Dakini on Horseback

 Here is a recent watercolour painting of a dakini with a sword.

And here is another red dakini riding a golden horse from years back.

My plan is to do a monthly post with old work from the archive. Here is the first of these.

It is a piece I came across in an old sketchbook.  I was staying in a caravan in Cornwall, reflecting and making work. I found a snail shell tucked in a corner under a cupboard. Found spiral shells carry symbolic meaning for me and this one became a personal talisman for a time. 

I improvised with materials I had to hand - gouache, paint, PVA glue and white powder paint. There is a gold thread tracing a spiral from periphery to centre. If you look closely you might be able to make it out.

Pyrrole Joy

 Continuing with the Magic City theme here is a city of the south.  

I am in love with Pyrrole orange. I find it such a joyful colour. Pyrrole pigments were only discovered in the early 1980s. Pyrrole orange is a bright mid orange that is transparent and gives lots of variety when mixed with other pigments.

Fun fact: Orange was not used as a name to describe a colour until the Middle Ages when the fruit was imported into Europe. The range of colours we call orange were previously described as yellow or red.

My magic city in this painting might be called "The Red City" or even "The Pink City" if orange was not a named colour.  I like that.

Whatever it is called it feels (to me) quite joyous. And yes it is also quirky and idiosyncratic. It was a lot of fun to paint.

Earth and Fire - the heart of the volcano.

The physical process of making art helps me understand my embodiment through playing with the elements directly using the senses of touch and sight.  

Paint is made of pigment, earth element in its many colours, ground into coloured dust and mixed with liquid. Some favourite colours are made of earth and fire by firing raw clay: burnt umber and burnt siena. The latter gives lovely warm transparent glazes and makes a rich glowing surface.. 

I used a ground of burnt siena as the basis of this work and then worked into it with richly pigmented watercolours. 

Molten Earth.

Allium Seed Head

I found it very difficult to find a way to capture the essence of this allium. Here are a few attempts using pencil, fine liner and washes with some digital tweaks. I plan to use them as studies for a painting.

 

Potato Flowers

 A small scribbly drawing of some potato flowers. Coloured pencil on toned paper.

Magenta Teapot

 Every now and then I need to paint a teapot. (I drink a lot of tea!).  Here is a quick sketchy painting. The shapes and the tonal values were from observation of a little round teapot. The colour palette was from my imagination and not what I saw in real life. A mixture of the seen and the invented to make a colourful vibrant image using inky water soluble pencils in my sketchbook.

Tara's Blue Utpala Lotuses

 Digital variations made on the iPad pasting in and transforming photographs of some of my artworks on paper.

Plant Studies

A few drawings to keep my eye and hand in: 

Coloured pencil, pastel, charcoal, pencil, watercolour 

For the Year of the Wo Dragon

 A few Dragons to mark the Chinese Year of the Wood Dragon

Thresholds - liminal space

 Back on the iPad here are some experiments playing with the Procreate App

Fire and Phoenix

A few fiery sketches in my continuing exploration of the elements. 

Foliage Still Life in Blue and Purple

My starting point was a photograph of a moody and decorative collage made on a dark winter's day out of cut and torn fragments from another piece along with crystalline watercolour to bring out the forms. Multiplying, transforming and layering the image I made variations on my iPad. The original collage is the first image followed by three of my favourites from the sequence.

Ratnadakini, Sky Dancer of Earth and Jewels

 Next in the series of small circular paintings of the five wisdom dakinis. Ratnadakini is accompanied by Ratnasambhava's horses (they support his lotus throne) and dragons. For me dragons are wisdom beings akin to Nagas and also symbolise the freeing of the subtle energies of the body.