#the way the sky turned into a gradation of pink and orange and how they mixed beautifully?

[belindarimbi13]

doramitsu shippers go outside, they say.

and then the sky was pink and orange.

[bluestardust23]

"You know I don't need your help to climb at all, right?"

"I know that all to well." [A caption that turned to be a oneshoot. 881 words.]

Two days after the restoration of the village, Lara told the people after she told Jacob and Sofia that she was leaving soon. Whenever she was asked when, or if she was coming back at all, she told them they'd know eventually. That motivated Jacob to take Lara to a place, which he said was the best point of view of the landscape.

So there they were, early in the morning before sunrise, at a relaxed pace, en route to the higher spot. Jacob and Lara didn't stop sharing their stories with each other. They shared their emotions; anger, sadness, and laughter. Neither of them realized they got along so well, they unconsciously made a few stops when talking. After climbing for a while, Lara noticed Jacob wouldn't stop helping her to climb up. She was about to ask why when he released his hold on her hand and advanced over some bushes. Gripping onto a sturdy ledge, again, even not asked to, he extended his arm for her. She stared at it, quite puzzled.

"Then why do you keep on giving me your hand?"

"I figured out you never let anyone take care of you, so I'm allowing myself to."

She chuckled, "Fair enough."

"Do you allow me to? Actually, it's okay if you—"

"Yes, it's okay. I appreciate it, Jacob," Lara told him as she pulled herself up over a large stone by holding his hand, "Thanks."

"You're welcome. We're halfway there," he pointed up, "Come."

They continued the voyage upward, climbing up the cliff. The trail wasn't so apparent but it was clear Jacob went there multiple times, as the way they were going was the easiest and safest way to climb up. The chatter continued as well. Jacob stopped next to a fallen tree before turning to face Lara.

"Now, Lara, please close your eyes."

Lara raised an eyebrow, holding her smile, "Do I have to?"

"I guess yes. Please."

"Alright. Eyes closed."

"Are they really closed?"

"Don't make me wanna peek."

"Heh," he grinned as he took her hand and led her to the finish line, warning her about rocks, sharp grass, and branches. Then he told her to sit down.

"You may open your eyes."

Lara opened her eyes slowly, then quickly wide open as the colors filled her head. The sky was a gradation of blue with pink and orange clouds and a lining of gold. The icy tundra and lake reflected the beautiful colors. Nearing the foot of the mountain, next to the river, the village. Adults working on the farm, kids chasing the rabbits down, elders walking in leisure.

"What an amazing view," Lara managed to say, after catching her breath, "I...I never take such a peaceful look over the places I've been. All I've always felt was, worry, urgency..." she paused in a frown, "...fear."

"No," Jacob rebuffed, "Fear isn't one of them. You're fearless. The better word for it is incertitude. You didn't know all that lonely journey you'd take, passing every point where you could've died, still with that remarkable conscience, would even lead you to anything at all. But as you said, you were done not believing your father. And there you got it," he smiled, "That's being human, Lara. We hate, fear, and are desperate for what we don't understand. In the end, the one leap of faith we take leads us to peace."

"One step to peace," she implied, reminding Jacob that she was still hunting for Trinity. She turned to Jacob with a grateful smile, "Thank you for showing me this, Jacob, making me see. I mean it."

"I'm glad you like it that much," Jacob uttered, "This view is what keeps me going. I lost count of how many times in my life I have thought to just come back to Kitezh, order the Deathless Ones to stand back, and destroy the Divine Source myself. But I always come up here, intentionally or not...and that thought washed away. Replaced with what I could hear in my ear: 'hold on'."

He turned to Lara with a smile, and when she replied with one of her own, Jacob placed a hand on her arm, joking, "So it was you?"

They laughed heartily, then absentmindedly stared into each other's eyes for a moment that felt like time had stopped. Suddenly, he dropped his expression and released his warm hold. Lara was surprised quietly when she realized what happened. Jacob looked at the village and sighed. Swallowing, he asked without looking at her, "Will I see you again, Lara?"

