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  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    :P

    I really can't get over how pretty the color of the water is here.

    12%20koh%20tao%20ao%20leuk%20small.jpg

    and more watercolor sketching, one day it'll feel right maybe

    03%20koh%20tao%20boats%20small.jpg

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited July 2015
    Don't be afraid to overlay areas on watercolours - yeah you can't build up the way you can with oils (or gouache), but what you can do really well is blend. Move light-to-dark, and provided your paper is thick you'll find it can hold up to a surprising number of wash layers.

    Personally for out-door sketching in watercolours, I find it helpful to start with a base sketch in pen or pencil. This helps sort out the composition before you put down colours and values (since you can't really paint over if you find you've misjudged anything). If you use a pen you can even wash out the lines when you paint.

    tynic on
  • NatriNatri Registered User regular
    Beautiful travel paintings, lyrium! Will be some fine memories later on.

    www.instagram.com/ceneven
  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    edited July 2015
    Thanks so much for the advice @tynic ! I tried both sketching some areas in pencil and gray pen first, and also tried blending. Need more practice but I think those things helped.

    04%20khao%20sok%20river%20small.jpg

    This oil one was palette knife only, first time I've tried that and it was pretty interesting.

    13%20khao%20sok%20limestone%20small.jpg

    lyrium on
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    oh i love the textures on that last oil! Lookit dose trees!

    and yeah, that watercolour definitely looks like you're getting more comfortable. I'm loving that we get to live this trip with you vicariously!

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    Gotta agree with Tynic, that palette knife landscape is really striking!

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    Thanks folks! Yeah, sometimes I feel silly hauling around my painting box, but not only could I not go without painting for so long, doing these has been a really nice way to interact with the things I am experiencing. I'm glad you are enjoying them too :)
    Here's another oil

    14%20Krabi%20market%20small.jpg

  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    are all of these paintings pretty small? I assume they must be so you can travel without lugging huge canvases around?

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    Yep, the paintings are all 5" x 7" (with the exception of the goldfish, which was 8" x 10" because I painted it as a gift). Basically I have my box here + tripod:

    IMG_3902.jpg

    The box is sized to hold 9" x 12" panels. I brought five pads of 10 canvas sheets each, and use tape to divide the 9"x 12" sheets into two 5" x 7" halves. This way, subtracting that goldfish painting, I'll be able to paint 98 of these before I run out of canvas :P . I wanted to avoid running out because it's tricky to find oil painting supplies here, and these pads work so perfectly. The small size of the paintings also works well considering I'm doing them so quickly (at least quick compared to what I'm used to, 2-3 hours for most of them).

    IMG_3903.jpg

    Also in my backpack I have the plain sketchbook, toned sketchbook, and watercolor sketchbook. I actually have a pretty small backpack compared to all the other travelers I see; it's not a "backpacker" backpack but just a large normal backpack, and even so it fits what I need + those art supplies. So that balances out my painting box I guess, and I end up wondering what in the world is stuffed into all those huge backpacks!

    Doing the faster little paintings is good in some ways. It forces me to remember to focus on my priorities for each one, and I feel comfortable experimenting a lot more. At this stage in my learning, those are probably good things to work on.

    Did this today:

    14%20monk%20small.jpg

  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    Neat!

    Love that last one. Its cool to see the set up and think about the quick time frame that you are doing these. I 98 of these would be excellent, haha.

  • acadiaacadia Registered User regular
    Love that dude's face. Love how you can see his scalp through his hair (either because it's thinning or just because it's short). Love your cool painting box, and I love picturing you sitting in a place for two hours and just painting a person or landscape. Are you interacting with your subjects generally, or do you just sit down and go? Like, do you show them when you're done, or are you getting down some strokes, then finishing from memory later?

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    @acadia - Some of the paintings I am able to do entirely in person, but the portraits generally are done later from memory/photos. I have to have something to paint on all these rainy days! The level of interaction with people varies a bit, sometimes I'm in a place where there aren't a lot of people around, sometimes a few people stop to look and comment for a moment. The other day while I was painting this apartment complex though, I had groups gathering around me the whole time. I had never painted with crowds like that before. I was couch surfing with someone who's apartment was part of a low-income building complex that was so big it basically had it's own community of food tents and shops around the bases of the buildings. So there was a ton of people walking around and those people probably hadn't seen anyone like me doing anything like that around their building and were really curious.

