Tag Archives: watercolour

365 Days of Art – Flowers

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…..days 42 and 43

Yesterday I left the house at 8:00 in the morning and didn’t get home till almost 8:00 in the evening. I spent the day cross country skiing but almost five hours of my day was spent on a bus getting to and from the ski centre. On the way home I pulled out my phone and my sketchbook and looked up some photos I had taken of flowers that I thought might make good subjects for sketching.

It was pretty dark in the bus so it was a good opportunity to work on my blind or semi-blind contour drawing skills.

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Today I took those drawings and redrew them in a larger sketchbook, adding more detail and shading. With the rose I added colour with watercolours.

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365 Days of Art – Chinese Brush Painting

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…..days 38 and 39

I started these late last night and then finished in the wee hours of this morning. So I guess that still counts as a painting a day.

I’ve always liked the simplicity of Chinese Brush Painting but there’s nothing simple about it. I can see why Chinese artists take years to master their craft. I took this book out of the library as a reference. It’s beautifully illustrated but I’ve discovered that I’m not very good at following directions from a book. I’m in too much of a hurry to take the time to read all the directions. I’m much better with a video demonstration but I did enjoy this process so I think I will go back and read some of the chapters.

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365 Days of Art – The Bad With the Good

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…..days 36 and 37

Not everything that I make do I necessarily like. This is a journey of learning and practising skills in art. I started with watercolour still life and then landscapes when I started painting at 50. I’ve dabbled in so many different art genres that I haven’t mastered one. I’m going back to basics. Here are two studies of apples and bananas. I need to keep practising.

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365 Days of Art – Text Pages

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…..day 33

Today’s class with Carla Sonheim was to create art papers using text. I enjoyed this process. I used watercolour paper and a variety of pens and ink to create these papers. I found a couple of poems in my Roald Dahl Treasury and I copied them onto some of the sheets. The idea is to fill the paper with words and try not to leave too much white space. I plan to use some of these in my next collage assignment.

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365 Days of Art – Geometric Doodle

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….day 24

I went back to Creative Bug and decided to attempt another pattern done in watercolour. This one was pretty open ended. Lisa Congdon encouraged us to try and not copy her piece but come up with our own colours and shapes. I think I’d like to try this with acrylics next time or maybe even do one in collage.

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365 Days of Art – “I’m a Circle”

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…..day 23

In Carla Sonheim’s on-line class today the prompt was ‘I’m a circle’. She provided a link that showed the origins of the yellow smiley face. If you’re interested go here.

I decided to continue practising painting free hand with watercolour and of course I chose the circle. I purposely overlapped the circles to see how the watercolours would react and then I drew in the smiley faces in-between the circles.

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365 Days of Art – Days 14 and 15

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….still getting inspiration from Lisa Congdon on Creative Bug

Days 14 and 15 are patterns with watercolour. The first is nautical flags. Not my favourite to date but a good exercise in painting geometric shapes freehand. The second one is a bold floral was more fun to do. I wouldn’t mind playing around with this one by trying it with different shapes and colours.

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365 Days of Art – Day 13

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…..more patterns from Creative Bug

This latest pattern that I worked on from Lisa Congdon’s daily videos was the Matisse pattern of fern leaves. The recommendation was to use gauche paints but at the moment I don’t have any here at home. I think I left the ones that I have up at the cottage which is probably not a good thing because they will probably freeze over the winter. In fact, they are probably frozen solid already.

I used watercolours but I can see why she recommends gouache. Watercolours are very translucent where the gouache paints are much more opaque.

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365 Days of Art – Landscape on Yupo Paper

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….day 8 of my year-long challenge

With this piece I tried to direct the thread to create a landscape. Tricky! I used acrylic inks again for the threading and watercolour to fill in the spaces. When you work on yupo paper you have little control over how the paint dries but then that’s one of the reasons why I like to work with it. This piece is also 9″ x 12″.

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