Painting Kuching in Watercolour

I have been growing this phalaenopsis hybrid from seedling and was quite pleased when a flower spike started up.  Alas, as the buds grew, some pesky insect got busy and chewed them up just as they were about to bloom!  That’s how I ended up with only one flower on this plant!

Painted on my very last piece of 9” x 12” Cotmans 140lbs watercolour paper with Holbein paints.  And it’s back to the many glazes of transparent, non-staining pigments, starting with Gamboge Nova, Alizarin, Marine Blue, Opera and Permanent Violet.

This doily is for the picnic table on my patio and was Inspired by the jasmine in my garden! That’s a sprig of the left of the pic.

I worked from an old pattern but added extra flowers.

One of the most expensive fruits on the market, when you get only a little nub of sweet sour pulp for RM4.00 a kilo! If I wasn’t interested in painting local fruits, I wouldn’t even consider buying.

I painted this on a hot pressed sketching paper block I found at the Technographics store in Satok. Surprisingly the paper didn’t cockle toomuch, but then I was careful not to use too much water. The paper is OK for quick studies, but not for fine details and also somehow the colours turned out a bit dull. I used a limited palette here of Aureolin, Winsor Orange, Raw Sienna, Payne’s grey and Ultramarine blue. I added a bit of Cobalt violet to the stems for a powdery look.

I got fed up battling with soggy paper and mouldy paints during this incredibly wet rainy season and so until the weather and my papers dry up a bit, I am busy working with cotton thread as media instead – the fine old art of tatting!

Here’s my work in progress based on a flower motif pattern I found in an old thread brochure (1960s?) The little leaf “La feuille frivole” is a design by J. Paulson who is a fellow member of the Intatters forum group.

I am thinking that the two motifs would make a nice design as soon as I work out how to join them together!

I have been busy, not painting but rescuing an abused dog – here she is, looking much healthier and fatter after a month with me. We call her Binkie – she had been kept locked up in a rubbish bin chute for some months with hardly any food or water. I had to teach her to drink from a proper water bowl – she kept licking rain water dripping down the wall, plant leaves and puddles on the floor.

Thank God for the concerned people who saw the cruelty and bust her out of “prison”! And many thanks to the SSPCA vet who provided treatment free of charge!

The SSPCA animal shelter is bursting at the seams with abandoned dogs and cats – a very sad reflection on the wealthier section of Kuching society.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It is also time for rambutans here in Kuching. This is the variety “R24” from a friend’s backyard.

Again for this work I used opaque colours on Fabriano paper, layering from cadmium yellow to cadmium red and sap green. I mixed the browns for the twigs from all the colours on my palette.

I call this a Chinese New Year phalaenopsis…masses of flowering plants are imported from Taiwan during the festive season. People buy them at festive prices to give to relatives and friends as impressive, beautiful gifts or to decorate their own houses for New Year. And normally after Chap Goh Meh (Fifteenth Night of New Year) the orchids start to die off to the dismay of the owners, who then pour even more water and fertilizers into the pots.

Dear owners, do take a close look at those clear plastic pots – they are filled with tightly packed spaghnum moss! The orchid roots are rotting away in the constantly wet medium and normally it is raining all the time during New Year. So if you want your phalaenopsis to survive after Chap Goh Meh, carefully remove the moss, soak the plant in a fungicide, then repot in a new pot with charcoal and coconut husk. Put it in a cool windy area, water sparingly every day and it should stand a good chance of survival!

This is the variety with ‘harlequin’ spots – it looks quite unusual and rather ugly! Like measles or a nasty allergy rash.

Painted with a limited palette of Holbein’s Opera, Rose violet, Carmine and Ultramarine blue for the shadows.

Wow, I can’t believe how busy I’ve been lately – have only managed this quick study in the past month!

I composed this study from photos taken of the white variety of Vanda Miss Joachim in the DBKU Orchid Garden. I like the challenge of painting white flowers! I’m still using the Cartiera Magnani paper which meant I had to be extra careful with my washes as it is impossible to lift off any mistakes from this paper.

By the way, it is an Orchid Garden, so what are bromellaids doing there? And surely there are more to orchids than rows and rows of vandas, dendrobiums, more vandas….oh well, at least entrance is free!

Yaay! Success! Red chillies freshly harvested from my garden! And organically grown as well. I used Biogreen 988 fertilizer which the vendor at the Sunday market assured me is also an anti-fungal and anti-feedant because of the neem oil in the formula.

I always prefer a fresh specimen right in front of me so that I can match the colours I see with my paints. Luckily hot chillies like these keep well during the 2 whole days I took. This time I had to dig out from the bottom of the box the opaque colours I seldom use – Winsor & Newton Vermilion Hue, Winsor Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, and for the stems, Oxide of Chromium. The shadows are a mixture of Indian Red and Ultramarine and it’s back to my favourite paper Fabriano Hotpressed 140lbs 9” x 12”.

Here’s Du Liniang hanging out at the Peony Pavilion.

I am using the Korean colours and still trying to handle the soft Cartiera Magnani paper. The good thing I noticed is the deep saturation of the colours. Probably I need to go really slowly with glazing, one light thin layer after another and preserve the whites at all costs!