Here are a few projects that I’ve been working on with my daughters as we learn how to watercolor together. These are kits from Let’s Make Art and we selected the Floral Truck to start with and shared the ink between us. There was still plenty left if we wanted to do it again.
The Art of Creative Watercolor by Danielle Donaldson is a book I’ve been working through and have enjoyed her whimsical style. Here are some more of her “Littles” and also followed up by one that I created on my own.
Here’s the latest in my water coloring journey and clueless mentor to small pliable minds… this time the subject was Pokémon. But to be honest, I have no clue which ones unless it was one of the traditional classic starters. So in this case unknown with Bulbasaur sitting enjoy the night sky.
I really have no clue on how to watercolor property but I’m studying and watching lots and lots of videos. It seems easy when I watch someone else do it but I haven’t found the right combination for me to make it work the way I want. Especially the wet on wet techniques where I see the colors spread it amazing details. Ah, but alas, at least someone in my house thinks I’m a pro and has asked me to teach her.
I’ve continued to work through the book The Art of Creative Watercolor by Danielle Donaldson. Here are some more creations from her book that I’ve mimicked using different papers and different watercolor mediums.
Still trying to figure out my watercolor vibes but this time I’ve upgraded to Arches hot press paper that Jennifer shared with me. I immediately noticed a huge difference and was a lot more relaxed when using it. I’ll have to put some of that stuff on my wish list!!
I wanted to show some of my past watercolor attempts which were from a few weeks ago. This one features Dragon Pull My Finger rubber stamp from Whimsy Stamps. I love the images by Dustin Pike and his dragons are so easy to color…even if it is with watercolors.
I would say I had some difficulty with the watercolors, paper, brush or something. As you can see on the hand and the lamp, I tried to blend too much on the paper and scrubbed the paper away. Overall, it was somewhat frustrating and I wanted it to be more defined. So I pulled out the colored pencils and did some touch up work.
I like this result much better and felt that I salvaged the image. I can still see where the blue brush marker was used to color the sky in the background so I’ve been watching out for that to avoid. In the before and after, I can definitely see a difference on the eyes, tummy and lamp.
I had seen a gorgeous loose watercolor painting of a winter scene with aspen trees and was very inspired by it. I thought, that should be easy. Right?! Well, not so much for me with watercolors at the moment. I sketched out the image and tried a wet on wet technique. Then I didn’t let it dry long enough and proceed to add some details – and well, you can see how that went.
In hindsight, I can see areas where there was something good going on so it’s not all that bad. I did slightly learn from it so that’s a plus. I’ll have to revisit something like this in the future and see how much I’ve progressed. It’ll be a doozy of a before and after, I’m sure.
This is Bob. Say Hi to bob. He like salty things and standing in the sun. I like Bob. I actually met Bob on the farm while visiting a friend. However, believe me that Bob in real life was a lot more interesting, albeit not as colorful.
For this image, I sketched out my image lightly with pencil then continued to experiment using the Karin Brushmarker Pro watercolor markers. I mainly created a pool of ink then used a watercolor brush to the paper. The white highlights were a combination of a gel pen and white gesso.
I’ve been getting into watercolor and one of the books I came across was The Art of Creative Watercolor by Danielle Donaldson. She has a fun whimsical style that I like and thought that was a good place to dabble. One of the things she draws are wonky people she calls “Littles” so in this project, I picked out a few of my favorites to color. Some of these are altered or combined but mostly are mostly examples from the book.
Here’s the group of Littles all together. I went back in and fixed the blotch on the troll’s shirt then darkened the lines in some places, used a white gel pen and splattered colored water to finish. I didn’t enjoy working with the Brea Reese Watercolor Creams so I’ll skip those the next time. The rest are still on the table and I’ll try this again with another sheet of Littles.
