Primary Colours in Inky Avians

Sticky, rich inks on Yupo paper merge together to help me illustrate the bold European goldfinch and American blue jay. Since moving from South London and into Kent I’ve been treated to an abundance of small, cheeky birds. Goldfinches are partial to dandelions, which we have plenty!

I thought I’d illustrate a goldfinch just because I’m thrilled that I get to see them regularly due to my neglectful attitude to gardening. I accompanied my goldfinch with the blue jay just for the lovely contrast in colouration.

Blue Horse Comparisons

I’m going to embarrass myself again with another paper contrast, the drawing may not be as high quality and as proportionally accurate on the cold pressed paper, but ignoring that, the way I use the watercolour and ink is wildly different.

I really enjoy Yupo paper as you can see all mistakes can me amended with virtually no penalty to the paper. The colour sits on the surface swirling and merging into interesting things and doesn’t permanently absorb and stain the paper unlike the cold pressed paper, so you have all the time in the world to make something worth posting about!

Yupo Hare Comparisons

More hare’s I know but I just had to paint one on my new Yupo paper! He’s quite the stark contrast to my cold pressed watercolour paintings. My hare on the Yupo paper is much simpler, less erratic and more considered.

But my cold pressed watercolour painting sketches I feel I have completely ruined. They were decent ink drawings but when I added watercolours and inks I found it difficult to visualise how I wanted the pieces to go which resulted in a confused mess — not a complete waste though as I feel like it makes excellent contrast to how confident I feel on Yupo paper, and how I was really struggling with traditional paper before.

Ink Experiments with Yupo

Another interesting quality of Yupo paper — you can carve out images in a relief manner, which reminds me of the process of my drypoint prints. To make my angry wild cat, I drew my image onto the paper, and covered the entire surface of the paper with Indian ink. After the ink was dry, I used the guide drawing underneath to strip off the dry ink layers using wet cotton buds and paper towels to gradually reveal my feline.

I took a different approach with my rat piece, I added Indian ink where I wanted dark areas, and manipulated ink around the original drawing.

Yupo Watercolour Goat

Here I showcase the lovely glassy quality of applying watercolours to Yupo paper! I used just watercolour and ink on this piece, even without alcohol inks you can achieve stunningly vibrant results.

I painted the same goaty face on my regular cold pressed watercolour paper to compare how I get on with both papers, as embarrassing as it is to show — but I feel I redeem myself with my Yupo painting.

As you may have noticed, on my cold pressed watercolour painting I panic and start throwing colour around hoping for a recovery … whilst in my Yupo paper I can strip back colour easily with just a squirt of water, giving me greater confidence and allowing me the time to experiment, go wild and make mistakes without incurring paper ruining consequences!

Yupo Crocodile

I’ve recently come across something special — Yupo Paper.

It is not your traditional paper, it is a plasticy paper, very thin but hugely versatile. This crocodile I painted I used a variety of media including alcohol inks and isopropyl alcohol among my other staples and the variety of textures you can produce is astonishing.

The water quickly evaporates off this paper so you can work on pieces faster, I can’t recommend highly enough the use of Yupo. If you’re not a confident watercolourist being able to alter a piece, strip out colour in a flash with a dab of water, rubbing alcohol or ammonia is a welcome change when you’re familiar with the unforgiving permenant nature of cold/hot pressed watercolour paper.

The colour you do apply dries in an almost stained glass window affect, translucent, glass like colours which merge like clouds which dry in seconds if your using alcohol inks. This crocodile piece is available in my shop.

Green Little Hummingbirds

These little green hummingbirds have been really fun to paint, I used lots of bright inks to highlight how beautiful these jewel like creatures are without going overboard and leaving plenty of white space — an aspect which I’ve been struggling with.

I was using my fineliner pen to darken particularly bright areas in the face instead of mixing up darker water colour paint as I’m still a bit of a novice when it comes to mixing watercolour paint.

The hummingbirds are available in my shop.

2014’s Sea Turtle

I found this long lost sea turtle sorting through my artwork a few weeks ago. I really like the way the watercolours merge on his shell, and I created the sea foam and splashes using white inks which I defined with white pen.

I was also practicing some colour restriction on this piece using only orange, blue and yellow pigments.

Inky Rabbit Sketches

A couple of small sketches here created using Indian ink and fineliner pens. I really enjoy drawing animals in these mediums, but I feel when painting I lose a lot of the line work due to me applying to much heavy paint on the paper. I want to get the balance right so my line work can be fully appreciated and not lost forever.

