Curiosity

I found this photo of Rogue that captures one of my favorite expressions of hers. I would say it was crying out to be translated into watercolor, but that wouldn't be completely accurate. 

It was more like it was looking at me, head cocked to one side, with a quizzical look in its big green eyes. "Why don't you paint me?" it seemed to be saying. So I did. 

You know what they say about cats and curiosity. What they don't say is that curiosity can be irresistibly adorable. 

Paint it black

Spring is finally here, and my own personal travel "season" is about to start. Since I'm going to be away often over the next two months, I didn't want to start a new watercolor project (which normally takes a few weeks). So the objective of my last class was to finish something fast. 

My subject of choice: a certain black cat named Rogue. 

Her proportions are a bit wonky, but you'll have to forgive me as I didn't even do a sketch for this one. I pretty much started splashing around with a big brush, as my teacher wishes I would do more often. But I think this captures her cranky/evil look pretty well; it's the one she pulls when she's sleepy and I'm trying to play with her.

It's an interesting exercise to paint black without actually having black in my palette: I used indigo, brown, and a touch of red. I plan to use it as a study for a bigger, more carefully considered portrait of my pet (cat-rait? Pet-rait?). But in the meantime, I have some traveling to do! #excited

Lady in red

Based on a vintage-inspired editorial from an old issue of Preview, this lady in red has been my watercolor project for the whole month of February. I had been feeling largely uninspired by the usual landscapes that we do in class, and recalling how much I enjoyed doing my first fashion illustration, I decided to try another fashion-influenced project. 

At the end of each class, I would take a photo of the day's work. It helped me see what I needed to fix and improve before moving on. For example, looking at this photo of the initial sketch helped me shift her features from fully Pinay to more Chinese, and fix the proportions of the body before getting the paint in.

Getting the sketch right and painting in the underlayers was slow work, but it all took off when I laid in that brilliant red in week three. Now that was fun...

Watercolor Christmas cards

Success! I've mailed out my Christmas cards for the year. Yes, I'm one of those people that still sends out Christmas cards via snail mail. It's usually a struggle to get them out on time, but this year I managed my to do it!

I knew I wanted to make my own cards this year. And I knew I wanted to combine watercolors with hand lettering. So I set out my watercolors, tore out a few pages from my watercolor sketch pad, and played around with them one rainy afternoon. These were some of the cards I came up with. Apologies for the bad lighting, Amsterdam has been immersed in this weak gray gloom all week. 

Yes, the designs are pretty simple and it's a very small batch of cards (plus a couple that I didn't photograph). But each one is unique and is made with love and care. Which one do you like best?

Oh, and I also made the envelopes myself, as all the cards are odd sizes. I used this festive Japanese washi tape with polka dots (my current obsession) to seal the envelopes.

And now my cards are winging their way to Belgium, the UK and Singapore. Fly swift, my pretties, and spread the Christmas cheer!

Just a girl

Now that I'm done with Cappadocia, I can move on to blogging about Istanbul! But before that, I thought I'd take a breather to put up the fashion illustration I finished last week in watercolor class.

Penny has been pushing me to let to go of my nitty-gritty details and learn a faster, looser style that uses more brushwork than drawing. One of the ways to do that is to copy a work done in that style. I chose this piece to study because I've always been interested in fashion illustration, and I was getting a little bored with landscapes.

I had lots of fun with this girl, and she taught me a lot! I learned simply by looking at this piece and analyzing how it's done (how the colors are mixed and how layers are built up), before attempting it myself. She didn't take too much time at all, and I felt very relaxed and free painting her. I'm looking forward to doing more of her kind, and applying the style to my own original illustrations. 

A pop of (water)color

I'm usually pretty impatient when it comes to making things. If it can't be done in one sitting, I tend to rush it or just give up altogether. So I consider it a big achievement to have spent three consecutive Tuesdays working on a painting for my watercolor class. I finished it last week, left it to dry in my teacher's studio in Haarlem, and finally brought it home!

This is the first painting that I've produced out of this class that I enjoyed doing from start to finish and am really, truly happy with. My first few lessons were a little awkward and unsure; with this work, I feel I've hit my stride and grown in confidence and technique.

