Cay Denise

This book, "Poetic Woods", was a serendipitously great find, and I highly recommend it for creatives!!   A book of watercolor/ink/collage paintings and poetry by Ann Blockley, It has been published by B.T. Batsford Ltd. (United Kingdom) and was just released earlier this month.  Ann Blockley has an amazing style and creates images of forests, foliage and poetry in an inspirational way.  She has great observational skills and an extraordinary way of translating the textures and depth of nature, its seasons, and the time of day on to a two-dimensional substrate. The images in the book are tantalizing and the poetry is so fitting with the work and the sites she has visited to nourish her love for the natural world.  

Sometimes you've got to shake things up...do something different. While perusing art work to decide on what I could rework or sacrifice for a class I'm taking, I found a collage start from a couple years ago.  I decided to work on it again.  Finding the 'bones' were there, it just needed a fully-fledged idea.  The added elements have resulted in an intriguing snowflake mandala with the theme of surrendering.  The quote in the piece, by Epictetus, reads, "Don't explain your philosophy.  Embody it."   There was a word that I was toying with adding (Sparkle), but it seemed more like a distraction from the tone set by the other written collage bits.  Overall, this has become so much more than it was and sings in particular because of the pink and purple elements.  I'm satisfied.

This study involved the use of the chisel nib end of my Ohuhu markers with the goal of making a face. Additional tools used in a more limited way included a Micron pen for the sketch and frenzied hair marks, and gold and silver Pen Touch pens for ornamentation/earrings.  The substrate was watercolor paper. Chisel tip pens are limited by their very size.  They can make a reasonable line though lines made this way will be thicker (e.g. the darker gray-colored random marks in the hair).  An advantage of their size is that you can pull them across the substrate and do repeating lines to create designs (like in the dress and background).  But to do intricate details and coloring on a face -- these pens are really hard to work with and the results show that.   Doing this piece was a total experience of asking what if's:   Can the light green be used successfully for shadow in a lighter area of pink or tan?   What colors work best to give an impression of sha...

For fun, I've drawn one of my own photos (yes, I was dressed in a clown outfit) and added a wild and crazy background to accompany it for today's practice effort. As part of sketching the piece, it was split into four sections with two opposing diagonal lines.  In terms of color choices, I've worked with color gradations for some shape sections.  Can you believe, there are five major shapes in this effort?  There really are -- circles, squares, trapezoids, triangles and spirals. I think the substrate is Biengfang Watercolor Paper (140 lb.).  The materials used were Ohuhu markers, Micron 01 pigment ink pen, some red Stickles glitter glue for the nose, and a white Posca pen (for white dots on the face and to highlight eyes) and a yellow one (for yellow dots in the center of the flowers on the hat). There was no intention in working on this piece other than to have fun...and based on how it looks, I'd say well done!.   One thing I learned is that blending with the ...

This is a second effort using my new Ohuhu markers.  The 5-minute sketch (done with a Micron pen) captures the essence of the pose and gender of the subject pretty well. I really liked working with the markers on the Canson Watercolor Artboard.  They flowed nicely and were easier to control than the substrate used in an earlier project.  In the finished piece, I like the illusion of the hairstyle through the line shapes and by using the repeating dark colors.  The random line work on the head covering was fun to do and is an attractive decoration.  I am quite surprised that I like some of the outline 'mistakes' in the piece (e.g. the nose) as they add a bit of character. There are still challenges with blending the marker colors.  The blending marker works differently than I would have thought and seems to work better if used wet under the colors to be combined.  Secondarily, It works to lift color off the page...though isn't an effective erasing agent...

My latest work is an exploration in using new Ohuhu alcohol markers and Fluid 100 Watercolor Paper (300 lb.; cold-pressed). A first step was to rearrange the carrying case the markers came in into six sections (Yellows/Oranges, Reds/Pinks, Greys/Black, Neutrals, Greens/Purples, and Blues/Turquoises).  Then, I created a chart with the color number, name, and samples from each of the marker ends (see first photo).  Then I started a drawing on the new substrate.  The 300 lb. paper is thicker though not hard.  The somewhat cushy texture of the paper is for absorbancy--especially when using watercolors.   The markers work very differently than Sharpies.  They bleed through 140 lb. watercolor paper while with the new substrate bleedthrough was slight.  The Ohuhus are supposed to be blendable.  By the work below, you can see I haven't figured that out yet (even though there was a blending marker included in the set).    I consider this work to ...

This piece is the result of a three-day effort beginning with a 5-minute sketch.  I took progress photos along the way -- to remember how I started and all the steps taken in order.   My intention after the initial 5-minute sketch was to have a piece that would be symmetrical or at least strongly suggest it.  This time, instead of wavy lines I've used only straight lines to interrupt the image.  They include horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines that create assorted triangles, rectangles and polygons.  The flesh-tone portion of the face was the first color applied, then the colors for the hair were added next.  With the rest of the piece, I sometimes had to sit and think about what colors to add that would maintain balance across the piece.  In some cases, this meant using small Sharpie-colored bits of paper to audition the colors in order to make a choice. For the floral elements, the petals have been blended to the degree that Sharpies can blend--w...