Cabbage Painting

After using natural dyes to color Easter eggs this year, I had a bunch of red cabbage juice left over.  I knew that you could make homemade litmus paper using cabbage juice, which made me wonder if I could paint on it using acids and bases for a reasonable effect.
So, I soaked some watercolor paper in the cabbage juice overnight.  It left me with a lovely blue tinted page to start from.

From there I painted with a variety of household items.  The winged serpent used: milk, lemon juice, baking soda and marinara sauce.  (milk=blue of his body, lemon juice = bright pink, baking soda = green, marinara sauce = orange/pink)
Once I was done soaking the paper, I boiled down the rest of the cabbage juice to make cabbage ink, which I painted in for the dark areas after the painting was dry.  You can see several of the paintings in progress in the next photo.

This one looks like a planet.  It was hanging by a corner to dry and I dripped some lemon juice on it which caused diagonal pink streaks.

And this one is an abstract.

Spring

Last Wednesday was the Spring Equinox.  On Thursday I taught Art in Action for my daughter's class.  Well, I should say I attempted to teach Art in Action, those kids were full of spring and had little focus for art.  But we made a lot of pretty piles of pastel dust on the art tables...
My favorite flowers are starting to bloom, the California Poppy.  So I sat down on my driveway and sketched one with my water color pencils today.  There is something about the sunlight shining through that color of orange that just makes me happy.
And here are some photos I took earlier today.