Category: Watercolour painting

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Enjoy art projects in pink

Pen and watercolor illustration

Illusions and visions

There is no “undo” command in our life. This makes everything we pursue, experience or achieve absolutely irreversible. Everything is a small moment, frozen in time. As I’m typing these words or you’re reading them, the past washes this moment away and puts it in the big folder of our lifetime’s history. The cold sun rays of the disappearing day are pouring over the nearby rooftops and the highest tree branches. This creates an illusion of warmth in the air. Yet, it is an illusion. As the quiet stream of twilight starts flowing across the sky, we will find ourselves in even colder conditions, minus thirty or so. That’s why we create art projects in sunny colors.

Apple blossoms and rose watercolor

Uplifting colors for grey mood

How does this relate to pink projects? Very simple: when the environment is unfriendly, we should try doing something pleasant. For me, that is drawing and painting something which takes me far away from this cold winter day and places in surroundings where I’d love to be. This is an easy mental transformation into a feeling-better state. We actually did similar project in the classroom. The first project was all about yellow and orange, and the next one was painting flowers in pink. These projects can be done by absolutely everybody whether they have any experience or not. They are as basic as one, two, three.

Step 1

Choose the reference image and draw the main lines with pencil or do a drawing from memory.

Drawing for pen and watercolor blossoms

Step 2

Draw over the most suitable lines with a black pen. Black ink can be used, as well, if somebody has it.

Drawing for pen and watercolor blossoms

Step 3

Follow the reference image or your imagination and apply colors which seem to be most fitting the drawing. We apply color on one leaf or on one petal at a time. We start with light washes and go over some areas with more intense color. Wash out connection lines with pure water.

Pen and watercolor illustration

The result

Drawings which do not look perfect at all become extremely beautiful with this approach. We were applying washes and glazes of yellow, red, crimson red and dark red with blue. Any color was applied using various intensity. These projects took us about 3 hours in total. The rose was painted in a similar way. Since it is pure watercolor, I used only watercolor paint without black pen.

Pen and watercolor illustration

Start seeing

Just one more thing:  everybody can draw and paint and, therefore, create for themselves a beautiful rescue place where to avoid troubles and hardships. However, we have to learn seeing things in an artistic way first. This feels almost like developing a much better perception of the surrounding world. We are used to see everything just walking by and running over. Now, it is time to start noticing lines, shapes, shadows, colors, contrast and features that make this particular subject attractive. That is the moment when we can put it on paper or canvas.

Pen and watercolor illustration

Drawing and painting with watercolor is fun. Such illustrations and paintings are beautiful and look fantastic in your art portfolio, on your wall and when published.

Get inspired; Ideas

Learn how to paint: Art classes

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My rainy day sketches and paintings sparkle with light, and we have finally summer weather

Sketching in watercolor what is the advantage

Sketches sparkle with light probably because the weather has been no fun. The Latvian weather has been very unpredictable. Since I am always drawing and painting mostly from life and using real objects, that was quite upsetting. I did not get all depressed, but moved on as much as I could.

For time saving purposes, I am sometimes outlining and drawing with black pen. I do not have to use glasses that way which is great because glasses can destroy proportions and distort the visual perception.

Be curious, be creative

I love cheerful colors!

We were doing parrots in the Exotic birds drawing workshop. Everybody loved them!

Sketches sparkle with light
Parrot trio

Sketches sparkle with light
Apples were growing in the sister’s garden, so were the red currants.

I was very happy also that I finally obtained the St. Petersburg watercolor set. I wanted these paints ever since I was a small kid when I saw one artist painting with them. I got them now at the age of 55, actually my birthday is just some weeks away, so it’s a nice birthday gift for myself. These paints are said to be the best in the world just because they are made of the purest and best really natural ingredients. I love these watercolor paints: they have excellent transparency,  brightness and they are very pure.

Be curious, be creative

The sun is beating down today, so we are having some Mexico weather this week. Isn’t that crazy how I was freezing in my leather coat just a week ago, and it is advisable to wear nothing more than a swimming suit at the moment? Too bad, no swimming pool anywhere here, but I suppose, I can survive that, too!

Sketching in watercolor what is the advantage

I am a child of the sun, my horoscope sign is leo, and this immediately changes my inner settings. I don’t care how hot it gets, whenever it is sunny, I am happy.

I would love to express the hugest THANK YOU to all those fellow bloggers, friends and students who did not stop encouraging me during the bad weather period and are still following my trip to Europe, Latvia.

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Try something different: painting with sponge

sponge painting

Have you tried painting watercolor with sponge? I decided that adding some new technique wouldn’t disturb. Let’s give it a try.

This time it was application of watercolor using a sea grass sponge. It worked well with acrylic (I will post these pictures separately), it seemed it could work nicely with watercolor, as well.

I could see after the first attempts that it is advisable to test colors first. There are lots of brands, many types of paints, it’s hard to know whether the chosen colors will or won’t mix well. The big fear was not to overdo right at the beginning. Sponging sort of takes away easily, and it takes no time to lose focus and to forget where exactly was I intending to place any particular paint. I did not plan for these paintings, I just got straight to sponging. I would advise anybody who is trying this technique to plan a small bit ahead. Sponge allows to create beautiful watercolor backgrounds, like distant trees or forests, it is amazing how quickly some spots get textures, and it is a fantastic for layering watercolor paints. Simply don’t forget to test your colors.

