Adventures in Art, Decorating, Cooking, and Gardening
My daughter went wild with color and decided to paint each petal a different color. How fun is this? She added texture using micron pens in colors that closely matched the paint color and chose to keep the background white so as not to compete with all the vibrant colors and fun texture.
Coming up next: my niece’s painting. I still haven’t completed my painting. Looks like I’ll be having another late-night painting session or two.
I’m so excited to show you my sister’s finished watercolor painting. The addition of the swirly texture–inspired by artist Cindy Dauer at TheSlumberingHerd.com–really made this painting come alive. My sister wasn’t thrilled with the dark green background–she felt it obscured the ink details–so I lightened it in Photoshop so she’d be more satisfied with the end result.
After I lightened the background I played with Photoshop’s Hue setting (Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation) and came up with several variations of her painting in different colors. It looks amazing in the different color combinations and would make a great art grouping in her new house. Are you ready to see this? I’m so excited to share!
In orange and teal. Fabulous!
In hot pink and lime. Be still my heart!
In purple and green. Delightful!
In yellow and aqua. What’s not to love? How do you like your painting now, sissy? It’s perfection.
This past weekend I hosted a family summer watercolor fest. My sister, niece, daughter, and I had a great time painting, chatting, singing Taylor Swift’s annoying song, “we are never-ever-ever getting back together” over and over again, and snacking on caramel macchiatos and homemade brownie cupcakes. The cupcakes were amazing; I’ll be posting the recipe next.
For this painting session we thought it would be fun to paint the same painting and compare our individual results. We took this challenge a step further and decided to add texture with pen and ink on top of the completed paintings. We were inspired by the work of artist Cindy Dauer and her Slumbering Herd. If you’re not familiar with Cindy’s work, check out her blog, The Slumbering Herd, and prepare to be delighted.
Here, I applied liquid frisket to mask out the tulips, leaves, and stems while I painted the cloudy background.
This is my niece, Karen’s painting in progress. It’s upside down in this view because I was sitting across from her when I snapped the photo.
This is my sister’s work in progress. She chose colors that closely resembled those in the reference photo, but then went crazy with ink and texture. You won’t believe how many looks she was able to achieve with this painting. I’ll be showing photos of the completed paintings next.
This Winsor Newton watercolor chart came in handy when we were choosing the color schemes for our paintings or trying to match a color in a reference photo. If you ever have an opportunity to host or join a painting party, I highly recommend them. They’re lots of fun and a great learning experience.
My daughter painted this sweet animal menagerie as a baby shower gift for her childhood friend, Samantha. I still remember Sam as a pink-cheeked, chubby little girl with snow-white blonde hair and the sweetest personality ever. Today she’s grown into a beautiful young woman who’s expecting her first child in a few short weeks. My, how time flies. I still feel like a new mom myself. I can’t believe how fast the years have flown by. I hope Sam enjoys her child and motherhood as much as I have. Children are such a blessing.
I really enjoyed painting this hydrangea fairy, although it was time consuming to paint all those petals. This is my first attempt at painting a red head. I was a skeptical that I could pull it off without ending up with a garish orange instead of lovely shades of red, but I think I pulled it off splendidly. For the fairy’s hair I used a combination of Indian red, Chinese orange, burnt umber, and caput mortuum violet, then added a light wash of Chinese orange on top, which really made her lovely red locks come alive. For the shading on the stem and dress, I used indigo and then added a wash of sap green. I’ll be using that combination of colors again–love it.
This painting is based on a tutorial in Barbara Lanza’s book, “Enchanting Fairies: How to Paint Charming Fairies and Flowers.” Here’s a close-up view:
I haven’t posted a painting in a while because I’ve been so busy with home maintenance and repair projects. I had an hour to spare this evening so I kept this painting sweet and simple. This painting is based on tutorials in Linda Ravenscroft’s books, “How to Draw and Paint Fairyland” and “How to Draw and Paint Fairies.”
How awesome is this watercolor painting? My daughter painted this rainbow zebra last night. She used a variety of different types of salt–table salt, sea salt, and kosher salt–to achieve the texture. Traditional table salt results in more subtle texture and coarse salt results in a larger, bolder texture. To create these textures, she sprinkled the wet paint with salt, which displaced the water and resulted in the texture you see above. I love how she encouraged the rainbow stripes to pool into the zebra’s mane and merge together randomly. She used a fan brush to create the texture in the mane and to spatter paint on top of the painting. Well done, my girl, well done!
It was a dreary day today–cloudy, cool, and drizzly–not the best day to be outside but a perfect day to stay inside and paint. The soft lighting allowed me to sit by the kitchen windows and paint for hours without interruption from the late afternoon sun. These pink miltonia orchids were a pleasure to paint. The variegated leaves were easy to paint and the brightly colored petals really pop against the dark green background.
This painting was based on a tutorial in the book, “Orchids in Watercolor” by Ann Mortimer.
Here’s a peek at my latest painting. I hope to finish it this evening. I’ve been so busy with spring cleaning and home improvement projects that I’ve had little time to paint. I have several interior decorating projects underway, porch and deck makeovers in progress, a massive yard cleanup, custom curtains to sew, and a few painting tasks to complete–some involving plenty of spray paint (you know how much I love spray paint). Oh, and lots of fun shopping with my mom. I can’t wait to finish all these projects and share the results with you.
I hope you’re enjoying the warm spring weather as much as I am.
My daughter surprised me with this lovely iPad case featuring my rose petal fairy yesterday. She ordered it from CafePress. I like that the image is a full bleed and that it’s printed on both sides of the case. If you’re not familiar with CafePress, hop on over there and check it out. You can have your artwork produced on hundreds of items like business cards, thank you notes, coffee mugs, household goods, apparel, computer accessories, jewelry, and lots more.
You can create a private shop and purchase items for yourself or open a public shop (similar to an Etsy shop) and sell products featuring your artwork to anyone wishing to purchase them. I spent the evening creating a shop, now I have to get busy and fill it full of goodies.