Watercolor Postcard: A Basket of Flowers

Summertime travels lend themselves to postcards - short narratives about your adventures to send to a friend.  And postcards offer a wonderful tiny canvas to paint an image from your travels.

I cut large pieces of 140# watercolor paper into roughly 4" x 6" pieces and tucked them into a plastic bag in my backpack.  

This basket of flowers was hanging over a porch I recently visited. I started with a loose ink sketch, used a white Crayola crayon to keep a few spots white, then laid in a lot of wet-in-wet greens, blues and purples.

Other great subjects for postcard art:

clouds

tiny, simplified landscapes

a flower

a pet

a doorway into a cathedral, museum or other place you visited

your tent on a camp-out

a bird

a butterfly

your favorite sunhat

Postcards take less time to create, feel less imposing and more playful, and force you to simplify more complex scenes. That gorgeous lake view you admired while canoeing becomes less confusing when you break it down to basic shapes, values and colors and fit it into a 5"x 7" space.

And in the end, if you don't like what you create (because no artist loves everything they make), you can always flip it over and write a grocery list on the back!

Happy Creating! 

Beach Postcard Painting Inspiration

One way to keep enjoying your vacation once you return home is to create from your photos. 

 I have been diving back into pics from our recent Florida trip.

 The beauty of the wild dunes and the clean ocean sand made me wish I had more time to paint the scene while there in person, so I snapped this photo with my cell phone.

I've used this photo to create a little postcard.  This one is roughly 3" x 6".  The first washes were made with a number 8 round brush.

I finished the card with a number 1 rigger brush (shown in the top picture). 

Why not dig out your favorite photos from a past trip and immerse yourself in them artfully?  

Or find a photo of a place you'd like to visit and make a journal entry, a post card or a painting. 

 Follow your intuition!

And remember that you're not a camera, you're not trying to create an exact replica of the scene in the photograph.  Your goal can be to simply experience the beauty you see in a photo.  

Upcycled Art: Daffodil Postcard

I have been disheartened to read recent news about the end of recycling in the United States.  Found objects and recycled materials have always inspired me to create out of a desire to use up what would normally be trash.  The fact that an item is going to the landfill frees up my creativity -- even if I make terrible art, nothing has been lost.

Lately, I have stepped up my creative efforts in recycling packaging into useful items.  Sometimes, when I turn towards the trash with an empty box or other food packaging, I feel the tingle of inspiration.  That was the case with this recycled cardboard cucumber tray:

The neutral color, the rough texture (like cold pressed watercolor paper), and the stiff, sturdiness of the cardboard compelled me to cut out a 4" x 6" rectangle from the tray, create a spring scene with daffodils blooming, and turn it into a postcard to send to my dear friend, Robin.

So simple, yet the colors reach out to me.  I used my new box of Prismacolor Art Stix.  (Thanks Brad!)



Happy Spring and Happy Upcycling to you!  For more ideas on how to turn trash into art, visit the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse's website.