Tag: gouache

Art: Fujiwara, 38th station of the Tōkaidō (Kyoka edition)

Fujiwara, 38th station of the Kyoka edition of 53 stations of the Tōkaidō, by Hiroshige.

Final painting propped up against my black piano. The painting shows a caped person from behind, on a horse loaded with crates at its sides. At the foot of the raised area they are is a village and a few people. There is snow everywhere and people wear large hats and capes.

I messed up my stamp and then couldn’t paint over it with gouache as the red stamp ink I use kept seeping through! I had to cover it with acrylic white paint which is like plastic, but also is shinier than gouache, so it shows.

Here is a photo of my work area just as I was done:

Messy work table where we see the finished painting taped to a large cutting board in front of the propped up book I used as reference. The tools I used are scattered around: paint tubes, white acrylic paint marker, black and grey ink pen, brushes.
Messy work table where we see the finished painting taped to a large cutting board in front of the propped up book I used as reference. The tools I used are scattered around: paint tubes, white acrylic paint marker, black and grey ink pen, brushes.

I did a second version of it the following week.

Art: Ryōgoku Hanabi (Fireworks at Ryogoku), Hiroshige (step by step)

My first painting of the year 2021! It seems appropriate as a new year’s first painting to be one of fireworks.

I set out to paint Ryōgoku Hanabi (Fireworks at Ryogoku) by favourite artist Hiroshige (1858). Here’s a step by step progression.

Masking tape on a watercolour sheet with pencil sketch of a large bridge and many boats on the river. My mechanical pencil and tiny rubber are visible on the table.

Masking tape in place, pencil sketch done.

Top and bottom painted with a gradient of deep prussian blue. The gouache paint tube is visible next to the pad on the table.

Gradient of prussian blue for the night sky and the bottom part of the river.

Bridge, boats, village, tree line and vegetation added, as well a many tiny people on the bridge. I used yellow ochre gouache paint mixed with ivory black to get the brown and darker brown tones. The tubes are visible on the table.

Bridge, boats, village, tree line, people.

Finished version, signed and dated at the bottom right, against a black backdrop.

Fireworks added in white. Tape removed. Signature and date added.

Finished version framed: the painting is glued on some light taupe paper and the frame is taupe wood.
Finished version framed: the painting is glued on some light taupe paper and the frame is taupe wood.

Art: 2020 hand-made holiday cards

Making my own holiday cards is fun. Besides, I am keen on the notion of taking time to make something for someone I care about. I’ve hand-made my holiday cards every year for 5 or 6 years now. The time I spend making something for someone is time I spend thinking about them. The only thing missing is… well, them. But in most cases the people I make them for are far away. This year, with the COVID-19 pandemic and various states of lockdown or/and curfew, everyone was far away.

2020 was a rough year for so many people and I felt I could maybe share some love, that I tweeted that I was offering 20 hand-made cards to whoever wanted one. I had found a lovely pad of 20 thick smooth watercolor paper of roughly A5 size which once folded would make nice cards.

Memoji-2020-skeptical

To my surprise, nobody responded.

I was puzzled. Perhaps the time wasn’t right? But Twitter shows the number of impressions (times in somebody’s timeline) and engagement (any interaction with the tweet) and after 4 days that tweet had been seen by over 200 persons, and interacted with by 20. Twenty. Exactly the number of sheets I could make cards with 😀

Memoji-2020-shrug

But then a friend of mine sent me a text message to “sign up”. Woohoo! Game on! That friend was surprised to be the first. That reinforced the idea that perhaps my first message wasn’t sent at the right time. Or perhaps people didn’t care. In any case, I added a tweet in response.

4 friends raised their hands. That’s it. 5 actually, as another friend raised hand three weeks later.

Oh well, I built a list of other people I wanted to send a card to, made and sent the cards to everyone! Most of them have made it already.

6 series of 3 hand-made folded cards on a wooden table.

Here are 18 of them. I chose simple designs and a few colours: blue, sienna, grey, green that I mixed to obtain varying shades. I used gouache paint, a black pen, a white Posca pen, and a metallic gold pen. Inside I traced in pencil a couple lines in case people wanted to cut out the painting and use it as a bookmark. I wrote a personal holiday greeting in each of them.