced by the love to trees and nature. Despite of the problems in relationships there is a stabilizing element that helps to overcome it. Anyway I would recommend to be more braved and take more risk.

So, it was a short example how to easily read associations of colors including mutual context. Comments and questions are welcomed.

But there is another way how to read your inner self through colors and it is illustrated on the main picture. The method is called Aura-Soma, comes from Great Britain of the late 1980s. I’ve been in touch with the color bottles of magic since 2004 and still they can surprise me with accurate and deep messages.

I believe there are many who have already met the Aura-Soma bottles. There are more than 100 of them already, so the picture above is a small example only. Would you like to share your experience?

With supporting love of colors,

Ivana

Taste of colors

Have you ever wondered how the colors smell and taste? I am sure they have their own energy that is not easy to exactly perceive, but we can play with associations. I will take a risk and show my inner self by giving you an example.

Red, when I close my eyes and ask for red, I feel the blood – wet and sticky blood with ferocious taste on my tongue. Something bleeds and calls the fragility on the border between life and death. My second attempt for red was juicy fruits of red color with a large amount of seed inside. This time life and fertility have beaten death 😋 But still I feel a kind of potential danger in red. It might taste great, I stay in alert.

Yellow. I smell the freshness of the lemon, but its sour taste is balanced by a ton of honey. Sweet and fresh sour mixed together, that’s how I taste the yellow. Yellow is the light why I’m not afraid to go to a dark cellar.  Yellow is the tool through which I can see the truth, even it could bring a huge shock.

Blue is an ocean at night, wide and deep, full of dark secrets. I feel how cold and wet the blue is. Anyway, for me the blue doesn’t represent the purity because I’m fully aware of millions microorganism living there. Plus I feel the salinity inside of blue and each grain of salt means the impurity which separates sterility from viable environment, with too high salinity of death on the opposite side. For me, the blue brings the alchemy of living environment or better to say how much secrets and impurities are acceptable in our lives.

Orange is a sun for me. I feel friendly sunshine on my skin or even a hot sunny day in the middle of desert. Orange is always smiling in my imagination, enjoying every second of life. Orange is fun, a sense of humor, a celebration of life alone and with friends. Orange is a must otherwise you would fall into sadness or depression.

Violet makes me feel lavender in the old cabinet, in which the spiritual robe hangs and only lavender prevents moths from destroying it. In my image the violets is full of grey as if the dust covered the spirituality.

And finally green, this is the place where I can freely run and truly be who I am. I smell all the shades of the forest, the resin of the conifers that improves my breathing and breaks the boundaries of my options in life. Inside of green, I can always touch my heart and read what is written inside.

So, this is my honest imagination of colors at the moment, I’m staying naked in front of you.  I’ll tell you next time how to read it, how to detect a possible problem and how to bring some harmony into it. Would you like to guess? Feel free to write comments, I’m curious. And if you like to share your imagination through colors, I will be honored.

With love, Ivana