    15%20Penang%20flats%20small.jpg

    It was on the island of Penang, pretty far out from the main downtown area, which is called Georgetown. Georgetown is really cool because the population is Chinese Buddhist, Malay Muslim, and Indian, so there are HIndu temples and Buddisht temples and mosques all over the place, as well as a bunch of street art and delicious delicious street food. As a whole Georgetown is so culturally rich that it's a Unesco World Heritage site.

    16%20Penang%20temple%20small.jpg

    Oh yeah I'm in Malaysia now.

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    I like the watercolors. You seem to be able to get a little more sure with your forms. That bike-thing(?) looks cool. You probably don't want the presence of lines all the time, but I think that mixing up the materials to help get some crisp edges here and there really helps.

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    Thanks Iruka. Yeah, I was trying to turn to ink in particular to help with certain edges, though unfortunately with the reverse-tricycle-cart-bike thing I found out the hard way that one of my pens ran a little bit under the water (hence the weird purple haze).

    I tried using just a little pencil for these mushrooms-

    08%20taman%20mushrooms%20small.jpg

    And then just using the watercolor to add a little bit to a pencil drawing in this one-

    09%20melaka%20sidewalk%20small.jpg

    So still feeling it out.

    Here is another oil. The topography in the Cameron Highlands is crazy, and even in "dry" season it rains every day, so the tea plantations look dope.

    17%20cameron%20tea%20plantation%20small.jpg

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    Lighting a painting to photograph it can be so tricky. Here is the same painting in different light, which loses some of the vibrant green (too yellow) but better captures the range of warm/cool. Oh well!

    17%20cameron%20tea%20plantation%20small_1.jpg

    Then here are some roots from the jungle, basically the roots are so dense that they almost create 'stairs' of mud up or down hill, and often times this is your path while hiking. I almost tried to have more of an abstract mindset while painting this one:

    18%20taman%20negara%20roots%20small.jpg

    And a building in Melaka as well- I tried to leave some canvas showing through on this one but I think I under utilized it:

    19%20Melaka%20building%20small.jpg

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    While I was painting this, a Japanese film crew shot a commercial next to me and got some footage of me painting. They said me being there was "a bonus" so it sounds like I'll be in a commercial in Japan! They were really nice and kept giving me beverages, which I was really grateful for because Singapore is really close to the equator and hot as balls. In about two hours I went through in iced tea, a coke, and three bottles of water!

    20%20Singapore%20mosque%20small.jpg

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    I tried a palette knife painting again:

    22%20kinabalu%20small.jpg

    and some bros chilling in a Hindu temple:

    21%20Kuala%20Lumpur%20hindu%20small.jpg

  • acadiaacadia Registered User regular
    So that mountains/mist painting, how many shades of blue is that? Just one, mixed with varying levels of white, or two?

    The reflection on that temple floor is fantastic.

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    Thanks!

    I used both pthalo blue and ultramarine blue for the mountain one, but I wanted it to be subtle so it basically comes off as monochromatic. I've been really into pthalo blue lately, probably because I only ever used ultramarine at school. So I was sort of doing a monochromatic temperature study by using a warm blue and a cool blue, just for kicks. And then since I'm still working on palette knife strategies it's a bit of a mess, heh :P

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    edited October 2015
    I saw wild elephants! We were in a boat, but we had just pulled to shore because there was one visible in the trees, and then a big male walked out from the trees right in front of us!

    23%20borneo%20elephant%20small.jpg

    lyrium on
  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    24%20borneo%20orangutan%20small.jpg

    It was pretty mind blowing to see orangutans up close, just playing and doing as they please. Any creature that can hang its whole body weight comfortably upside down by its toes is pretty impressive.

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    Really loving the trippy lions in all these dope carvings

    25%20statue%20prambanan%20small.jpg

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular

    Borubudur is a single large stupa that forms a massive mandala when viewed from above. The temple has no interior room; it's purpose is for pilgrims to walk circularly along its different levels and admire it.

    26%20walking%20borubudur%20small.jpg

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    How long will you be traveling, lyrium? I hope you compile all the work you do on this trip in some way, maybe a small book?

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    @Iruka Wellllll I don't have a set plan exactly, but most likely about a year? I hadn't thought of compiling them together into a book or anything, mostly because it hadn't occurred to me that anyone would be interested in looking at something like that. Mostly my plan has been to have a little show of them all together once I go home and have them for sale there.

