Acrylic and Watercolor experiments

i got some 14x16" bristol vellum and have been painting with acrylics and a bit of watercolor. the first few i just put the color on the page randomly and filled in with black ink later. i've recently found Montana Acrylic pens that work really well to lay down opaque lines of paint on top of dried acrylic without messing up the tip too much (like happens with Sharpies). i don't know how long the tips will last. they're around $6 so not cheap if they only last a few paintings but we'll see. i have a black extra fine tip and pink fine tip.

For the first painting, i started adding color randomly to the page. after i had several blobs or lines of color, i filled it all in with more color. then i added black lines. it was all random and built on itself as i was working. by the end i found that i didn't like the overall piece at all, but i liked bits of the piece.

so for the first time ever i just cut up the piece and discarded the parts i didn't like! i don't know why i haven't thought to do that before. Here are the two parts i did like from that particular piece.

Next I did this one by putting paint down randomly again:

 And cut out the parts I liked (also the first photo in this post):


By that point I had scissors on the brain so when I started the next one and decided to sketch out my ideas beforehand, i flipped through my most recent art journal and took out all the motifs and ideas I liked and added them to this page. Here is the sketch, and the colored-in, pre-line version. My favorite part for some reason is the bird standing on the scissors.

I saw this brick wall the other day, I love the idea of the spiral.