It seemed that Hooker’s green light and dark in combination with French ultramarine, Cobalt blue, Payne’s grey, Lemon yellow and Burnt sienna or Burnt umber worked better than Sap green in any combination unless I mixed only 2 or 3 colors in all layers.

Seagrass sponges are inexpensive and available at any art store, that’s at least where I got them. Every sponge is slightly different, so will be textures created using these sponges. I cut my sponge in smaller parts, and used every time that part which seemed to be the most fitting. Sponge has to be made wet at first, and we should squeeze out all excess water before picking up the paint with it.

Sponge works on wet paper well (wet in wet application), and we can paint nice distant backgrounds this way. It creates thicker layers and attractive irregular shapes when applied on dry paper. It is possible to create the entire painting this way, and it looks especially great when we combine different techniques.

Generally speaking, application of a sponge helps loosen up, and sponge is a good tool to vary paint application techniques.

sponge painting
Sponge with watercolor

sponge backgrounds
Small creek, we used sponge for background

Layering quite a few colors with sponge is interesting: we never know how it will look at the end!

sponge painting
Spring forest: watercolor painting using sponge, it is quite large, 18 x 24 inches

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Spring time watercolors: bright, sunny and cheerful

Garden anemones, spring time painting

Spring time: we’ve been waiting long for sun to show up and wake up the nature. At my studio, we have been very busy with creating spring time watercolors, too. We keep enjoying the pleasure of being able to create something great, cheerful and uplifting. That would be art which is simple, but speaks to us.

Pink spring anemones: watercolor

Watercolor painting of pink garden anemones: demo version for adult watercolor class

While there’s some useful advice contained in all learning materials, it’s most often a description of a common, basic and simple techniques and approaches. When you try painting in reality and on your own, it might seem more difficult. However, we have to start with something, therefore, we can do easy spring time nature paintings.

Spring time paintings

Kristina is genuinely happy since the chickadee painting came out extremely nice

Presence of immediate advice is extremely important. That not only speeds up everything, but also provides students with plenty of information in a very short period of time, allowing to experience and apply everything right there and right away.

This is a very direct and very immediate “how to”. Any question receives answer on the spot, any problem gets solved when it occurs.

Spring time paintings

Watercolor wash: spontaneous and simple application of watercolor

Students, who want to learn, are very happy with my classes, and so am I. It’s always a pleasure to see fast development of young, talented artists. It is great to know that I have contributed quite a lot to this development.

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Paintings in progress: experimenting with medium and surfaces

Pastel painting in progress, still life painting in pastel

Experimenting with subjects and medium

Experimenting is the force behind creation of new art. I love experimenting.  I think most artists try new materials and challenge themselves time to time. We cannot just paint one and the same subject in the same way all life. Life is too short not to find out what else is out there. In order to create these paintings, I have to try different medium options.

Experimenting with surfaces

I just found out that watercolor canvas is not my preferred surface because paint comes off much easier than it goes on, but it was interesting to try painting on this surface. It was quite a struggle to cheat the paint onto watercolor canvas. I had to wait until the first layer is completely dry and then try adding more paint. See how gorgeous it actually came out: Sunny still life, finished years later

Experimenting with medium

I’m combining acrylic ground, watercolor, pastel fixative and pastels in order to draw with pastels on a stretched canvas. While it is a multi-step process, the small canvas looks really good.

Pastel painting

Disadvantage of using glass

I’m also stretching watercolor paper on bars, and I’m doing this because I don’t like how paintings look behind the glass. Frame contributes to perception of an image, but glass reflections definitely disturb it. I have watercolor paintings under museum quality glass, and there is still present reflection. It feels as if color and image are not directly approachable as with acrylic paintings.

paintings in progress: amaryllis acrylic painting
First layers of acrylic paint in amaryllis painting

Challenges with any medium

I don’t think, there is any absolutely flawless medium. Pastels leave a lot of dust and cause respiratory problems. They need to be preserved immediately. Acrylic paintings are easy to store and hang, but paint dries out almost immediately, and any correction requires to go over a big area. Watercolor paintings on paper need to be preserved and framed. Glass, mat board and frame increase the selling price a lot.

Creating a still life
My set-up is visible in the background

Avoiding necessity to frame art

My goal is to paint on any surface combining any mediums so that I don’t have to frame my paintings. To be honest, good frames look fantastic. However, framing many hundreds of paintings is very expensive and time-consuming. It is almost impossible at this point since there are too many paintings. Art buyers actually like paintings without frames. That allows them framing or not framing later, and using frames they prefer to.

combining pastel and watercolor on canvas
Such art doesn’t require frame and can be used without it

Paintings in progress

None of these paintings is finished yet, but I like how they are coming out. I’m experimenting so far, but I will see soon what works the best. It’s also fun to use watercolor pencils, pastel pencils, pastel sticks, watercolor on canvas, on paper, on board and just take a risk. The result might be unpredictable, but I don’t think it’s going to be unacceptable. Painting from real set-up is also the way I like it. Update: please, see newer articles for all finished paintings.