Category Archives: watercolour

Doodle rectangles with Ecoline liquid watercolour.

art, Ecoline, watercolour

You know that feeling when you are anxious and overthinking and you just want your brain to stop.  Mindfulness and breathing are useful tools, but then doodling can be pretty good too, at allowing yourself to be in the present moment.  This is what I was doing yesterday after watching linaforrester on instagram.  I loved the colours she used (bright green and yellow) but I wanted to try my own colour combo.  I have a few Ecoline liquid watercolours that I haven’t touched in years so I made up an orange and a purple and gave it a go.  Sadly my ‘Delicate surface Frogtape – low tack painter’s masking tape’ ripped my paper in a couple of areas when I was very carefully peeling it back.  It may be that the paper pad I was using was too old (the cover had come off so don’t know what it was) or that I was leaning on it too hard while doodling. Hey – ho these things happen.  It was fun to do.

small rectangles with doodles and watercolour
Doodle rectangles

 

Neurographic art

art, art journal, card, neurographic, watercolour

The last few months I have been concentrating on the garden and keeping it alive during the hot weather.  Lately we have been having the conservatory fixed so all the plants that lived there had to be kept on every available table in the house so I didn’t have access to any table.  I finally got my table back and had a go at some neurographic art.  There are quite a few you tube videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtKSOUV7U8U   that show you how to do it and although there is an actual therapeutic method,  I just did it for fun.

watercolour and pen painting with interlacing circles and rounded joinsThis is the painting,  and I took a photo of it and shrunk it to make a greetings card with a black border.  The card is white but as my scanner wasn’t working I had to use my phone camera to photograph it and the card wouldn’t sit flat so I just cropped the white of the card out.

Hellebores watercolour painting

art, painting, watercolour

I had a go at Ali Board’s watercolour of some lovely hellebores from her book (A beginner’s guide to Watercolour with Mixed media) .  I have many of these in my garden but they aren’t looking there best right now and, although I do have a few of my own photographs of my hellebores, they don’t look as nice as the ones in her book.

I quite like how it turned out but  I still need to get looser with the paint.  And the phone camera never picks up the subtle shading so it looks a bit bloby and patchy.

hellebores watercolour painting

Abstract self portrait.

abstract, art, painting, watercolour

Over on Artist Demo Days on facebook, Ali Hargreaves did a few demos on cubism (it is also on you tube here .   Now, although I don’t like cubism, I thought I would give the self portrait a go as Ali’s finished painting was really good. Cubism uses geometric shapes and lots of straight lines and for someone like me, who likes soft and fluffy, this was difficult.  My hair had grown a lot during the last lockdown and was quite wavy so I used crescent shapes to depict the waves and so that meant it didn’t look too harsh and jaggy.  I used  my Bockingford NOT block 300g as I was going to be using watercolour but I should possibly have used a smoother paper to get smoother outlines.  I ended up using a mixture of watercolour, Marvy le Plume pens, Copic pens, Stabilo pens,  Posca  pens, inktense pencils, gold and silver Pilot pens.  In a few places I added a little sparkle using a gel glitter pen and the outline is in black Faber Castell Pitt pen.  The pale colours in some Copic pens don’t show up well in the photograph, and the dark English red Marvy le Plume looks almost black in places..

You start by jotting down a few things you like and try to incorporate them into your painting.  You don’t have to use them all.

list of happy things

 

You begin with a soft pencil sketch then go over the outline with a permanent pen.

abstract self portrait outline

 

One you have your outline, it is just a matter of colouring in and adding some patterns – great fun.

abstract self portrait

My abstract self portrait is almost zentangle and not really cubism in my opinion.  At the end I added a bit of sparkle and a few gold and silver highlights but they don’t show up on the photo.  The whole process was a lot of fun.

My husband really likes this painting and wants it framed and hung on our wall.  Even though I really like it, I can see all the wee mistakes that I made.  Also I have painted right up to the edges and a mount will cover the detail at the edges.  So my dilemma is: do I start it again using smoother paper and leave a border for a mount, or,  just go ahead and get it framed?  I am quite a lazy artist and don’t like the thought of doing it all again, but I don’t really want to hang something with mistakes in it.  Anyhooo, there is no rush to make the decision as we are in another lockdown, and as we are shielding we aren’t going anywhere.

White cat painting.

art, painting, watercolour

white cat paintingGhost

Sharon Hurst did a demo of this painting of  white cat  (Ghost) over on Artist Demo Days on facebook.  Using salt on the watercolour background is very effective.  The turquoise colour doesn’t show up well though on this photograph.  It was fun to do although I may have made Ghost a bit jowly.

Physalis and poppy heads mixed media painting.

art, mixed media, painting, watercolour

Practising with some texture in this painting using sand mixed into acrylic paint.  This was painted using the techniques from  Alison Board’s first book ‘A beginners guide to watercolour with mixed media’.  I love this book as it it gives you lots of ideas and easy to understand instructions and I like Alison’s lively, loose painting style.  I used dried fern, fennel,  and acer leaves dropped into the wet background and left to dry.  There is also some lifting out, using a leafy stencil and a magic sponge eraser, and some messy splattering and dripping.  The camera hasn’t quite picked up on some of the subtle shading so it looks much better in real life.

Owl mixed media painting

art, mixed media, painting, watercolour

I am a big fab of Alison Board, so whenever I get the chance I watch her demos on Artist Demo Days on facebook, or on her own web page, then sometimes I have a  go myself.  However this one is from one of her workshops on the SAA site.  I used watercolour, gouache, brusho,  conte crayons and a fine liner pen.  Alison used a photo of Boo, a little owl, which has such a lovely face, and I love the splashy loose techniques she uses.

Puffin watercolour

art, watercolour, watercolour painting

I have been checking out the Artist Demo Days on facebook and love the demos and chit chat about painting.   This is one of Ali Boards demos of a puffin I did yesterday in order to  get a looser approach to painting.  It isn’t quite right but I am getting there.