Watercolors Practice

When I'm short on time, looking for inspiration, or checking to see how a painting works, I often get out my pen and watercolors. The pen is to challenge and grow my drawing skills, so not to get too fussy about my marks.

The transparency of watercolors and the light airiness they give to a painting is such a contrast to the thick application of oil that is used with my palette knife paintings. It's always a nice change. Here are some of the little paintings in my journal. You might recognize a few of them from works I've also done in oils.

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A Boat a Day

Like all of the watercolors I've been doing, this was drawn with a fine black permanent pen before it was painted. I have been pushing myself to draw this way and I feel as though my confidence with drawing is improving. Oddly enough, it forces me to be loose instead of erasing five times to get that perfect line. It is what it is!

5x7 Pen & Watercolor

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Watercolor Elephant

It's hard to believe that I waited as long as I did to paint an elephant with my watercolors. This one was done in my moleskine journal. I love the soft easiness of it. The chickadee was also done in my journal.

Room with a View

We weren't disappointed at all when we saw the view from our window in Firenze. This was the straight on view, and a view of the Duomo off to one side. It's the terra cotta roofs that I'm drawn to. All of that warmth and color. Well, here is my attempt at this spectacular view, with watercolors.

5x7 Pen & Watercolor

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Ponte Vecchio

My husband and I went to Florence in 2006, before we had our boys. We had such an amazing time exploring another country together. My cousin was also living and studying there at the time, so we had a great companion on two of the days. Great memories I hold close to my heart of beautiful sights, great food, and hidden little treasures we discovered while there. So great to be able to capture these in paintings.

I'm really working on my drawing--these watercolors are all done with a pen, so no erasing! This means they are... perfectly flawed. 

watercolor on paper 4x6

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January Painting Challenge

I have spent the entire month of January participating in a painting challenge. The challenge was organized by Leslie Saeta, an artist I took my first (and only, up to this point) painting workshop with last March. The rules were to try and paint a painting per day for 30 days. Not sure how successful my numbers were, but I do feel I gave myself plenty of challenges this month.

I started out posting two paintings that had been commissioned as Christmas presents and hadn't made it to my blog yet. Then I painted about 13 small oil paintings my usual way, with a palette knife, including a five-set commission. It had been such a busy December and then, a kind of pressure to produce in January and I started to lose inspiration. I think I kind of shut down. 

This was when I called my artist grandma. I wasn't looking to produce, just to let loose! We did a few paintings using watercolors on Yupo paper--one I shared on my blog. The next day I went out and purchased some watercolors and did my next five tiny paintings with those. I was feeling inspired again, but with a totally different medium and tools. I definitely pushed myself as an artist. 

I know my paintings probably don't look cohesive or like they came from the same artist, but maybe they didn't! I'd like to think I've grown, or at least stretched a bit.

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A Black Swallowtail

I took this photograph years ago and have always wanted to paint it. With watercolors I can just grab my little papers, pen, and travel paints and do it. The process for what I'm doing is just so much more convenient, especially with two boys underfoot. I mix as I go instead of mixing out the whole palette as I do with my oils. Hmmm. Maybe I will give this a try with oils--risky!

4x6 watercolor on paper

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