    28%20wayang%20yogya%20small.jpg

    This guy is nailing a design into a leather puppet, for the shadow puppet style of theater called Wayang. Sometimes when you try doing something differently it turns out nice, but sometimes your painting just ends up looking like barf and you wonder.

  • acadiaacadia Registered User regular
    If they're all of similar size, you should consider putting together a little booklet, for sure. The desire to vicariously travel through your paintings has got to be worth some $$$

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    edited November 2015
    Well @acadia, most of them are exactly the same size, so I'll have to look into it!

    I'm way behind posting. Here are the rest of my paintings from Indonesia:

    29%20Jakarta%20river%20small.jpg

    30%20Bandung%20hill%20small.jpg

    31%20gunung%20bromo%20small.jpg

    The volcanoes had the craziest colors and topography I have ever seen in my life. I really felt like I was on an alien planet. This big one had a crater rim so wide it took 2.5 hours for me and my walking buddy to get all the way around, and we were the only ones who made the venture.

    32%20kawa%20ijen%20small.jpg

    The lake in this volcano is acidic and boils when it gets too hot. Miners harvest the sulfur and the fires they light burn blue from the gas.

    33%20Lovina%20fountain%20small.jpg

    I wish I could take all my bathes in hot water pouring from a naga mouth.

    34%20Ubud%20canyon%20small.jpg

    So this one was kind of nutty. My host knew about this nearby canyon so we went and climbed in. It was really really hard because we had to cling to a lot of steep wet rock faces and wade in the river and stuff, but luckily my painting box survived. It took so long to get in I only had about an hour to paint before sunset, so this was super super fast. It was really fun to paint in there though, so peaceful.

    35%20kuta%20shell%20small.jpg

    I was trying to paint a really up close view of the bottom of the sand dollar, trying to capture the nice pattern and detail. Kind of failed, makes me miss having actual long-term setups where I can work on dry paint.

    lyrium on
  • MacMcCrackMacMcCrack Duchess of Manboob Wherever mediocrity is celebratedRegistered User regular
    a book would be cool

    comicrocket%20banner.jpg
  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
  • acadiaacadia Registered User regular
    I really dig that volcano one. The COLORS.

  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    That water texture is very effective. Its really easy to forget how limited you are by travel and media, when you get back to a permanent set up, its going to be really interesting.

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    edited January 2016
    I got hired to do a mural for a teddybear museum! It's still being built but the theme of this room is a fun fair. Definitely the biggest one I've done so far! The paint was pretty thin so to get the solid look took on average three coats, so it was a lot of work!

    TV%20mural%200_1.jpg

    TV%20mural%202_2.jpg


    (The big chair and empty space are for an optical illusion they're going to have for instagram bait, basically copying this:
    art-in-paradise-bangkok.jpg
    )

    lyrium on
  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    aaand here's some more paintings from Cambodia!

    that time I got tipsy and painted the Royal Palace because who can stop me

    37%20royal%20palace%20small.jpg

    38%20cows%20small.jpg

    39%20drum%20small.jpg

    40%20angkor%20bricks%20small.jpg

    41%20angkor%20tree%20small.jpg

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    edited February 2016
    Weird Internet, double post

    lyrium on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    Apologies if you've mentioned this before, but are these cropped at all from larger pieces? Are these all on small/medium canvas board?

    They're all very lovely. :)

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    edited April 2016
    Thanks, ND!
    These are all little 5" x 7" pieces on canvas sheets. I'm still working with the same portable setup that I left home with last June:
    IMG_3902.jpgIMG_3903.jpg

    I really really really highly recommend these canvas sheets to anyone who is looking for something light for landscape painting or something simple for experimenting. Fredrix is a great quality brand (in the studio we all bought big rolls of the good stuff to stretch for our pieces), and the price is awesome- you can get the 8x10 pad of 10 sheets at Blick for $5! For more refined pieces it's definitely nicer to work on stretched canvas, but these are a great option for studies and the like.

    And oooohhhhh boy do I miss having a long term studio set up! But I'm planning on getting back to Chicago to get settled in June :) yay having a place to call home!

    lyrium on
  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    Well, haven't been painting so much lately for a lot of different reasons. But I'm still here! My mind is getting a lot more focused on illustrative ideas that I want to get started on when I get back home, which is in just one month!
    In the meantime, here's a little drawing

    rabbit%20small.jpg

    And some monsters I left in Penang to keep an eye on things

    narrowmarrow.jpg

    Those doors are really big by the way! I'm a tall lady and I only come up to around the dog monster's mouth.

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