I've gotten quite a few compliments from Penny on this, and it's been great to walk into the studio on Tuesday afternoons and find my other classmates—my geriatric barkada, LOL—gathered around my work and talking enthusiastically about it.

My favorite bits are the flowers, naturally. I love how the red flowers really pop, thanks to the contrast of the dark green around it. (I think I'm getting better with contrast!) I did the pink flowers by dipping a rough natural sponge in some green paint and blotting it quickly on a wet, watered-down red wash.

Penny remarked that my style is turning out to be more illustrative than painterly—nothing wrong with that, just a matter of style. To help soften the whole painting, she suggested painting over the stark white background with a quick wash of pale green blurred with lots of water.

Voila, the finished work!

Do you like it? Tell me what you think!

Courtyard cats

Two weeks, two trips to France and a house full of guests later... I'm back! So much has happened that I would love to blog about. But first let me catch up on a blog post that I was working on before I left to attend Mimi and Pete's wedding in the south of France.

I had my first outdoor watercolor class on one of those sunny days that are proving so rare in this Dutch summer. Penny arranged for us to paint at the Frans Loenenhofje on Witte Herenstraat in Haarlem. Okay, I know that's a rather large gaggle of letters—let me explain. 

A hofje is a courtyard around which rent-free houses, called alms houses, are clustered. Dating back to the Middle Ages, hofjes were built by wealthy families as a form of charity, where places where the elderly (usually women, mostly religious) could live for free. 

Living rent-free depended on a number of conditions such as religion, gender and income; Amsterdam's most centrally located (and most famous) hofje, the Begijnhof, forbids its female residents to have overnight male visitors, partners, husbands or children. (Amsterdam Magazine gives a great glimpse into the house of a Begijnhof resident.)

Many of these houses still exist. The best thing for those of us who are not privileged enough to earn residence in these hofjes is that their courtyards are open to the public daily, usually between the hours of 10am to 5pm. 

And this is what I love about hofjes—entering one is like pulling open a random door to find a special secret garden. Some, like the Begijnhof, are unmarked, so it's only when you push the right door or gate that you are rewarded with the sweet little thrill of finding it unlocked. 

Inside, chances are you'll find a small courtyard that's charming, tranquil and beautifully maintained, with well-planted gardens that, like everything else here in Holland, simply spring to life in the sunshine. 

This particular hofje Penny arranged for us to paint in was built for those of the Lutheran faith, with a Lutheran church within its grounds. 

It also had plum trees and apple trees, which I've never seen before. Some of the plums were just beginning to ripen.

But aside from the tranquility, history and lushness of these courtyard homes, I found yet another pleasant surprise that endeared this particular hofje to me. Cats!

Contented, fat, well-fed cats everywhere!

I remarked on this to my painting classmate, Louis, a genteel old Dutch man. "Well," he said after a thoughtful pause. "You know how it is. These houses are full of old women. And you know about old women and their cats."



I could have played with these kitties all afternoon, but then I remembered I had some painting to do.

My favorite was this adorable orange-and-white kitty stretched out on top of an old brick wall. She was snoozing contentedly in the sun and looked perfect against the fluffy white clouds and crisp blue sky.



She must have sensed the little old lady in me, because she woke up for a cuddle when I walked up to her.

Then she started squirming and rolling around in the sun. I melted.

Even Dutch cats seem to know better than to waste a single ray of sunshine!

Second lesson

My second watercolor lesson with Penny was supposed to be an outdoor session, but the evil Dutch weather gnomes had other plans. Instead, we stayed inside her studio and pored over glossy photos of Dutch landscapes. I chose one of a stream by the woods (how precious!), not knowing that the big swathe of water was going to be tricky for a beginner like me.

Penny had a big group that day, five students, of which I was the only one below sixty. Seriously. I seem to have this knack for gravitating to all the geriatric hotspots. It must be the little old lady inside me. Anyway, I found myself getting huffy as I was painting because I felt I was largely being ignored. So I just went ahead painting with big, loose, and somewhat reckless strokes.

I was so put out that I almost forgot to be pleased with the afternoon's work.

