Mosslike.com

Category: Arts

  • Ink & Watercolor Mamaki for day 2 of Inktober

    Ink & Watercolor Mamaki for day 2 of Inktober

    Today’s drawing is of Mamaki (Pipturus albidus). It’s a native Hawaiian plant that is used in lฤสปau lapaสปau (traditional medicine practices). It’s known to help with digestive problems, skin ailments, and respiratory conditions among other things. Plus, I learned a new-to-me fact about Mamaki while doing some reference searching on Google. It is also helpful in treating Dementia! (source) I know it’s popular as a brewed tea, so I went out and bought some for my mom. Our family member has dementia, and was coming over to visit today. Hopefully they can share some tea ๐Ÿ–ค

    This plant once existed in my yard, just like the Koa from yesterday’s post. I think it dried out completely one hot summer when I wasn’t watering enough. Sigh. It had really big, deep green leaves with purple veins. Due to my organic & lazy gardening practices, the leaves always had stuff on them so I rarely made tea.

    This drawing came together pretty quickly. Which I’m grateful for, because I had a busy day!! I used my favorite waterproof hot pink ink to make this drawing. It’s called Noodler’s Ink Bulletproof Rachmaninoff. I always use a LAMY Safari fountain pen. I used my trusty watercolors to add the greens and yellows. And I relined it with hot pink watercolor to finish it up!

    I hope you like it! Tomorrow’s post will be about today’s plant in Laulima Hawaii’s prompt list, the Pua Kala. I’ve never even heard of this flower before but I already love the look of it. Subscribe to my email list so you don’t miss my next post.

  • Oil pastel drawings of Mililani’s shady park trees

    Oil pastel drawings of Mililani’s shady park trees

    Pastel drawing of a white tree trunk
    Pastel drawing of a Monkeypod tree and it's shadow

    Some pastel trees for today!

    The first drawing is of a tree in Mililani Mauka Ravine Park. It has a white trunk with lichen.

    The second image is of a Monkeypod tree. We are surrounded by them here in Mililani. I love their shade! After my runs, I take time to lean on a tree and ground myself. Then, I pour out the last of my water near it’s base out of gratitude. Everything has been so crunchy dry after the summer passed.

    I hung out with some friends a couple weeks ago, and one of them said how Mililani is the prettiest town he’s ever seen. The trees, the parks, the clean roads. I get it. It was really nice to hear someone else appreciate it.

    In Ravine Park, they have fruit trees that are marked and also a section of native Hawaiian plants. It’s a really nice walk that I’ve enjoyed a bunch of times.

    Except this one time… it was night. My friend and I approached the park in our car, and all the nearby street lights shut off. The sprinklers turned on as a cold wind came down the road. There are a lot of large rocks in ravine park. I could have sworn something was between the rocks near the entrance. We got the creepiest feeling and got the hell out of there.

    And this other time that the whole park smelled like a litter box. We had to leave. Don’t get me wrong, I love cats ~ but it was out of hand. I’m sure even the cats were pissed.

    Anyways – these were my trees for today. Hope you liked them!

  • Tiny Bright Portraits in Oil Pastel

    Tiny Bright Portraits in Oil Pastel

    As promised, I worked on some new portraits. These are done in oil pastel and are on small craft paper, 4″ x 6″. Oh, and I also used a black grease pencil. They took about 10 minutes each. There were others that I made but these were the nicest of them.

    It’s fun to mess with these faces so quickly! Oil pastels are super fun on bright paper.

    I still need to work on getting the “likeness” of my portraits correct though. I like the limited palette of the green portrait, but my favorite so far is the red. Even though the right side of her face slid outwards. They look nothing like the reference photos, but I do really like the shading.

    Thanks for looking!