WATERCOLOUR LOVE

 I am excited to share my new palette with you, which arrived this morning in the post (on a Sunday, Yay!) I did not wait long to fill it with my pigments, and am really looking forward to paint with it! I can see that this palette allows me to organise and paint with about 5 times more pigments than my two ceramic plates that I was using. The palette has 33 pans; my two ceramic plates I coud get maybe about 6-8 dots of pigment. Also, there was often not enough pigment on the plate, so that I had to "squirt" some more and use it when it was wet, which is more wasteful. So with this palette the idea is to let the pigment dry overnight and then use as you would a pan. It is better than a ready-filled pan, from what I understand in my research, because the colours are your own, and the colours are usually brighter when loaded onto your brush. I used this palette (affiliate link*), and is similar to what Jenna Rainey recommended on her YouTube video . Some of you may have experi...

  I was overwhelmed today and did not feel like painting, because there was just so much I wanted to do, and so much more I have to learn. Coupled with this is the fear of failure, and of making mistakes. But, like Steve Mitchell on the Mind of Watercolour says, it is important to overcome this fear of failure, and forge ahead with your painting, because, at the very least, you will come away with having learned something! But woudn't it be so much better if you could "fix" the mistakes that you make? And so, on this balmy winter morning in Melbourne, I looked at my paintings and saw a problem with my painting of two galahs. The above picture is the "after", where I attempted to cover this up. Below is the "before" painting. As you can see, the bird on the left does not look right on my first attempt. So, with the help of YouTube techniques of how to blend watercolour paint wet on dry , I managed to improve my painting!  Life's a bit like that too,...

Today I started painting my first ever landscapes. I got a bit of teaching from Nicki Traikos at Life I Design - I recommend her online courses.  The painting above is done on the cheaper Fabriano paper 25% cotton, and it turned out quite well, I thought. The painting is also A5 in size. This makes it a bit easier as you don't have to paint the details too much. The flowers in the foreground are very "loose" and impressionistic. So, spurred on by this, I tried my hand at painting a seascape and a sunset -  This is painted on Arches 300 gsm paper and is A4 in size. It looks better in the photo. I have found that the mind of the observer fills in a lot of gaps in the details left out by the painting. This is a rendition of a seascape at sunset, with the foreground flowers leaving a lot to the imagination! Onward I went! Again, A4 Arches 300 gsm cold-pressed paper. I have finished it off with a favourite quote, and have updated my listing in my Etsy shop. The last painting ...

 I love this quote which really speaks to me: I am thinking it will make a great card to show encouragement and support. This quote gives me hope that it will all end well, and sometimes I need that! There is a lot of sadness in this world, and my belief is that, as we go through the difficulties, we equilibrate each time, and move on. Some things are hard to get over, but, as in the famous words by Robert Frost, "the best way out is always through" (another favourite quote). I used size 4 and 0 round Princeton Neptune brushes, M. Graham paints in Ultramarine and Prussian Blue, and Fabriano cold pressed paper 25% cotton.

I just love this rainy cold weather for painting! I am lucky that I do not feel the cold as much as I used to, and am less thermally challenged now that I have hit middle age! This painting is another fave quote, and I wanted to update my Etsy shop listing to reflect what I have done with it now. This quote reminds me of how each of us is a miracle, and that our dreams are what make us rise high and reach for our goals. The forces that nurture life, the physical constants that make up the basic ingredients of light, water, atmosphere, are all so finely tuned and precise, that even if altered by a gazillionth of a decimal place, would make life in this Universe, and on this planet, impossible. I think about this and am amazed! To me it means that we are not here by chance. Each life on this planet was planted here for a purpose, and we each have a responsibility to our neighbours, our families, and our communities, and ourselves, to nurture and enhance the life experience. I used M. Gr...

