My Artist's Date : how to make paints from flowers and leaves

Last week was quite a busy week for me. It was full of family activities as well as of creative ones. I attended 2 live workshops and two online art challenges plus I'm practicing watercolor painting!

There are so many things happening in just one week and now I have stories to write on this blog for maybe 2 or 3 weeks :).  Let's begin with my latest Artist's Date. The Date was for a live workshop with a lovely artist who specializes in painting watercolor with organic paints, the ones that made from leaves of plants and trees and flower petals. Her name is Tongkarn Samathakorn and you can look at her beautiful work at Organic Water Color page.

The workshop was hosted by The Museum of Floral Culture in Bangkok where you can learn about plants, flowers and Thai culture related to flowers.

Here are some of beautiful flower displays around the museum.

The class was held in a small cozy little pavilion in the garden. We were introduced to various kinds of flowers and leaves that could be made into watercolor paints. 

You can make pink paint from Bougainvillea,  blue from Butterfly Pea, yellow from Night Jasmine, green from Pandanus leaves, and the list goes on. How to make it is very easy.  Begin by picking the petals off, put them in a mortar, add little bit of hot water and start grinding until you see the color comes out.

This method needs time and patience. The artist has devoted her time in experimenting until she finds the right paints for her paintings and here are her works all done in organic paints.

The artist has a lot of her paintings published in books and magazines but I have to tell you that the original paintings are much much more gorgeous than the printed ones. So happy to have a chance to see them :D

And here is my attempt of organic watercolor painting.

This workshop inspires me to begin my journey of watercolor practice. If you have been following my facebook page, you may have seen some of my paintings already. After some awkward moments in front of water and paints, I think I'm beginning to fall in love with watercolor painting and I will write about this lovely journey here soon :)

Thanks for coming. Hope you have a merry creative day today :)

work in progress : yellow is my merry color :)

The other day, I woke up with a question in my mind : is it possible to design my life? It struck me that I have been spending several years working in design field but never thought of really designing my own life.  Each day I woke up thinking of which project I had to do, which errands I was responsible of. I worried if I had been working hard enough, if I would have a bright future in my freelance career...

Then, the answer just came to me. Yes, I can design my own life. In fact, I have started doing that right after Make Art That Sells class when I decided to devote my time for MerryDay. I just didn't realize it.

It's difficult though. Although I still work alone just as I used to when I focused on my freelance jobs, it's really different. With freelance jobs, I had clients with their project schedule and feedbacks. With my own MerryDay in current production step, I am both client and designer. I have to set my own schedule and debate everything on my own. It's freedom as well as the fight with bad discipline.

I'm still behind my own schedule. Feeling bad sometimes and constantly fight with my own self-criticism. But I have to say that I feel much more creative and energized than before. I guess it is the feeling when you can design your own life, you feel much happier :)

Above is my work in progress. It's a snapshot from Illustrator program. I usually sketch rough ideas on paper first then scan it in and trace the lines and fill colors in Illustrator, my favorite program. What you see here are two layers: one of my marker sketch on brown paper and a layer on top with digital artwork. The drawing is in the theme of secret garden with fresh and colorful flowers. Can't wait to see the final artwork myself :)

I actually felt a bit lazy this morning. It's nice to end the day with some work almost done :)

green inspire and a photo taking experiment

Since I moved in my  apartment, it has become a habit to buy flowers every week to decorate my little room. A friend suggested me to have some flower pots to take care, but I know I cannot do that. I have never been green-thumb person and I will feel so guilty if plants I take care of die on me :(. So, I choose to have different kind of flowers in a vase each week instead.

I usually buy flowers from little shop at my usual marketplace or from little stall around the corner. There are not many varieties, usually mums, roses or carnations but colorful shapes and fresh scent are enough to feel good just standing in front of them.

This week is green mum. There was only one bouquet in the shop and its different shades of green really stood out among colorful others. Somehow I fell in love with it... and already imagined taking photos of them on wooden background (it just popped in my head).

So here they are on my little wood panel. It’s kind of photo-shooting experiment.  My place is quite dark and it’s hard to find bright natural light around this time (it has been so cloudy for several days already). I used light from my desk lamp, turned it upward so the light would not reflect on the panel, and just pressed the shutter.

It turned out unreal to me, more like plastic and somewhat surreal. I like it though, especially the two green shades look so separate as if they are not from the same branch. It has something to do with the camera color function too, I guess. I’m really an amateur in photo taking :p

I really like these two green shades and wondering how I could use them on my next design :)

How about you? What colors inspire you today?

One fine day

Have a good day today? :)

Sketch: flowers

all the flowers in my head :-)

I'm getting a bit frustrated that I haven't done any illustration
for some time. Well, I just have to try and try again everyday.
I'm glad though that at least I draw everyday, even if they are just sketches :-)