Colour Mixing Wheel.....

This after noon I found a colour mixing wheel in my bookmarks. I have ignored it until today. When I found it again I thought to myself this is exactly what I need to work on. In my thought, colour mixing is an art form all its own and if you can't do it you will be limited in what you can paint.


I started a thread over at Lori Andrews-Come paint with me. Asking that beginners jump in and try their own colour wheel and that the more experienced artist give some constructive critiques.


I had a hard time making my purple and my yellows seem similar. I found out that you use a lot of yellow, a bit of red and a touch of blue when you are mixing colours.

Bubble , bubble......

Kim started a new project at Drawspace, Let's use our coloured pencils. She put up this great picture of a bubble for us to try out, as well as showing the steps and colours that she used to draw it.
Well I meant to do it in CP but I have water colour on the brain right now and well, out came the paints. I tried hard to keep the layers from mounting up, but wasn't so successful. Oh well its more practice and maybe not so bad.

Maple leaf......

I was reading through a water colour thread on Drawspace, where I found an image posted by Adolpho. He suggested laying down a wash of yellow on the leaf and build from there. I found I got lost on the leafs vines, probably because even though I started slow, I sped up after awhile.

Sarah on the same thread suggested that only two or three layers of colour should go down, so I think that will explain some of the muddiness. Sarah also suggested cutting yourself some post card size papers and keep practicing, which sounded like a great idea.

I am using 140lb strathmore CP water colour paper, I wet it down and then taped it. It still buckled, I am thinking this is because I didn't soak it, just ran it through the tap water. I'll try soaking it next time. Oh, might also be because I taped it too close to the edge, or the paint tape I have isn't strong enough.

April 2009 VSD......

I haven't done a virtual sketch date in a while. There is a whole new way of signing up, so if I can figure that out, I'll be doing good. Here is my sketch I am working from. The original photograph is from Jeanette. I am showing the sketch first because it goes down hill from here.

Here is my horribly overworked flower done in water colour. I figured I was done but got to thinking what would it look like with a background.


For all that I just swabbed in the background with no finesse, it does show that the background was needed to finish the picture. Good thing to know for next time.

Lilac Breasted Roller, Botswana, Africa.....

Drawspace has a new water colour challenge this week. Marisa put up some beautiful pictures with lots of colour in them. Like this Lilac Breasted Roller from Botswana Africa.
I did this water colour painting in my moleskin sketch book. I really am enjoying using water colours. It is fun to see how quickly a picture can take shape. Although I do find that I need to get some patience for giving the paint time to dry and thinking out layers of colours.

Water colour.....

While I love water colour as a medium, I had no particular desire to try to learn it anytime soon. But... I am a firm believer in 'when opportunity knocks, answer the door'. Well opportunity knocked with a new website, Lori Andrews, Come Paint with Me!
Lori is offering free online water colour demonstrations, as well as downloadable, paid for lessons. There is an upcoming class near the end of April and Lori has let us know what we will need for materials.

While I am waiting on the class and the new materials, I decided to use what I have. I received an easel a while back and it came with some water colour paint tubes and I had some Dollar store paint brushes. (which I really like, although maybe just because I have never used a real brush).

Overall I am pretty happy with the picture of Bob. While by no means perfect, it does have some of the aspects that I like about water colour. I can see that learning to blend colours is going to be an art form all of its own.

Cats, Crazy Cats.....

Well, finally all eighteen cats are done! We have wood cats, playing card cats, moon lit cats and cat eyes.


I did a lot of sketching trying to get the look of cats with just simple lines. Jim noticed the sketches and mentioned that they would be perfect for something he was thinking about trying out. He had found this piece of really thin birch plywood and wanted to try it out. We decide my cats needed to be highlighted some how, so we came up with the cats on the fence in the moonlight. These are the beautiful result of a lot of painstaking cutting (by Jim). I do love it when he puts his mind to something artistic!

I then realized that these same drawings would be a good way to try out some water colours. I broke out a set of my kids water colours and gave it a try. It was really cool to see how when you wet the paper in just the area that you want to paint, the paint stays in that wet spot. For example I wet down just the moon area, fence, cat and sky were left dry. Then just dabbed in the yellow. Now if only I can figure out how to bring the sky up to the moon without bleeding in.
Oh well lots to learn and it was fun enough to go back for more.


As you can tell, just hand drawn eyes from my mind. I wanted to play around some more and see what I could do. I sort of used the brush like my colour pencils for the fur. The black on the top eye was done with black and the one on the bottom was done with several colours to make black, like I would with CP. I like the made up black better.


I ended up ditching the ace of clubs and I did fix the ears on the jack with white out. I know I am a terrible cheat. Doing these outline and silhouette drawings I have come to realize that I do a lot of fixing and shaping as I fill in with pencil or CP.