Watching paint dry.... mandalas flowers mermaids

welcome to paint party Friday... lots of color being used this week.
Painting takes me to where life is manageable...
Continuing with my circular/mandala series, I always think I will paint a simple one, then ink over it.

then I don't. This one reminded me of a landscape/sky in the circle, surrounded by water. The only ink added was Posca pen in white for little horizontal dots and the spiral bottom right.
I painted, dabbed, over-painted, dropped color on in dots, watched it all merge and spread as it dried...

The color is intense. The process for my non-paint obsessed friends... choose colors you like, use strong paper, start. I go around, merging and blending in radiating circles. Then I crossed the circles with yellow vertically.
Then crossed that with blue horizontally. Watch it blend move meld into this lovely. Horizontal dots of white crossed the circular lines and look what it made itself into...

A bonus class given by sketchbook revival coordinator this week led to this daily practice.

The artist

 has been lettering the date on her sketchbook for years, then writing a few words

As you can see in the portrait, I tried to capture her little quirks... teeth are hard, as are the little lines under an eye that define them in person but look old and tired if done in a sketch. Delicate shading is needed. I'd never tried to do pigtails either.

The next day I was intrigued with using my wide flat brush, pulling it across two pans at once, then swirling it in a curve to see the colors blend

I wouldn't normally use those two colors but interesting... and then after dabbing it with a paper towel I dabbed the wet towel across the painting and that added texture. How would it look to have the flat end dabbed on the painting?

hmmm grassy kind of... gotta remember that
So I enjoyed the swirling of the flat brush and thought, let's do a fantasy flower by swirling the flat brush on watercolor paper, 4" X 6"

the color is more intense than this. Using the same color scheme as the one above it, I showed restraint in doing only three petals.
So I learned rhythm can add form.
Mixing colors on the brush not in the pan
Green fine tip liner, black ink and posca opaque white were added for shading and details.

Later I added stamens

it's always a bit unnerving to alter a painting but like Michaelangelo said, "I am always learning"

This week I took my pink flower painting from last week, and printed it onto fabric. The first print came out black and white and I was disappointed but didn't want to waste the expensive fabric sheet.
I used it not as I intended in an art quilt, and that will be shown tomorrow. Here's a peek

The printable fabric sheets cost enough that I didn't want to waste any of it, and printed tiny detail shots of my painting too. I tried to ink over the black and white image, then pencil over with prisma pencils

very interesting. I've done this before, for an art quilt challenge,  and it's always surprising how it comes out. I love how the "failed " printing flower piece came out by the way. Please come see that tomorrow and tell me what you think.
I liked merging my two current artforms.
Yesterday an artist held a zoom meeting of her people across the globe, and focused on mermaids for fun! She encouraged us to paint a mermaid scene. I've done many a mermaid art quilt, but not painted one

til now!
She encouraged us to add inspirational words but I couldn't think of any.

I'm trying to develop a logo image for the "I Like Thursday" group I host here and would love to show you for feedback, but it's still too soon to show...
that's it for this week til tomorrow's reveal, happy painting to all

LINKING TO
Thursday art dates with Rain

https://paintpartyfriday.blogspot.com/