Happy Valentine's Day!
My Work: Bouquet Paintings
For the past few weeks I've been painting bouquets as often as I can and have shared many of them on Instagram. For inspiration, I've referenced bouquets in books, magazines, on instagram and pinterest, and fresh flowers on my desk from Trader Joe's (the best!!).
It's been fun painting arrangements in vases, some without, in various color palettes, adding details with color pencils or pen, and exploring different shapes and styles.
In the Shop: Christmas Gift Wrap
PSA: Christmas is less than six weeks away! If you're in need of wrapping paper, I've got you covered.
Okay, so this paper is seriously so pretty and thick—but not too thick. It's quality paper and won't rip at the corners of your boxes as you're wrapping. If you're a wrapping paper fan, I think you'll love these!
You can choose a set of 3 sheets or a set of 5 sheets. Most of the designs are made-to-order just for you so expect to receive your paper 10-15 days from the date you place your order.
I hope you love wrapping your gifts with these as much as I do!
My Work: Recent Sketches
I've been experimenting with sketches adding background colors in watercolor and like the extra boldness it adds to my work. I don't know if I'll make it a regular thing, but it's been fun to try.
The biggest struggle is knowing how to paint the background without it looking too messy. Some strokes and puddles look cool and others, not so much. One tip I can share is that it's obviously easier to do the background with a larger round brush...so I used a size 10 brush. The wide part gives a nice swash and the round tip helps me get around the detail areas.
Here are some of the sketches. What do you think?
For more of my work, follow along on Instagram to see my daily sketches and patterns.
Practice Recommendation: Magazine Illustrations
If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen me post these practice illustrations in my Stories. I've been wanting to get better at watercolor illustrations because I typically default to painting florals and fruit so I chose four magazine covers and painted them in a fairly quick style over four days. I took about 30-60 min for each. I wasn't aiming for perfect (clearly!), but instead I wanted to get the idea across and get a feel for sketching a space.
I'd love to be more comfortable painting a range of subjects, including people, animals, furniture, houses, etc. and these cover paintings are such a good idea. They have a variety of elements on each cover which make me consider depth and angles as well as figuring out how to "paint white" by leaving areas empty and painting around the white parts. There's the lettering aspect too which is fun! I'm going to continue this practice even though I probably won't keep sharing them...and I recommend you try too if you're in the same boat. Have fun!
Day 1: Real Simple
Day 2: Better Homes & Gardens
Day 3: Sunset
Day 4: House Beautiful
Day 5: Martha Stewart Living
July Citrus Tech Walllpaper
July! Already. (As I say every month.) After a great 4th of July weekend with my family and in-laws, I'm back home with the kids and my husband for a full month of family time. He's a teacher and I'm now a stay-at-home mom, so we decided to take our 4-year old out of preschool for the month and spend some quality time together.
We have some fun day activities planned in the bay area and will also be doing lots of neighborhood activities (mainly the park and bakery stops :) as well as some visiting with family. And of course, my husband and I will trade kid duties here and there so we both get some time to ourselves.
For instance, I currently have our home to myself while he is with the kids visiting his grandma a couple cities away. I've had some time to paint and also need to get a few other things checked off my list, such as posting the July download. These citrus slices are cheerful and make me smile inside and I hope they do the same for you.
As usual, I have an iPad, iPhone and desktop version available for download. Sign-up below for the link and enjoy!
My Work: 10-Day Project Review
If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed I do a new 10-day project about every 10-days. I started these last December to help me focus on one type of art or theme and hopefully not only improve my skills, but also figure out what the type of art I truly enjoy. I'm ultimately working towards developing a "signature style" but have found I like so many things, it may take years to actually figure out!
But maybe that's okay...and it's probably normal. Since I have no deadline for learning to draw and paint, I'm enjoying the process. One thing these 10-day projects have made me realize is that I truly enjoy working with watercolor and I especially love creating patterns with what I paint.
So now that I've completed 10 of these 10-day projects, I thought I'd share some of my favorite from the first five weeks for now. Side note: I'm taking a break from these 10-day projects to join the #100dayproject challenge (yikes!). It started yesterday, April 4 and lasts until July. I will do a hundred days of watercolor (#100daysofwatercolor and #100delighteddays) which means I have some flexibility with the subject, but am limited by the medium...although I think I'll sneak in some gouache as well. It's water-based so I think that's okay :)
So here they are : the highlights of my first five 10-day projects. Thank you for following along over the past few months and for all of the encouragement. I truly appreciate it!
Week 1: Patterns created from gouache and watercolor sketches
Week 2: Things to Wear
Week 3: Florals
Week 4: Lettering
Week 5: Creatures