Adventures in Art, Product Design, Home Decor, Cooking, and Gardening
Floral and Fairy Watercolor Paintings
Our little pal, Frodo, hasn’t paid us a visit in two weeks. I’ve grown so accustomed to his daily deck visits that I’m really starting to miss him. So this one is for Frodo, our little princely frog friend, wherever he is.
This painting is based on a tutorial from “How to Draw and Paint Fairyland,” by Linda Ravenscoft.
I hope everyone enjoyed the long holiday weekend. It went by way too fast and I didn’t accomplish everything that I had planned to do. But I managed to squeeze in a brief painting session this afternoon. Fall is the perfect time to plant tulips, and these Angelique tulips would look fabulous in my spring garden. Now all I need to do is find the time and energy to plant some before winter sets in.
Today is a spectacular fall day with crystal clear blue skies and temperatures in the high 70s–not too hot, not too cold–just the way I like it. The leaves are just beginning to change colors and I can’t wait to see the show. All this fall goodness got me in the mood to paint something with a fall theme, so I whipped up this colorful fall fairy complete with a magic wand and pumpkins just waiting to be turned into Cinderalla’s coach. Now All she needs is some white mice to be turned into horses, and away she’ll go to meet prince charming.
This painting is based on a tutorial in Linda Ravenscroft’s book, The Fairy Artist’s Figure Drawing Bible. I’ve learned so many new painting techniques from the tutorials in this book. It was definitely money well spent.
My daughter painted this beautiful yellow Asiatic lily during a recent mother/daughter painting session. We haven’t painted together in a while, so it was nice to have my favorite painting partner join me for an evening of painting, small talk, and pumpkin lattes. To create the background texture, she sprinkled sea salt on the paint while it was still wet. It adds a lot of interest to an otherwise very simple painting.
As usual, she completed her painting first, so I’ll be showing my latest painting as soon as I finish it.
The gorgeous gold tone on the flower buds and stems is green gold by Winsor Newton–one of my favorite colors. It looks fabulous paired with the pink and coral tones in the flowers. I painted the veins on the leaves with white acrylic ink and a Number 1 round paint brush. This painting is based on a tutorial in Fiona Peart’s book, “Vibrant Flowers in Watercolor.” It’s a great book for beginning–or seasoned–watercolorists. Watercolors and acrylic ink on cold pressed Acquarello Artistico paper by Fabriano.
Here are some close-up views:
I thought it was about time that I posted something other than a watercolor painting. I picked this project from a book that I bought way back in 1998–Painting Garden Birds with Sherry Nelson–but never used. The book offers a series of lessons in oil painting but since I no longer have any oil paints laying around the house, I gave it a try with colored pencils. Prisma Color and Verithin colored pencils on gray Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper.
Keeping things simple today. No shading, no fancy watercolor tricks, just plain, solid color on a white background. The keep-it-simple (KISS) rule always works. This painting–which was inspired by a pillow case that caught my sister’s eye–is for my sister’s new home. She wants to add a touch of orange in every room, and I’m happy to oblige. I can’t wait to pull up a chair and have a cup of coffee with my sissy in her new kitchen.
I’m just getting back in the groove of painting and blogging after a seriously relaxing three-week-long vacation. I had to break back into blogging slowly–I didn’t want to shock my system after doing a whole lot of nothing, LOL! This is another painting that I thought I could complete quickly but it took way longer than I anticipated. I worked on this moon flower fairy for four days. The pearls in her hair were quite time consuming and tedious to paint–they are tiny. This painting is based on a tutorial in the book, “Enchanting Fairies–How to Paint Fairies and Flowers,” by Barbara Lanza.
Here’s a close-up view of her face:
This tulip painting looks deceptively simple but it was time consuming and challenging to paint. I found the giant tulip on the left to be particularly challenging since I had such a large area to cover. The orange areas on the tulips required several washes to create an intense color. I painted the yellow areas first and then washed the orange on top; however, the next time I will reverse the process and paint the dark orange first and then apply a yellow wash on top. Each painting is a learning process.
This painting is for my sister with much love.
My goal for this painting was to keep the subject simple so I could complete it quickly. But looks can be deceiving, and these water lilies proved to be quite time consuming and challenging. It took me several attempts to render realistic dew drops but I finally began to nail them on the leaf on the bottom right-hand corner. Once I figured out the technique, painting dew drops was surprisingly quick and easy.
The swampy water, on the other hand, was even more challenging. It’s definitely not what I envisioned; and I obviously need more practice painting water. If anyone has any tips or tricks for painting water that they’d like to share, I’m all ears!
This painting was based on a tutorial in Linda Ravenscroft’s book, “How to Draw and Paint Fairyland: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the World of Fairies.”