She smiled softly, and to his surprise, she held his hand on the ground and called his name. He looked into her brown orbs as she stared at his blue ones.

"Will you wait for me?"

As if a heavy boulder was taken off of his shoulders, his face brightened up as he released a breath. "Yes. Yes, yes I will. Please, be safe, Lara."

"You too, Jacob. Be safe. I'll see you again, I promise."

"I'll hold you to that."

---------end---------

One perk of being on a tiny fandom: you get to fangirl your own works!! Ain't that right, Tea?!

I hope you all like it too! <3 Speedpaint: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uaQmBI9ft9oxuexREQ0clpKDLw1RDO6K/view?usp=sharing

[allisenoble]

Hello! Today I want to show you a fun beginner project you can do to practice blending colors with watercolor paints and markers. If you are a complete beginner to color mixing, it is easiest to stick to either all warm colors (red, yellow, pink, orange …) or all cool colors like I did (blue, green, violet …). Some colors when blended together turn into “mud”, making a neutral like brown or gray. This is where understanding the color wheel comes in handy! For more about the color wheel, visit my earlier post Colors Aren’t Scary :). For this project, we will try out both flat brushes and round brushes. Round brushes have a teardrop shaped bristle that comes to a point at the end, and flat brushes have rectangular shaped bristles that are, well, flat on the end. Pretty easy to remember! It’s good to have a variety of sizes of each. Your brush size depends on the size of the area you are filling in. If your brush is too big, you risk getting paint where you don’t want it  but if your brush is too small, you will see all the little strokes and the paint won’t cover evenly.

I started first with an outline, drawing my design in pencil on watercolor paper and then tracing over it with a waterproof black fine-liner pen (Sharpie fine points will work – You do not necessarily need a fancy art pen, though my preference when I do watercolor and ink work are these bad boys by Staedler.). You can draw your design however you want, or if you want to practice this technique without the added pressure of drawing, feel free to print this outline out and use graphite paper to transfer it right onto a piece of watercolor paper (Don’t have graphite paper on hand? Just shade over the back of your printout with a pencil, lay it on top of your watercolor paper, and trace over the lines and it will work the same way, though a bit more labor intensive.).

  With watercolor, you want to start with the background and move to the foreground, and you always want to work lightest to darkest. It’s all about layering and building up colors since the paints themselves are translucent. In this more simplified project, we will be focusing just on blending this time, not layering. Still, working with the background first ensures that if any background color does find its way into the waves, which it inevitably will, we can just work right over it later and you won’t even notice by the end. Starting with the background, you want to choose a couple of colors (I used a cornflower blue and a cerulean blue.) and water them down so that they are consisting of mainly water with a small amount of pigment. Then you want to use a larger round brush and start filling in the space using circular motions. This will give our background wash a bit of texture, so that it has a hazy, cloud-like appearance rather than just flat streaks. I applied the cornflower blue on the bottom half of my sky and the cerulean on the top. Because both colors are wet, they should bleed into each other and blend together in a pretty seamless gradation. Be sure to overlap the two colors slightly where they meet. If they aren’t blending enough, you may also rinse off your brush and using the same circular motion run over the line where they touch with your damp brush to work them together further.

Color blending is one of the foundation skills of painting with watercolors, but it takes a lot of practice. Good thing you are about to get a lot of it! We did a textured blend for the background, but within an individual space inside our waves, we are now going to practice some flat blending with the goal of getting our colors to merge into as smooth of a gradation as possible. Now we are going to use a medium sized flat brush. A flat brush will be perfect for the smooth effect we need and will also be easier to keep inside the edges of our geometric shapes. You can tilt the brush so you are only using the tip rather than the whole side for narrower areas. Pick 2 different colors, and start painting one color on one end until you’ve gotten to about halfway across. Rinse your brush, and paint in another color starting on the opposite end, overlapping in the middle. A unique quality watercolor has is that when one color touches another while it is still wet, they WILL bleed into each other. In this case, that is a good thing as using wet-on-wet color with watercolors makes for some pretty low-effort, seamless blending. Still, watercolor can be finicky and things don’t always go as planned. I purposely filled the shape in so that there are darker, patchy areas and a harsh transition between the two colors. This happens sometimes, but can be easily rectified by going back over the uneven area with a damp brush. Be sure to always paint in the same direction, following the length of your shape.

