Practicing Watercolor Painting in the Evening on the Couch I dearly love painting watercolors in the evening on the couch. It’s the best way I know to unwind the day and relax before bedtime. Practicing watercolor painting might not fit into every hectic day, but I can almost always squeeze in an hour or so …
Watercolors
Sketching People in Watercolors Figurative watercolors are – to me – one of the most challenging subjects to sketch and paint. Watercolor is already an ambitious medium, and under the pigments, there is a desire for anatomically accurate drawing. It’s also hard to capture an individual’s carriage and gesture, so the figure doesn’t look stiff …
Small Landscape Study in Watercolor with Colored Pencil Something about cypress trees makes me want to draw and paint them as small landscape studies. They remind me of giant green pencil leads or verdant paint brush tips pointing at the sky, and I’ve rendered them in watercolor, pencil, and printmaking over the years. My reference …
Small Landscape Study in Watercolor with Colored Pencil Read More »
Small Figurative Watercolor Studies I promised a segue from the gel plate monoprint marathon, so here we are, painting small (quick) figurative watercolor studies at the kitchen counter. But there are more gel plate prints coming, so be warned… I’m adding colored pencil to them this week. It’s noteworthy – to me – that one …
A New Adventure: Artist Mentorship I’m pleased to share that I’m offering artist mentorships through Mastrius.com. Mastrius helps motivated artists accelerate their creative journey by combining live, interactive mentorship within a trusted artists’ community. Have a look at the details here. It’s been a pleasure to encourage art-making and share process details with you on …
Adjusting Watercolor Paintings with Colored Pencils Colored pencils can transform a watercolor that missed the mark, got a little muddy, or craves a bit of pizazz. Do you have a cupboard of old watercolors from a previous chapter in your art adventure? And I bet you’re a better painter now, so you see what those …
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Figurative Watercolors – Sand Castle Princess I took a pause from my fun Mokulito printmaking experiments to work on this small watercolor of a sand castle princess. I’ve included a trio of helpful resource links for you below… read on. One of my favorite things about watercolor is the simplicity and portability of the medium. …
Painting Portraits in Watercolor Painting portraits in watercolor is ambitious. Figurative watercolors are some of my favorite subjects to paint, but they’re never easy (for me). Here is a post of useful watercolor portrait artist-links, tutorial videos, and tip articles to tuck into the coffers of your Painting Inspiration Cupboard. Fantasy Watercolor Portraits Here is …
Traveling with Watercolors Have you assembled a watercolor painting travel kit to take with you, outside your usual painting space? Here are some tips to put one together now, with a few variations. Don’t discard the idea of a small watercolor kit if you’re not the traveling type. Packing watercolors into a compact kit makes …
Still Life Watercolor Ideas, and the Grid System Several times a year, I set up still life vignettes to photograph and use as reference material in watercolor paintings. This watercolor (above) is from one of those photo sessions. If you’ve never created a catalog of scenes to paint, give it a try. (Here are some …
Still Life Watercolors – Painting Larger Using a Grid Drawing System Read More »
Watercolor Still Life Painting Subjects from Your Own Things Pretend you’ve been given a watercolor painting assignment to paint two small still life arrangements. For the first painting, the subject is a trinket from a gift shop. It’s cute and you like it, but you’ve never seen it before. In the second still life, you’ll …
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Figure Composition in Watercolor This is a figure study for a watercolor of my friend Aimee. I loved the composition the moment I saw it. She’s reading in the sun, against the backdrop of an incredible vista in Provence, France. I’m not sure I’ll go ahead with the larger painting of this scene right away. …
Painting a Still Life in Watercolors If you enjoy the accessibility of painting still life in watercolors, but struggle with deciding what to paint, this is for you. One of the reasons that still life as a watercolor painting subject is so powerful for artists is related to control. (Read this post –> about the …
Consider Brevity – Short Painting Sessions After Dinner I’m much obliged this week so this is brief; I have a watercolor sketch, a few great links for you, and a question too. This is a kitchen counter watercolor sketch (above). I painted incrementally, after dinner, over a few nights, at the kitchen counter. Have you …
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Painting an Urban Watercolor on Clear Gesso In a previous post, I mentioned an experiment with an urban building facade, painted in watercolor on clear gesso coated watercolor paper. You asked why, and what, and how, so lemme ‘splain…. What is Gesso? Gesso is an artist’s painting primer that feels similar to plaster. It’s applied …
