Bridges and Sparkle

The bridge of dreams

Floating on the brief Spring night

Soon breaks off:

Now from the mountaintop a cloud

Takes leave into the open sky.

~Miner

Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry, 114

 I've been playing with the watercolors again.
I saw a lovely picture of mountains, water, 
and a red bridge in a book 
and decided to do my own version.
Who could resist a vivid red bridge?
Not me!

This was a gift for my friend Stephanie
who wanted a picture with water.
That leaves a lot of wiggle room for ideas.

 In retrospect I could have put a lovely
waterfall in there.  But Stephanie was
pleased and that is what matters.

I especially liked the layer of colors on
the mountains next to the red bridge.
And the splatters.  I've become a  big fan
of adding splatters to my watercolors.
I really love the look of it.
It's a nice accent that draws attention.

My next project was to make a card for
someone leaving my workplace.

These are called Twinkling H20's.
They are hard luminescent cakes of
color activated by water.

Look at these delicious colors...
The best way to use them is spray them
liberally with water and then walk away and
do an errand, take a shower, wash the dishes,
and then come back to work with them.

The longer you let them set the thicker
the paint gets.

I used this picture from Country Living for the
inspiration for the vase.

Unfortunately I did not get good lighting
on the card so you can't see the irridecent
quality of the paints.

Closer look...

I put the painting on a layer of orange
handmade paper and then on top of some
 flowered scrapbook cardstock and connected 
the layers with colorful brads.

For more information on these paints
check out the LuminArte site here.
Dion Dior offers some good classes using the
"Twinks".  Check her site out here.

That's all for today...but I have a painting
date this weekend..so stay tuned.