Blending with watercolor markers is a similar process, but you need to be a bit more controlled with your water application so that you don’t completely lose the effect of the ink. I love watercolor markers because you can get such bold contrast, but a little bit of ink goes a long way, and with too much water your separate colors will just swim all together into one mass.  I cannot emphasize enough, quality also matters. If you get cheap markers, chances are they won’t blend nicely no matter how skillful the artist. They don’t need to be officially called “watercolor markers”, they just need to be water soluble so they will run when wet. I love using Tombow’s water soluble brush markers. You also need to think about the values of the markers you are using. Deeper colors will spread a lot farther than paler colors, and can overpower. I have started with a darker color, a royal blue, and a lighter more muted color, a sage green. Start by scribbling a bit of each color on opposite ends of your shape. You do NOT want to shade the entire area in. Again, a little bit of ink goes a long way when water is added. Then, still using a flat brush you want to dip your brush in some water, tapping off the extra on a nearby paper towel. Wet the ink on one side and work it into the middle of the shape. Rinse off your brush, and wet the ink on the other side, again working towards the middle where they will meet. The wet colors will again, flow together and seamlessly blend pretty much on their own once they meet, staying darkest where you first laid down the ink. You can see above that a gradation is apparent, but the blue has pretty much taken over as the main color you see.

Trying the process again using the same 2 colors, but shading in only a tiny bit of blue and more of the green, you can see we get a more balanced effect where the pure green color is still highly visible.

  You can also create a gradation with only one color. The beauty of watercolor is the depth of value that can be captured from one single hue, simply by adjusting the amount of water added. To do this you would apply a bit of the same color on each end in a darker or medium value (mixing less water with your paint). Then, rinsing off your brush, add some water to the edge of the area of color on each side, again spreading towards the center from each end. The color will remain most saturated at the ends, and will be the lightest (most watered down) in the center.

If at any point you add too much water, your gradation is in danger of all just running together into one flat tone. If this happens, you can blot the area with a paper towel to lift the excess water (and some of the pigment), and then blend right over again. You don’t want to see any “puddles” pooling on your paper … that is a sign there is too much water being used. Also keep in mind damp is ok, but if you are filling in a new area next to an old one that is still very wet, the colors will bleed together over your lines. Sometimes it helps to use a blow-dryer to speed along the drying process. Or, you could just work on filling in areas that aren’t touching each other until each spot dries. The paint air dries pretty quick.

Here is a reminder of the final image! It is the same blending process for each section, which is what makes it good practice. I filled in some spaces using the markers, and some with paint. I kept lighter colors on the crests of the waves, and alternated medium and dark tones throughout the body of water, making sure not to fill in too many of the same colors right next to each other. It always feels good to still have some sort of finished product after practicing techniques, and I guarantee you will start to see a difference in the first couple spaces you fill in versus the last! Remember, it’s all about playing with color. Have fun!

Blending With Watercolors – Stained Glass Ocean Project Hello! Today I want to show you a fun beginner project you can do to practice blending colors with watercolor paints and markers.

[culturalreassociation]

Waterfalls, Ricefields and a Breathtaking Sunrise

Since the first time we, my closely knit group of friends, started hanging out, we've always wanted to go tour around Bali. Unfortunately, as assignments soon began piling up and our days were endlessly filled with classes and meetings, we never really got around to it. Every time we had time to spare, something always came up and we had to cancel our plans over and over again. Finally, this christmas, the stars aligned in our favor and we went on our first camping trip to Kintamani.