There are problems with the perspective (I didn't bring out the bend of the stream quite too well) and shading of the tree trunks, but Penny seemed really pleased with it. "And it's only her second lesson!" she exclaimed, patting me on the hand. It was a departure from the careful, precise work of my classmates, off in a direction that I'm really liking. Looks like my days of obsessive detail are over.

Watercolor lessons

I've always been into drawing and painting. The first medium I ever learned to use was watercolor. My mom hired an artist to give me and my sister watercolor lessons when I was about 9 or 10. He was a really precise, uber-detailed kind of painter who came to the house once a week. We would move a big desk from my mom's study outside onto the front lawn, where he taught me how to mix colors and manipulate water and brush on paper. 

Over the summer, I produced two obsessively detailed watercolor paintings: a still life with fruit that still hangs in my mom's house, and one of unicorns (another lifelong interest of mine) in a cave. He liked to go over my mom's art books to find "inspiration", and the unicorns' cave resembled Da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks in quite a few places. 

Since then, though, I've kind of... lost the knack for watercolors. I started getting really impatient if I couldn't finish something in one sitting. There are ways to pull off really quick watercolors, but because that wasn't my tutor's style, I never learned how.

It was a flyer posted on the bulletin board of the Van Beek art supply store on the Weteringschans that led me back to watercolors. Penny Johnson, an artist based in Haarlem, was offering watercolor sessions at her studio. After trading a few emails with Penny, I signed up for the last of the Tuesday afternoon sessions before her summer break.

The city of Haarlem is about 20 minutes by train from Amsterdam. A lot of Marlon's colleagues actually live there because of the lower property costs, which makes it a good alternative to living in Amsterdam. Since I was running late (as usual) for my first lesson, I didn't get to look around much. 

I went back with Marlon the following Saturday to walk around the center and explore a bit more. It seems like a pretty town, a lot smaller and quainter than Amsterdam, with not as many tall buildings and far less tourists (which is nice). Still, I haven't quite decided if it's a city we'd want to live in further down the road.

Penny, a late-middle aged British lady with a brisk and cheery manner, welcomed me warmly with a cup of coffee and my art materials for the day. I immediately felt at home in Penny's studio. It was bright, with high ceilings and enough work space for a small group, with heaps of interesting odds and ends piled together in small vignettes... a charming kind of clutter.

I liked her little collections of ceramics and glass bottles, all ready to be captured by paintbrush and water. I suspect I'll be like this someday. I already have a starter collection of wine bottles on the kitchen counter, which I kept just because I found the colors so pretty.

One wall was covered with cards, posters and various bits of paper showing different styles of watercolor. Some were loose and fast, with luminous colors bleeding together; others were more precise and detailed. These two pieces in particular caught my eye, and I snapped a photo with my iPhone. I would be more than happy if I could learn to paint like this.

Penny, and the two ladies who were here students that afternoon, stopped. "What are you doing?" Penny asked. "Are you taking photographs?" Then they all started talking about picture-happy people, how this tourist on one woman's cruise couldn't stop snap-snap-snapping away, blah blah blah.

I didn't realize that taking photos could be annoying to others. Is it just the generation gap showing here? I didn't want to be one of those "annoying types" so I meekly put away my phone, and resolved not to take my DSLR out of my bag for the rest of the afternoon...

... which was devoted to painting, of course. Penny started me off with a relatively easy project: getting a feel for the wet-on-wet technique, or painting on wet paper.  Wet paper makes the paint (which is also loaded with water) blend and bleed together, so it's for quick, loose work; vastly different from the style of my first tutor, but perhaps more suited for the less deft and more impatient me.

I surprised myself by starting out... cautiously. Timidity is not something I normally expect of myself, but there I was dabbing tentatively at the paper, producing pale, washed-out landscape. Penny took one look at my work and pronounced: "Color, my dear. You need more color. Let's put it this way: the paints are free."

By the end of the two and a half-hour session, I had gained a measure of boldness with my colors and strokes. I was re-learning how to see things differently, to look closer at light versus dark, since with watercolors you start with the lightest colors first, before building up the darker shades. I was beginning to learn how to be patient with mixing colors to achieve just the right shade, and not to settle for what I thought it looked like, out of impatience. And I was remembering how to just... play. All of these things that I thought I'd forgotten were reawakening in me. 

And I have to say: I kind of like it.