The Prayer of St. Francis - Paint Swatches

With the prayer lettered (I think I forgot to mention we used Moon Palace sumi ink), it was time to paint the poppies red.

We used this 24 set of Gansai watercolors. These are traditional Japanese watercolors. The colors are more opaque than typical watercolors used in the West.

 I was introduced to the White Gansai pan paint by Valerie Weismueller. The white was used in white work (dots and doodles) on illuminated initials. The white didn't fade into the darker colors of the letters.

We were going to use the paints right out of the pan. No color mixing! I liked that because I'm not really good at mixing colors. We painted samples of the colors to be used on the Moulin du Roy paper so we could see how the paint and paper would react and how the colors would look.

The poppy design was outlined with a .01 Sakura Pigma pen, and then we were ready to paint.

I'm writing this post a few days ahead of time and scheduled to post on 11. November. Veteran's Day or Armistice Day. The red poppy, the remembrance poppy was inspired by John McCrae's poem, In Flanders Fields. I'm struck by the serendipity of the remembrance poppy and the poppies used in the St. Francis prayer.