DAY 1: Tegalalang and Tukad Cepung

We had planned our trip about a week prior. We researched camping spots around Bali and decided on the infamous sunrise spot in Desa Pinggan, Kintamani. There were 11 of us, 4 girls and 7 boys and a heck of a lot of equipments; 2 tents, 8 sleeping bags, 7 sleeping mats and a shit ton of backpacks. We left Jimbaran at 7.30 A.M and directly headed to the rental place to pick up our camping equipments. By 8.30 A.M, we were all packed and finally began our long trip to our first destination, Beji Guwang Hidden Canyon. It took us about an hour to  get there. We all got off our motorcycles and marched enthusiastically to buy our tickets, already struck by the video of the canyon they had playing above the front desk. "How much?" I asked with a huge grin on my face, I had already rolled up my pants at this point ready to get knee-deep wet in water. "140.000 rupiah each." My heart sunk. There was no way we were paying 140.000, none of us were carrying that much money, or even had that much money to be quite honest since we were college students at the end of the month after all. We rolled our pants back down and went back to the parking lot to discuss what to do next.

"So? I know we are not about to pay 140.000 to get in. I say we head on to our next destination right away."

"Why don't we go straight to the camp site?"

"No dude, we'll get there too early and we won't have anything to do."

"Okaayy how about this. Why don't we grab a bite to eat and head to tegal alang ricefield? It's not far from here and pretty damn scenic"

We all looked at one another and finally nodded in agreement, already feeling somewhat defeated. We got back on our motorcycles and said goodbye to the ridiculously overpriced hidden canyon.

After being stuck in traffic for about 45 minutes, we finally reached Tegalalang. In all honesty, I thought tegal alang was just a corny tourist spectacle on the side of the road, I didn't expect a legitimate, immersive trekking experience. We pretty much busted our calves, thighs and whatever legs we had left but it was absolutely worth it. It was warm and lush and green, the kind of paddy fields I used to see in my storybooks when I was younger. It made me forget about the heavy backpack straining my shoulders or the million beads of sweat trickling down every square inch of my body. It was simply euphoric.

After our breathtakingly exhausting trek through Tegalalang, we took a quick break to rehydrate and catch our breaths before heading to our next destination: Tukad Cepung Waterfall. It didn't take us long to get there, about one very scenic hour away. When we arrived at Tukad Cepung, we all changed into our swim suits, ready to get absolutely wet. We left our backpacks at the nearby kiosks and made our way to the ticket counter. "How far away is it from here?" I regretted asking the question as soon as I saw two tourists heading back from the waterfall, faces completely red and their clothes drenched in what I presume was sweat considering the stench coming off of them. The ticket lady simply smiled and said, "Not that far, you'll make it."

It.was.far. I mean at least to me it was. Loads of stairs. Loads of road. Loads of sweat. But yet again, the challenging route proved worthy when we saw the mesmerizing gallons of water cascading down the mouth of a humongous cave. It was exactly like the instagram pictures! Fortunately, it was't especially crowded that day so it honestly felt like we had the entire cave to ourselves. We took lots of pictures and videos and most importantly got super wet. Had it not been for our friend who kindly scolded us to hurry up if we want to reach our campsite before nightfall. We took one last, long look at the waterfall before finally bidding farewell.

When we reached our campsite in Kintamani, it was a couple minutes past sunset. We had to quickly build our tents before it gets too dark to see. Unfortunately, none of us were familiar with the tent we rented. It was a very large 6 person tent as opposed to the 2-person tents we were used to building. We spent a solid hour and a half arguing and scurrying here and there before we finally had our two tents up and ready. When we finally settled in, we lit our campfire and made the classic camping dinner, instant cup noodles and hot tea. We sang and laughed and kept each other warm all night by the side of Pinggan village, anxiously awaiting for the infamous Kintamani sunrise to wake us up.

DAY 2: Kintamani Sunrise and Home Sweet Home

At around 5 AM, all our alarms went off meaning its time to take our sleeping bags outside and wait for sunrise. Unsurprisingly, none of us woke up at 5. Half of us managed to groggily get up at 6, the other half slept through the sunrise. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky halves who managed to witness Kintamani's dreamlike morning. The sun creeped slowly behind Mount Batur, shedding light onto the foggy village below. The sky was a gradation of orange and pink and the clearest blue I have ever seen. The sunrise, however, was fleeting in its beauty. We sipped our remaining cup of tea as the last drop of sunlight spilled over Batur and woke the others up to get ready to go home. Once all our stuff was on the motorcycle and all that remained were the tents, we posed for pictures (which turned out amazing by the way) and headed home.

