Climbing Ivy

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Climbing Ivy – 5″ x 7″ Watercolor

This is the finished painting that I started a week ago and finished Saturday morning.  The photo I used for a reference is compliments of Dominic at WetCanvas.  Here are the steps I took…

First, I wet a piece of watercolor paper and dropped some color onto it.  Then, I added rock salt and rice.



After it dried, it looked like this…

Then, I negative painted the bricks and mortar into it.  Just for fun, I then splattered a little watercolor over it.

Here is what it looks like without the tape, before I cropped it for the blog.

I had a great time!!! 

Click on any photo to see it larger.

About Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson helped spark the transcendentalist movement with the essay Nature, which described his belief in the spiritual essence of humanity and the natural world. He was born in Boston in 1803. He was a Unitarian minister until he resigned in 1832 to become a philosopher and writer. He suffered the untimely deaths of many of his loved ones: three brothers, his first wife at age 20, and his eldest son at age five. Emerson died in 1882.

Ivy & Star – Watercolor

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.”
– Richard Bach



Ivy & Star – Watercolor
I really enjoyed doing this one.  After I painted the ivy, I added a little gold glittery star, hanging from a red string, just for fun.

About Richard Bach

Richard Bach, the American pilot and author, became hugely successful with the publication of the slim novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a spiritual quest about a bird who loved to fly rather than seeing flight as a means to an end. He was born in Illinois in 1936, a descendant of composer Johann Sebastian Bach. He has been an Air Force Reserve pilot, a flight instructor, and a barnstormer; most of his books involve flight either directly or as a metaphor.