Adventures in Art, Product Design, Home Decor, Cooking, and Gardening
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.
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:
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.”
Good morning, everyone. How was your weekend? Mine was busy. I spent time visiting with relatives from Ohio, went to the D.C. Big Flea antique show, visited a local farmer’s market, and did some housework, laundry, and yard work. And I managed to squeeze in one quick watercolor painting. This purple fairy is based on a tutorial in Linda Ravenscroft’s book, “How to Draw and Paint Fairies.” It’s an indispensable source of information for new watercolorists.
Normally, I paint fairy wings quite pale, so I thought I’d change things up a bit and use a more intense color. What do you think, are the wings too dark? Here’s a close up view of the fairy’s face. Thanks for visiting. Have a great day!
My niece, Karen, also painted rainbow tulips then tried her hand at stippling with a micron pen, choosing colors to match each flower. She painted the cloudy background without the use of masking fluid, which can be tricky, but she did a fabulous job.
I’m still completing my painting since I spent more time as a host, helper, photographer, and instructor during our family paint-a-thon than I actually did painting. I’ll be posting my painting next.
February 18th will mark the one-year anniversary of my blog. Since I began this blog to share my efforts on learning how to paint with watercolors, my daughter, Greta, thought it would be a good idea to repaint our first painting and share the results here. We’ve developed a lot of new skills in the past year–and I’ll share some lessons learned in an upcoming post–but we still have a lot to learn. Our plan is to repaint this little lion–which we intentionally kept simple since it was our first effort–each year on our anniversary to show our progression.
My blog has grown into much more than an art blog over the past year. I’ve also branched out and included posts about the things I love most–art, cooking, interior design, gardening, and spending time with my family and animal friends. Life is good, and I’m pleased to share the goodness with you. I’d like to thank my loyal followers and readers for all their encouragement and lovely comments over the past year and I hope to continue to share all the goodness life has to offer.
This was such a simple drawing, yet I found these morning glories quite challenging to paint. Challenging = difficult, which usually means it was a learning experience, and that’s a good thing. This painting was based on a drawing lesson from Janet Whittle’s book, “How to Draw Exotic Flowers in Simple Steps.”
While my daughter was painting her lovely orange tulips, I worked on these morning glories. This is a redo of these morning glories that I worked on last week:
I decided the yellow and turquoise background was too distracting and wanted to try a more monochrome painting. I also changed the proportion of some of the petals and glazed the flowers with blue. Which painting do you prefer?
My daughter chose to paint this Girl with a Koi Fish during our fall family watercolor fest. I particularly like the color scheme she used. The original line art was a free download by CrimsonPearls available at DeviantArt.com.
I took a break from botanical painting tonight to try something new. I don’t think I’m ready to live in the land of make believe yet, but it’s always fun to visit. Watercolors on cold pressed Acquarello Artistico paper by Fabriano.