Hopefully that won't be the last trip we had together. I sincerely hope it becomes a tradition from here on out, regardless of how old and wrinkly we'll get.

To another year of fun-filled spontaneous joy. Oh, and here’s the pictures:

[caveartfair]

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Missing Hawaiian Painting “Hibiscus” Resurfaces at Auction, Selling for $4.8 million

Georgia O’Keeffe, Hibiscus, 1939. Courtesy of Christie’s.

Georgia O'Keeffe, 1956. Yousuf Karsh Huxley-Parlour

When the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) opened its “Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of Hawai’i” exhibition on May 19th, one important painting was missing: Hibiscus (1939). Featuring yellow and pink hibiscus flowers seen up close against a blue sky, it’s quintessential O’Keeffe. Having the painting—one of 20 that O’Keeffe painted during her time in Hawaii—on view would have offered a more complete story of the artist’s production during her time there in 1939. But in all of curator Theresa Papanikolas’s searching, she could never locate it.

It took Christie’s far less detective work to find it: One of the auction house’s clients simply offered it up. Instead of appearing alongside its Hawaiian peers at the NYBG, Hibiscus was the lead work at the Christie’s American art sale this morning, selling for a $4 million bid, or $4.8 million with fees, just at its low estimate of $4 million.

Before the sale, auctioneer John Hays announced that the painting may yet rejoin the group: The NYBG and the Brooks Museum in Memphis, Tennessee—the next destination for the show—have both requested it. The buyers, who Christie’s would not identify, have an opportunity to lend it out—and immediately enhance its provenance.

According to Paige Kestenman, an American art specialist at the auction house, the Christie’s team reached out to Papanikolas while researching Hibiscus’s exhibition history. Kestenman says that Papanikolas told Christie’s: “This is one of the paintings we were looking for. We were able to locate 19 of the 20 paintings.…This was the one we could not.’”

Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, 1932. Georgia O’Keeffe "Georgia O'Keeffe" at Tate Modern, London

Georgia O’Keeffe, Waterfall No. 1, ‘Īao Valley, Maui, 1939. © 2018 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden.

In fact, Christie’s was only able to identify two galleries in which Hibiscus had been publicly exhibited: An American Place (a gallery run by O’Keeffe’s husband, Alfred Stieglitz) in 1940, and a Memphis gallery in 1998. Otherwise, Hibiscus has mostly remained in private hands.

The Christie’s pricetag squares with O’Keeffe’s impressive track record at auction. In 2014, her Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932) sold to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art for $44.4 million at Sotheby’s, becoming the world’s most expensive painting by a woman artist (the previous record holder was Joan Mitchell’s Untitled from 1960, which sold for $11.9 million earlier that year at Christie’s).

Kestenman says that a few recent prices helped the auction house determine the estimate for Hibiscus. Its sale of David and Peggy Rockefeller’s estate earlier this month saw another O’Keeffe work, a Southwestern landscape entitled Near Abiquiu, New Mexico (1931), sell for $8.4 million. Other flower paintings have sold in the single-digit millions. Last year, a flower done in pastel, Yellow Sweet Peas (1925), sold for $4.4 million last year at Sotheby’s.

Just how high can O’Keeffe’s market go? “Because a lot of her very major works are in institutional collections, I think it will depend on if there are major examples that become available on the market,” says Kestenman. “There’s a consistent, strong demand for her paintings.”

Harold Stein, Georgia O’Keeffe on Leho‘ula Beach, near ‘Aleamai, Hāna, Maui, 1939. Courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Lava Bridge, Hāna Coast, No. 1, 1939. Courtesy of the Honolulu Museum of Art and the New York Botanical Garden.

Kestenman calls Hibiscus “important,” if not major. The painting is, though, of historical note. O’Keeffe’s larger series of Hawaiian flora and fauna has received particular attention over the past few years. In 2011, Koa Books published Georgia O’Keeffe’s Hawai’i, and the Honolulu Museum of Art presented “Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawai’i Pictures” in 2014.

