Thursday, October 14, 2021

Weekly Stitching and Watercolors

 Six squares done this week in spite of spending way too much time on my new addiction, watercolor. More about that later. Again, I relied on my great stencil set, doing variations of each.





                 I like the scallops on this one and I know I will be using it again in different ways next week.

                               Least favorite of the week. Hard to get those straight lines straight.




Now on to WATERCOLORS.  I have often admired watercolors, but for some reason I was never interested to try it until last week when I saw some on Lee Ann Paylor's blog and saw her Painterly Friday and a fabulous video on Watercolor Doodles. OMG I thought,  this looks like so much fun. So I ordered a nice Kuretake set of paints which I really like for the large removable paint pans and its 36 colors. I  also ordered a couple of good brushes and bought a book of watercolor paper at Michaels' and I was off and running. There are so many videos on YouTube and I mainly concentrated on Watercolor Doodles, combining painting with fine point pen and ink doodles. I just used a black Sharpie Pen (not to be confused with Sharpie Ultrafine marker).

For the most part I followed the videos and will branch out with my own designs as I get more confidence. Right now I am learning techniques and practicing.


This was my very first attempt. I was rather pleased with myself and it spurred me on to the next ones.
These first three were all  by the same artist, Nia. She has many videos on Youtube. These three were done on 140 weight wc paper in 9" x 12" size. On these you paint first, then doodle.





These next three, by the same artist were just 4" x 6", just the perfect size to mount on greeting cards. On these you doodled (or drew) the leaves first and then added the watercolor circles. I want to do more of these with my own leaf designs.






And this last one, inspired by another artist CeeCee,  uses a very loose style. I really loved doing this. I have done a few more in different colors and sizes, also good to mount on a card.

I'm not showing you the ones I discarded or cut up to use on the other side for practice. I had my share of flops, but I am hooked for now. As I said before there are numerous videos out there, but perhaps I will take some online lessons in the future. The might be a good project for Florida, since my sister and my friend Claire (my FL housemates) are also interested. And Claire is a former art teacher so we should have a great time.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.







4 comments:

Angela said...

You should be pleased. Your watercolors are fabulous!

LA Paylor said...

squee!!! clapping! Great work Norma!!!
Isn't Ceecee just terrific? she has a lot of videos to try and is calming to watch. Your last one is just perfection.
In watercolor there is a lot of practice, even very experienced artists spend a lot of paper trying mixes and effects so let yourself go! Yes, Florida will be such inspiration, paint some palm trees for me, I love them all. And the light there is going to be fun to capture along with the changing sunset colors.
Your photos are very good too, it's sometimes hard to get the right color and light on artwork but you did.
LeeAnna

Shannon said...

Its so much fun to see you branch into watercolors. And I love the mandalas in your daily stitching projects.

Lynda said...

Norma, Love your stitching. However, love, love, love your watercolors!! I could see you taking those designs to fabric. Thanks for the inspiration this morning.