In this period I am feeling a bit lost. Some good things are happening in my academic job, I published some good articles, I got in touch with some interesting research groups and ideas are popping out inside of my brain and I am not sure I will manage to put them all to good use. I am on track with making a draft of my illustrated booklet about my surrealistic botanical watercolors, but I must find time to finalize it. I have maybe experimented too much with different types of paper and colors that I am not so sure I can still paint. I am not so satisfied with the quality of my paintings, in particular with the color. So I am going back to practice and I have started following an online course on botanical watercolor to get my technique straightened up. I took some time through Easter and step-by-step I am following a course and looking at some tutorials. A problem I have is that I want to have a realistic, polished technique, but I also want it to look like dynamic, expressive and original. My big enemy is OVERWORKING ! I must be careful to not put too many layers of colors all together, when in fact there should never be more than 4 layers. But my insecurity leads me to retouch and retouch several times, until too much color is applied and the painting is ruined :( Here you can see some exercises I have made from the online botanical painting course I am following online. The first one is an exercise about reproducing different textures in plants, from smooth and shiny to hairy and prickly. The second one is a finished botanical piece that I painted just to relax. I made it from a picture I took on my Christmas trip to the Canary Islands. The title is: "Grow little bird!" The title focuses on the little detail on the stem just underneath the dead flower, which looks like a tiny brown bird. Its form reminds me of a blue jay or kingfisher, the pointy end looks like a tiny bird head with a beak in an alert attitude ready to capture food. The flower to me looks like a sort of frog or weird animal with small round eyes and a wrinkled body. It looks like of grotesque but protective towards the little bird, launching a threatening gaze to anyone who might hurt the little bird. Maybe a reflection of my maternal feelings towards my daughter Alexandra, she is looking ready to spread her wings and I am getting more and more "wrinkled" and grotesque looking because of age ;) Above you can see the work in progress.
Technically I have worked mainly wet-on-wet and in layers. I have put water, then a thin and light layer of color, and while the areas were still wet, I applied thicker layers for my darker and middle tones. Some issues appeared on the leaf appearing on the right, behind the largest leaf, but it kind of worked and the color formed at a not too bad texture. A friend has suggested me to look into Sumi-e Japanese painting technique. It looks fresh and poetic, but there is too little hue for my taste. In the color department I am more inspired by botanical watercolors. So my goal for now is to explore, how I can combine the brush work of Sumi-e with the bright colors from traditional botanical watercolor technique and see what happens. I will post the results soon :) Thanks for stopping by Bertie xxx
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The form created by the trunks of dead trees, the lower end of trunks with roots left over from cutting down an old tree, is evocative and poetic. Roots are amazing on their own, as a child it felt to me as roots were the feet of the trees and formed an intricated maze to keep the tree standing up. But at the same time, the roots are also the mouths and tongues of the trees, enabling them to gain nourishment from the ground. The leaves absorb energy from the sun and the air. The biological structure of trees is poetic, beautiful, and effective. Trees live as magical alchemic creatures, kept alive by an amazing mechanism able to transmute into energy the traditional elements: earth, water, sun, and air. This mechanism produces nourishment for the tree, from top to feet, letting the wood grow and developing, and when burnt can produce fire. When trees die, they reveal their small hidden structural beauty, showing: the growth rings, which produced the layered structure of wood, holes, natural or excavated by insects and woodworms. From a macroscopic perspective, trunks of dead trees show architectural structures, caves, rocky paths, floors, flat or pointy roofs, castles and fortifications from a time that was. The earth and dust regaining their space, invading the trunks. Moss and tree mushrooms colonize the trunk, repopulating it with life, gaining nourishment from the remaining of the tree itself. Like hyenas and vultures from the carcasses of dead animals: the food chain of the botanical world. Less violent at the sight, nonetheless equally brutal. Dust, green moss and rocky remains of the trunks structure shape dramatic landscapes, skylines from primitive villages, the sunset of ancient civilizations reflected in the dead of trees, in a poetic symbiosis of death. New life crawling and regaining space for itself, the moss like younger civilizations building new civilizations above the layers of dead trees, forming an archaeological stratification of survival. I get shrills down my spine just imaging it in my mind. The woods around the Skovsøen - Woodslake area in Odense is populated by wonderful trees, young, old and dead, a monumental path of life. Here are a few pictures I took while strolling in the woods, where I tried to focus on detailed images of the trees, to lose the perception of scale and size, and enable the viewer to dive and see the architectonical aesthetic of the trees. I have made a few attempts at capturing in my watercolors the architectonical aesthetic of trees, merging the profile and lines of trees with the skyline of ancient abandoned villages. I am not entirely satisfied with the results, so I will work further on this process. Sunsets of worlds - Hahnemühle Britannia cold pressed 30*40cm. Sunset - Arches cold pressed 76*56 cm.
It was the first time I tried such a huge painting, it was exciting and I still have some work to do about it, especially regarding composition. Thank you for stopping by Bertie xxx The form of a flower is a most known form of nature. The yellow heart and the petals all around. Daisies, primroses, and anemones: the very first drawings of kindergarten children. The first attempts of capturing nature forms on the paper with pencils or makers. Flowers are delicate, pretty, and also strong. There is a vital force to them, that emerges in their birth and growing process. Since the start of their lives, flowers strive to live, fighting the elements, temperatures, gravity and animals feeding on them. I am observing hyacinths, start of April, their time to bloom in Denmark. Green leaves spring from the onion, turn yellow to let the flowers grow and feed themselves with air and sun. Small eggs, insects-like bodies with tight wings, lift their tiny yellowish head, aiming at the timid spring sun. Wrapped in tight wings - Hyacinths. The round bulbs deformed by wrinkles. The life to come and go, the green leaves, becoming yellow, opening up to the little flowers. The blossoms, emerging from their stems, wrapped tight in their green wings, like heteroptera - true bugs. Studies of hyacinths from my cheap sketchbook - a great way of practicing without worries ;) The tiny green heads, longing to spread their tight wings, to let the colorful flowers to hatch - the heteroptera turning into a butterfly.
In the form of a flower, the the epic struggle for survival. Thank you for stopping by Bertie xxx |
AuthorFreelance illustrator and painter. Archives
May 2023
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