Making Tiny Watercolor Paintings

I have a friend who likes to paint small paintings.  Jenny works on watercolor paper cut to fit frames she already has, starting at 2" x 3" and 3" x 5". Inspired by Jenny, I cut up some 140# watercolor paper and played with a garden flower watercolor theme.

The first two sketches I simply made up, imagining a bright summer day in a garden.  Phthalo blue for the sky, permanent rose and Azo yellow for the flowers, and mixtures of Hooker's green & phthalo blue, as well as sap green & Azo yellow for the greenery. All done wet-in-wet.

Later, I sat out in my sunny garden painting zinnia blooms.

I started with a Faber Castell XS permanent pen, then painted the flower.  For the background, I painted the area around the flower with clear water and touched in watercolor, letting it blend and flow.

Below is a Sacred Basil plant growing among the zinnias.

I love tiny paintings!  

They take very little time to complete, and you can try out an idea quickly, then move on to something else. It's easy to make a series.  

These little paintings would add a beautiful spot of color in a small space in my home, or become a beautiful card to send someone I love.  

Jenny has a box of her paintings and rotates them through her frames.  It's a great way to celebrate your creative explorations!

Happy Creating!

If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again!

It's the season of Plein Air painting, or painting outdoors in the fresh air.

Inspired by this scene on my farm, I set up my watercolor paints & pochade box.

I started with a sketch in pencil, added India ink, and then layered in washes.  

But when the painting was done, I didn't like it! Too many details competed with each other to attract your eye!  The background trees were so detailed, the whole thing looked like camouflage.  I tried to simplify the background by laying in a darker wash, but the result was cartoonish.

Of course, there are parts I love, like the little greenhouse and the dead tree, but as a composition, it just doesn't work.

As hard as that is to accept, there is power in looking critically at your own artwork.  When you see precisely what you don't like -- too many details -- you can create another painting and fix that problem.

Here's the second version of this scene.

I worked quickly, sketching in only the greenhouse angles lightly with pencil.  I abstracted the background trees into light and dark patches, and took out the dead tree because it competed with the greenhouse. 

When you're painting with watercolor, having a plan going in helps tremendously!  And when painting landscapes, the first step is to abstract all of those details, and pick what is most important to you -- what draws your artist's eye?

Allowing yourself several paintings to develop your ideas is freeing.  

Harsh self judgement is a lead weight on our creativity, but looking at our artwork with a discerning eye for what we love and what isn't successful gives us the power to improve.

Remember: Every painting teaches you something.

Do you have a painting that didn't work?  Why not make a plan for how you'd like to fix it? Hard won success feels uplifting and leads to more discoveries.

Happy Creating!

Working in a Series

Artists commonly work in a series, choosing a theme and creating different iterations based on that theme.

In my series, I began with a photo taken during the polar vortex, when the temperature was about 10 degrees F. My first artwork was a colored pencil sketch done at the breakfast table in my nature journal.  That drawing showed me that I wanted to be able to blend the colors more than the colored pencil drawing. So I made a watercolor painting of the scene.

I was taken by the way the light sparkled off of the snow as the sun set in the west.  The shadows looked as blue as the sky, but I also saw hints of purple and magenta. Wet-in-wet applications of pink, purple and blue was the best way for me to express the sparkly colors I saw in real life.

Each step along the way, I made new discoveries, observed more details in the photograph, and found new ways to express the bitingly cold, fresh air.  

Often, I think, we want to create something "good" quickly. But spending time exploring different techniques and materials gives us more creating time, builds our skills and lets us get lost in the process.  If your only purpose is to experiment, play and make discoveries, there's no need to rush. And when you don't rush, you relax into the process, and that makes it easier to learn new things.

I like the way that the cool blues in both the drawing and the painting lent a feeling of extreme cold and wintriness.  The bare-limbed trees in the midground were delightful to draw/paint, and they created a feeling of deep winter, too.

What scene would you like to get lost in?  Why not try a series of artworks -- in different media, using different approaches, different color schemes, etc.?

Happy Creating!

Working in a Series: Valentines

I was grocery shopping the other day and spotted a display of beautiful commercial pop-up greeting cards that popped out into a box, like a diorama with layers of art and figures.  They folded shut to fit in an envelope to be mailed easily.  

Inspiration struck!  

At home, I watched YouTube videos on making your own pop up box cards, and I set to work, first sketching out ideas for designs to try.

I chose an envelope size of 5" x 7" and sized the cards so they would fold up and fit in that space.  The front and back of the box =5" x 5"

The sides = 5" x 1.75"

That leaves a tab of 5" x 0.5" to glue down to close the box.

I cut a stack of 5" x 14" pieces of watercolor paper, then measured and creased the folds.

Now I had a pile of paper blanks to try out those ideas from my sketchbook.

I also took walks to generate ideas.  I was struck by the beauty of the bare winter tree limbs against the bold blue sky, and the backdrop of white snow covering the ground.  Those walks inspired this tree & heart design.

As a lover of collage, I rifled through my basket of collage materials, and found artwork from a date calendar to make into a heart-themed diorama.

I found old music sheeting printed with hand-made heart stamps. They fit perfectly with some fluffy feathers of similar colors.

And I put together some of the leftovers to make simpler cards like this one.

Working in a series is a great way to get your creativity flowing.  You can try a variety of ideas, and if one doesn't work, you don't have to keep it. Having many iterations of a theme gives you lots of ways to succeed.

The process of trying out a variety of ideas, color schemes and materials can inspire new ideas.  You may decide to repeat some of your favorite cards.  

I liked the tree limb card so much, I made a bunch of them.

And of course, I had a few cards, not pictured here, that I threw away.

Working in a series can be freeing.  I hope you give it a try!

Happy Creating!