The artist initially traveled to the islands in 1939 to work on a commission for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (which later became Dole). While the company hired her to render images for its advertising campaign, O’Keeffe instead roamed around O’ahu, Maui, Kaua’i, and Hawai’i, painting whatever she wanted. Verdant green valleys, spiky bright-red heliconia, and craggy black rocks all captured her attention.

In a catalogue essay for the NYBG show, Papanikolas writes that O’Keeffe created four compositions of hibiscus—“close studies of a single species that are both consistent with her serial modernism and suggestive of her personal transformation from tourist to ensconced visiting artist.”

According to Cody Hartley, senior director of collections and interpretation at Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, O’Keeffe’s Hawaii period is a great touchpoint in her career. The artist, who had been living in New York for years, began visiting New Mexico in 1929. She was so enamored with the landscape that she started spending months there at a time, relocating permanently in 1949. Inspired by her new surroundings, O’Keeffe painted bones, skulls, and other imagery associated with the desert.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Heliconia, Crab’s Claw Ginger, 1939. © 2018 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Pineapple Bud, 1939. © 2018 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden.

“Hawaii is this interesting interlude between the decade when she discovers New Mexico and when she starts to really make plans to spend the rest of her life here,” says Hartley. In Hawaii, O’Keeffe employed what he calls “a drawing practice where she used her sketches to understand and discover new places.” Her focus turned from the dry and desolate New Mexico to lush, vegetal Hawaii.

“Globally, Georgia O’Keeffe is most known for her flower paintings,” Kestenman points out, placing Hibiscus (and many of the Hawaii works) within a broader section of the artist’s body of work. “They were the paintings that first made her a real sensation.” O’Keeffe employed the subject from the 1920s through the 1950s. These pictures became immediately popular, especially as viewers interpreted the flowers’ indentations and folds as symbols of female genitalia. (Stieglitz, O’Keeffe’s husband, started the rumor.) O’Keeffe rejected the associations, which oversimplified her work.

Indeed, Hartley acknowledges both the broad appeal of the artist’s oeuvre and its subtler, more skillful elements. “Her work reproduces very cleanly in print,” he says. “I think that’s one of the reasons she’s so accessible.” Yet only in person can the viewer assess the artist’s light, skillful touch. O’Keeffe often employed a “wet into dry” technique, allowing full sections of paint to dry before beginning on the next.

According to Hartley, O’Keeffe saw her subjects as simple excuses to put oil paint on canvas in intriguing new ways. “Creating those subtle folding areas of color, those subtle gradations—that’s where she’s trying to engage you as a viewer,” he says. “It’s really about what she’s doing with paint more than anything that has to do with the flowers themselves.”

Red Hills with Flowers, 1937. Georgia O’Keeffe Art Institute of Chicago

The results, Hartley reminds us, were far more than pretty pictures. They were experiments in technique that pushed her material toward abstraction; sophisticated compositions that merged depictions of the American landscape with new ideas about painting and art.

In Hibiscus, rippled edges of petals appear to swirl counterclockwise, creating a sense of gentle undulation and breezy movement. Set against the light blue sky without any indication of the ground, the figures even become cloud-like. Swaths of pink, white, yellow, and red blend both subtly and dramatically, making the painting more about color and line than about simple flowers.  

The yellows, pinks, and oranges of Hibiscus, says Hartley, also connect the work to O’Keeffe’s New Mexico paintings. In the latter canvases, O’Keeffe employed intense yellows and reds. Red Hills with Flowers (1937), for example, merges her most-loved motif with the Southwestern landscape. These hues appear in Hibiscus, both in petals and in an interior shadow.

There’s also a small hint—intentional or not—of O’Keeffe’s reason for visiting Hawaii in the first place: a yellow stigma (the reproductive structure that protrudes from the center of a flower) in the lower left corner of the painting, which resembles a small pineapple. Now, these small details have taken on a definite, multi-million dollar price.    

from Artsy News