  My latest project is this branch of leaves that I have learned from Jenna Rainey's YouTube video , which is the complete beginner's guide to watercolour painting! It is a great watch but will take an hour and a half of your time. I also think she is an expert painter, and how she does a "simple" painting will not be the same as how a beginner might.  But one of the important things I have learned with this journey is that the goal is not to paint exactly as an instructor does, but to learn from the process of copying and develop your own style. It is so easy to say that, but the hardest thing to do! An update on brushes - I have ordered two more sizes - 12 and 16 round. This was partly from watching Jenna's video, where she uses a size 16 round as one of her go-to brushes, but also because I realised that to paint this branch to cover an A4 sheet of paper I will need a bigger brush. I find that to get the effect you want with the watercolour paint - whether it i...

 Here is a favourite phrase that I have painted a number of times. I used the best materials I could afford, including Arches 300 gsm watercolour paper, and M. Graham paints. I used round size 0, 2, 4 and 8 brushes. I looked, and felt I needed to tidy up the lettering and add more foliage - so I went ahead and did that: Already looking better - hmm, but not there with the lettering I feel.  So, this morning, as I sat in my room on a mild winter's day in Melbourne, I felt moved to paint this message again. I continued with the loose floral style and came up with this: I do not mind painting a phrase or saying over and again, because I learn each time, and I love doing it. I'll keep working on it, and updating it in my Etsy shop , and this iteration might not last for long!

 New hobbies are an exhilarating part of the journey of life, but there is a bit of pain. And that is in finding out the hard way about the materials that suit you best for what you want to do. I hope to share today some of what I have learnt along this journey which may be of interest if you would like to paint like me. So I have done a bit of research, and I am still finding out more about products that work for me. The painting I do is small-scale, on no bigger than A4 sheets of paper at my desk in my office. And I paint mainly florals, which I am learning to paint in a "loose" style, rather than a photorealistic style. With this in mind, let us delve in!  PAPER I love Arches watercolour paper, as reviewed by Steve Mitchell in the Mind of Watercolour. This paper is especially good for loose style painting as it gives a great result with "wet on wet" techniques that allow the different colours of paint to seep into one another. It is also great for more realistic ...

 I love this quote and I have illustrated it a couple of times, and I am sure I will continue to make more renditions of it as time goes on. It resonates with me: There is so much truth in this statement, and it is what makes each of us unique. It is the most endearing quality in children, and it is a quality that should be nurtured. My profile picture is another rendition of this quote: I am getting better at lettering. A lovely young Mum with a blog called Scribbling Grace gave excellent advice that helped me improve heaps! I still find it daunting sitting in front of a blank piece of Arches (expensive) watercolour paper with a loaded brush, just waiting to make mistakes - but hey, I have to make a start sometime and somewhere! Arches paper is available on special sometimes, anyway, and I am so lucky that I can get mine within days from Art Supplies in Sydney. I'm still developing my style. I am driven by a desire to create beauty, and I see so many beautiful things around me. ...

When I started to watercolour, suddenly the world seemed to be all a set of pictures waiting to be painted! I looked at every scene and object in a different way - I thought of them as subjects to paint and wondered how I could render them in watercolour. Let me show you one of my early paintings. I was taking my lovely little cavoodle Dimitri (Dimi for short) on a walk and saw this flower on the way: I was immediately inspired to paint this little beauty! So I set about painting in the corner of my Arches paper, playing around with the yellows and purples, laying wet on wet to create the shading in the centre. I saw a quote from C.S. Lewis that I liked: "You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending". I could use my calligraphy to write this! I used a gold gel pen, and the technique of faux calligraphy : I then used my phone picture editor to play around - it was so much fun! I liked the end result very much (and it is...

My artistic journey has brought me to learn a new skill - watercolour painting. Let me tell you how I got here. I will start with a brief history so you get to know a bit more about myself and what inspires me. I started off with scrapbooking in the 90s when I got engaged and then married to my husband of over 20 years now. I started off by scrapbooking my engagement, then my wedding and honeymoon. It was a great way to express my creativity as I set out on the journey of life together with a partner. As you can see from the cover of my engagement scrapbook, I used embellishments from the cake, and the colour was inspired by my dress on the day. My love of scrapbooking continued till my first child turned 3, and then I had a second child. Let me tell you, scrapbooking is hard to maintain when you have two children, so it slowly disappeared off my to-do lists! I still collect photos in the hopes that I will take it up again one day - maybe when I retire! But scrapbooking was the perfect...