Common Kingfisher Paintings

I haven’t looked to do another kingfisher since I was very happy with my Pied Kingfisher which was a bit of a turning point piece for me a year ago, and incidentally was one of the first paintings I ever sold at my first local exhibition.

These paintings were inspired by the Common Kingfisher, and were created using my nelgected hot pressed water colour paper.

Pigeon Paintings

Pigeons have to be my favourite animal, plucky, mischievous and super hardy, they never fail to make me smile. Also — very tricky to paint, lots of grey so couldn’t help injecting some limes and some oranges. These two were painted in watercolours and lots of blue ink.

Hummingbird drawings

Scruffy hummingbird drawings now, these little whizzing, jewel like beings are the focus of my next set of paintings. These drawings were created in Indian ink, graphite and fineliner. With the graphite drawings, I transfer them onto watercolour paper by flipping them face down onto my chosen paper and pressing really hard using pencils on the back — so I don’t have to redraw the original image onto expensive paper which could prove costly …

Large Luminous Peacock

I never feel like I can do peacocks enough justice, they are trully incredible, which is why I have again painted yet another peacock. The hens aren't getting much love from me at the moment, I guess they are somewhat overshadowed — I'm sure to get to them soon.

I chose to lay bright inks down in the background, before propping my work up on an easel and using gravity and water to bleed the pigments into one another, creating these translucent streams of colour.

This is the largest peacock I've painted, A3 in size and is available in my shop, see my other peacocks from previous posts …

Lion Lines

I’ve been experimenting with further segmentation with white pen and ink in this piece, I feel using this technique could lead to some exciting places with enough exploration. I’ve also tipped the page forward to allow for the watercolour to pool and drip in certain areas, whilst using straws to stretch ink across the paper to suggest a mane. This lion is available in my shop.

Crazed Foxykness

I was having a bit of a wild, reckless time with colour this week, not the best examples of restraint or consideration but interesting results nonetheless.

Lots of overworking is evident here, I’ve used water soluble pens in the faces of each fox as watercolour dulls when you add water and these pens stay pretty intense. I’ve also used straws and tried segmenting up the foxy faces and bodies which needs a lot more focus.

Again, not the best work, lots of refining ahead!

Foxes can be found in my shop.

Blue Bunny and Emu Inking

Here is a couple of things I got inking this week, my blue bunny and devious looking emu. The simple blue bunny was made with watercolour, inks and white pigment. The emu was brought to paper using a couple of neat calligraphy pens gifted to me, I shall paint him in due course!

A Few Hares

Many hares were used in my experimentations with inks and watercolour, but only three made it out. Many of the hares weren’t interesting or were overworked messes but these few made the cut to my website, with each one trying something a little bit different. I tried to keep colour restriction and simplicity in mind but I only managed to restrain myself in one piece.

My favourite outcome was the more sombre primarily Indian ink and fineliner painting as it is less busy and more dramatic than my usual colour saturated pieces. I still couldn’t resist the touches of white pigment which help make features and individual hairs stand out!

Blue Eyed Owl

Owls seem to come a bit more easily I feel, you can do quite a few wacky things with them creatively as being an owl you are by nature whimsical and mysterious.

This blue eyed owl was created with watercolour, ink, fineliner and white pigment. This piece can be found in my shop.

Giraffe Casualties

Regarding my ‘Giraffe Inking’ post a few weeks ago, the last giraffe was the only one to make it through my blundering creative process unfortunately. I have mentioned before that making artwork is painful as so many good drawings are sacrificed for (hopefully) a ‘learning curve’ which can make for gruelling slow progress indeed.

But this is why I started oddkness.com so I could see the progress from start to finish, so musn’t feel bitter. This survivor — my pretty eyed giraffe painting was made with watercolour, fineliner, ink and white pen.

Grubby Toad

Since the birth of our surprise 'tadies' I've wanted to do something amphibiany. We moved to Birchington a while ago now and we were perplexed that the owner had let their 'pond' (basically a big black tray in the ground) get so filthy. We were about to clean it out when we discovered a mass of frog spawn veraciously guarded by mummy/daddy frog who kept a close eye on us as we peered in to check on the spawn every day.

Our tadpoles hatched, and we haven't seen mummy/daddy frog since. We'll get round to clean our 'pond' in late summer when our froglets have long hopped away ready for our new 'tadies' in the spring! The grubby toad you see here was created with watercolour, inks and white pen.