Have You Tried Powdered Graphite under Watercolors? As an experiment, I used powdered graphite to lay out shapes and a loose value study from a cell phone image my son took. Adding wet media to powdered graphite can lift and mix the particles to create mud, so I was light handed in my brushwork and …
How Unremarkable White Tiles in a Kitchen Spawned Two Decades of Watercolor Paintings A couple of decades ago, I walked into the kitchen of a house we had just purchased. I turned to my husband and said: “These white tiles will have to go.” I imagined toothbrush-scrubbing strawberry juice and red wine from the white …
Watercolor Still Life Paintings from the Kitchen Read More »
Watercolor Painting of Cacti I went scouting for painting references at the Los Angeles Arboretum awhile ago. Local outdoor gardens are a good place to bring a cup of your favorite coffee to-go, and your camera. Wander the grounds that someone else has planted and manicured to snap reference photos of plants you don’t have in …
What is a Still Life? A still life (plural still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, and so on). With origins in the Middle Ages …
Watercolor Painting Over Pen and Ink Drawing – with a Tutorial Video Read More »
Prepping to Paint Still Life in Watercolor This post has a series of tips and resource links to help you with preparations and planning on your floral watercolor paintings. (Here are some examples [below] of floral still life set ups for watercolor snapped with my cell phone. You can use these to paint from if …
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Watercolor Landscape Studies in a Sketchbook I’m testing another watercolor sketchbook with a series of small watercolor landscape studies featuring coastal scenes. I used a ruler to grid 12 squares across a double page of a Hahnemühle Watercolor Sketchpad. (There may or may not have been accompanying crackers, olive tapenade and wine involved in this …
Coursing the Heliconi My friend Sarah recommended trying an Etchr Watercolor Sketchbook, so I bought this one to test the paper. Using the grid method, I combined elements from two reference photos for this Etchr Watercolor Sketchbook Figure study. My reference was a snapshot of my favorite model, MKH (who modeled for this watercolor portrait, …
Watercolor Sketchbook Practice Watercolor artists I’ve admired over the years write often about the importance of a sketchbook practice. Even so, I could never seem to reach for mine, let alone fill one. The slap-dash quality of the art in the last half of my college sketchbooks relays that I was rushing to “fill pages”, …
Watercolor Painting Sketchbook Studies Watercolor painting sketchbook studies of African violets became my meditation last week. I snapped a photo of a pink African violet in my kitchen – half in sunlight and half in shadow. I thought the image would be a good test of my new etchr labs watercolor sketchbook. (It’s good.) Minimalist …
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Where to Find Ideas for Watercolors Artists are in a hard crush to render our world in pigments, graphite, charcoal, etc. These days, we’re limited to finding inspiration inside our own homes during this pandemic. Whether you live in a studio apartment, a three story house, or a garage, there are always beautiful scenes to paint in watercolors. …
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Creating Watercolor Paintings of Your Own Kitchen Have you observed your kitchen as inspiration to paint a watercolor? Whether the room is dark or well-lit, cluttered or austere, frugal or grand, neat or piled with dishes, there’s inspiration for the taking. Artists have painted and sketched scenes from kitchens for hundreds of years. The intimacy …
Summertime Art Studio Planning Over the past 67 days (yikes!) of quarantine, the macadamia nut tree outside my studio window has erupted in fronds of shiny, new leaves. I’ll take this as a reminder that there are plenty of good things happening if we simply look for them. A fluffy squirrel (Mrs. Jetson) skitters up …
Exploring Watercolor and Charcoal Together I was sorting scanned image files in my archives, and I forgot about this watercolor and charcoal painting of an imagined scene. Eve is riding with her friend, a juvenile crow, exploring the garden, when a serpent in an apple tree beckons her to come closer. At the time, I …
Still Life Painting Design Ideas Still life painting in watercolor – especially interiors – is loaded with design opportunities to embellish. You can change the color palette of the room completely. Go ahead and edit the scene by removing objects, or adding others that weren’t really there. It’s like magic and you are the wizard! …
Still Life Painting Design Ideas – Adding Interest to your Art (even if it wasn’t there) Read More »
5 Instagram Artists Painting Still Life in Watercolor While we’re hunkering down and staying home, it’s nice to peruse some beautiful still life in watercolor. Seeing the fruits of another artist’s labor adds loft to a flat day, and encourages us to grab art supplies, and practice. (You weren’t thinking about comparing your work to …
Still Life in Watercolor- 5 Painters on Instagram Read More »
