Adventures in Art, Product Design, Home Decor, Cooking, and Gardening
Floral and Fairy Watercolor Paintings
This is my mom’s third painting. The improvement over her first two paintings is remarkable. She now has her own watercolor supplies and has begun painting on her own. Can we get a collective, “go mommy, go mommy?” This painting was based on a tutorial from Sherry C. Nelson’s book, “Painting Butterflies and Blooms.”
This is my sister’s second watercolor painting. Aren’t these tulips gorgeous? For this painting she combined two tutorials. The tulips are based on a tutorial in Fiona Peart’s book, “Tulips in Watercolor” and the background is based on a tutorial in Janet Whittle’s book, “Watercolor Roses.” What a great combination. You rock, sissy!
We had such a great time. I’ll be posting the completed paintings tomorrow.
What do you get when you celebrate three of your favorite things–a beautiful fall day, spending time with family, and experimenting with watercolors? A fall family watercolor fest–that’s how my mother, sister, daughter, and I spent the day. We had a great time painting, enjoying homemade treats, and sipping on cups of coffee and tea. I can’t think of a better way to spend the day. I hope your weekend was equally as sweet. Here are some photos of my fall family watercolor fest:
My kitchen table was the perfect place for a family watercolor fest. With all those windows, it offers plenty of light plus easy access to food and drinks (a must in my book) and a view of the backyard so I could watch the puppies enjoying the beautiful fall weather.
It can get challenging to paint when the late afternoon casts deep shadows on your work, but we carried on, determined to complete our paintings in one session.
Normally when we get together there’s a lot of talking involved, but things got pretty quiet when everyone was concentrating on their work. Painting can be so relaxing.
We each walked away with a completed painting to remember this special day. That makes the paintings even more precious in my book.
And here’s my German Shepherd, Mary. She laid at my feet for hours while I worked on my painting. She’s such a loving, faithful companion. I’m so blessed to have her as part of my family.
My daughter’s Yorkie, Little Stevie, preferred to watch the activities from his perch on the back of the couch. He’d a delightful little imp.
I just completed this painting a few minutes ago and was so pleased with the results that I had to post it right away. I darkened the background a bit behind the leaves on the right-hand side to increase the contrast, I added veins to the leaves using a negative painting technique, and added veining to the rose petals using a very diluted brilliant red violet, though next time I would dilute it even further because I think the lines should be even paler than what’s shown here.
As I mentioned previously, this painting was based on a tutorial from Janet Whittle’s book, “Roses in Watercolour.” Since Ms. Whittle stressed that using the right type of paper was very important to achieving this type of background wash and I didn’t have the paper she recommended on hand (Arches 140 lb. Not paper), I practiced her wash technique on the four types of paper I had on hand–Fabriano Artistico Hot Pressed, Fabriano Artistico Cold Pressed, Canson Aquarelle/Acuarela Cold Pressed, and Aquarelle Arches Cold Pressed. It was a worthwhile experiment because the results varied widely with each type of paper, and the Aquarelle Arches Cold Pressed 140-lb. paper was the hands-down winner.
My palette consisted of Winsor Newton opera rose, aureolin, quinacridone gold, Winsor red, indanthrene blue, Winsor violet, and perylene maroon as well as Schmincke brilliant blue violet, May green, helio green, and brilliant red violet.
I will definitely be using this wash technique in the future as well as some of the other techniques I learned from this book. I highly recommend it.
I worked on these Maigold roses for several hours again today and still didn’t finish the painting. I got close, but lost my light and had to stop for the night. I still have a few leaves to finish, some shadows to refine, some edges to clean up, and I need to add faint veining in the petals. For a tutorial on how to create a similar colorful background, pick up a copy of Janet Whittle’s book, “Watercolor Roses.”
How do you tame a wild watercolor background? Add some wild roses. Here’s a sneak peak of a painting I’ve been working on this weekend. I worked on this painting for a good portion of the day but had to stop when the lighting changed. If all goes well, I’ll be posting the completed painting tomorrow.
Sometimes you have to leave your comfort zone to make magic happen. Today I left my comfort zone, slapped a variety of colors of paint on my paper, tilted the paper to encourage the colors to run together, and came up with this wildly intense background.
Those are roses I’ve sketched (the shiny areas are masking fluid). Can I take a traditional subject like roses and combine them with this wild background and come up with something magical? Only time will tell….
My niece asked me to paint another fantasy illustration, so this one’s for you Jenny. This painting is based on a tutorial from “How to Draw and Paint Fairyland,” by Linda Ravenscoft. My palette consisted of alizarin crimson, opera rose, new gamboge, naples yellow, and raw umber from Winsor Newton; brilliant red violet and may green from Schmincke (I’m really loving this brand of paint); and jaune brilliant no. 2 from Holbein (this makes great skin tones).
Here’s a close up of her face (I like how you can see the texture of the paper in this shot):
And here’s a shot with the natural, late afternoon light in my studio (I like this one best):
This painting is based on a tutorial from the book, “Tulips in Watercolor,” by Fiona Peart. I’m really loving the intensity of the colors in this painting. I only have two more paintings to go, and then I’ll have worked my way through the entire book. Watercolors on cold pressed Acquarello Artistico paper by Fabriano.