hobbies

Watercolors—botanicals 9

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments

Almost done with my Watercolor Workbook by Sarah Simon.

“Lady Monstera” and her little dog 🐶
Berries and Cyprus

I painted the center flower as one big wet boundary, but I think it might’ve looked cooler if painted each petal separately. Would’ve taken longer though!

Watercolors—botanicals 8

~ MaryG ~ 13 Comments
Garden bouquet. I was trying to paint in the “loose boundaries” style here, but then my husband said the middle flower looked boring so I put some table salt in a few areas.
Another anonymous woman from the workbook. She is called “Lady Wisteria.“
“Lady Banana Plant” is very shy indeed!

Designs from Watercolor Workbook by Sarah Simon (IG: @themintgardener)

Watercolors—botanicals 7

~ MaryG ~ 18 Comments
This headless design is called Lady Sweet Pea in my workbook.
Poppies
Blueberry branch. I think this is my favorite page in the workbook so far. I really like how the blueberries came out.

Designs from Watercolor Workbook by Sarah Simon (IG: @themintgardener)

Today is my husband’s 64th birthday, which is significant to GenX and older because he’s officially reached the Beatles definition of old age:

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I’m sixty four?”

Also, I hear there’s football a game going on during a Bad Bunny concert tonight. 😉

Go Pats!

Watercolors — more botanicals

~ MaryG ~ 7 Comments

OK, so my artists pens came and I was able to outline the designs. I intentionally left some small edges unpainted as highlights.

Round leaf eucalyptus

For the next one, the workbook offered two options. Leave the leaves and stems unpainted:

Foxglove

Or wash them with three different colors (slate, sage and stone):

Foxglove

My husband says the first one looks unfinished, but I kind of like it better. Do you really need to have every bit of the surface painted to give the vibe of a certain plant?

Watercolors – botanicals

~ MaryG ~ 4 Comments

I’ve run into a bit of a problem with my Watercolors Workbook. The book is designed to have you ink the outlines of the various botanicals before painting. I did that with my pen and ink set, but too late discovered that my ink is not waterproof! The ink went everywhere once I hit it with the watercolor paint. I decided to try inking AFTER painting but I don’t love the result:

Long leaf eucalyptus. You can see that the ink was hard to control in some areas.

I then tried one without inking at all. It’s OK, but I decided to go ahead and order some waterproof black artists pens, as the author suggested.

Dahlia

I like some of the techniques I learned doing the eucalyptus and the dahlia: leaving some areas white to highlight; darkening petal bases with wet in wet color (dark into light); and layering over dry paint with a different color for a cool, translucent effect.

Hopefully my new pens arrive today.