Playing with Watercolor

Friends.  They pick you up when you're down, inspire you with their creativity, listen when you need an ear, try to say the right thing when you need to hear a voice, and always give you more than you can possibly give them back, no matter how hard you try.

I've been embarking on a new challenge - learning to use watercolors.  Such a finite medium:  you get it down right-- or you get mud.   On the other hand, if you practice a little, learn some fun techniques and use them, watercolor is actually a lot easier and more transportable than acrylics or even colored pencils--which is what I had been using for the most part.  So I'm finding it's worth my time learning. And I'm lucky to have a friend who is helping me on the journey.

I hounded Shirley to give me watercolor lessons, and a few other members of our Journal Study Group are joining in.  Here are some of my results from our first two lessons.

In this photo, we were testing opacity by painting over a Sharpie black line

In this one, we were smooching our primary colors around to see what secondary colors would  "volunteer."





Here we are in Lesson 2.  Mainly we focused on making a secondary color out of two primary colors, and today the color is Green.  Shirley had a pile of Green on her table and we sketched, then painted. Sometimes we sketched with pencil, or pen, or colored pencil, always ending with watercolors, yellow+blue.

 

  And finally, this is called a watercolor resist.  you paint around the subject with the water so that the color resists going into the dry area.  Doing that with successive layers allows you to create a very interesting composition.  (I will probably add another layer to this in the future.)

The watercolors I'm using are Windsor Newton Cotman Watercolor Painting Plus Half Pans, like this:

And that is my watercolor adventure so far, but stay tuned for more fun kids!