Botanical Weekly Planner Page

Each week in my planner is a new opportunity to experiment with my art. I try to let myself be free and let the art flow intuitively. 

Surprisingly, I feel more experimental than I do in my sketchbooks. 

One of the things I loved about our Watercolor Leaves and Florals class at CCBC was that we used the photos of wildflowers in field guides as references and created our own versions of real flowers.  

It gave us something to start with, yet we had none of the pressure to create anything realistic.

I created a "new" flower as I was making this page.  It's the yellow one. I was thinking of Queen Anne's Lace as I painted it.  

I can see now how much the drive for perfect realism puts a damper on my creativity.  Accepting that my painting isn't going to be photo-realistic releases my creative impulses and makes the process more fun and playful.

When I started painting landscapes, I wanted to capture every pine needle and flower in the scene.  Of course, that's impossible.  Learning to be playfully abstract in my watercolor paintings is far more fun for me than trying to recreate reality on the page.

Would you like to take a day in nature to play with your watercolors?  I hope you'll join me for my upcoming Nature in Watercolor Workshop for Beginners at Raccoon Creek State Park.  Read more about it in this post:

https://betsyblissart.blogspot.com/2026/05/osher-nature-in-watercolors-worshop-for.html 

I hope you'll join me!