Make custom wedding gift wrap and card (forest themed)

Make custom wedding gift wrap and card (forest themed)

by | Oct 17, 2022 | Doodling, Watercolor

My niece just got married – and of course my gift for her and her sweetheart was handmade. But I went the extra mile for handmade wrapping and card too! Not entirely by choice…I wasted an awful lot of time looking around for the right gift wrapping and found nothing. A day before I left – I realized I had to get on it and make something!

Tutorial: Custom wedding gift wrap and card (forest themed)

The wedding was to be in a forest, and the couple loves the outdoors and tall trees….and the gift I wrapped up hopefully pressed all the buttons. (I’m still traveling so I’m writing this ahead!) 

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

The card

I used a simple rendition of the tree branches that I used on the wrapping – and look how pretty the ink blooms! For some reason when ink does that I don’t mind like I sometimes do with watercolor. I added a layer of the grey paper on a layer of dark green, and the painted panel is popped up on dimensional adhesive.

The wrapping

Grey paper was what I had to work with, and while I’d have preferred it white – I’m pretty sure I’ll have had an easier time transporting it! White could get so messy on a long road trip, so I think this is likely all good.

Have you ever made custom giftwrapping – and did it match the card?

Sometimes I wonder if I’m just a complete, utter overachiever. Maybe I am! ha!

Supplies

Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art

Perspective Practice: Drawing SPOOKY buildings! (plus new wash & ink class)

Perspective Practice: Drawing SPOOKY buildings! (plus new wash & ink class)

by | Sep 23, 2022 | Fine Art & Sketching, Watercolor

I promised to return with more perspective today….and I have it in spades! I started down one road and ended up in a different place; you can thank three friends who saw what I was working on and their eyes bugged out. “Is that going to be a CLASS?” So ….yes, there’s a new class too! Let’s get down to it, shall we?

 

Tutorial: Perspective – Spooky Buildings

Today’s video is a little long – and has a first half, the spooky barn that’s wash-and-ink style, then a second half with a massive (18 hour!) drawing! Don’t worry I didn’t make it 18 hours, but…yeah. You’ll hear how both projects play into the new class, and there’s a link to it later in this blog post too.

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Drawing a spooky barn

This is a “simpler” complex building  – I wanted to show how the perspective works on a building that isn’t just a “block.”

In the new class we go through this spooky barn project a little slower and more indepth, though I think you could certainly give this project a try from the public video 🙂

Drawing a spooky complex “mansion”

I’m not 100% positive this didn’t escape being a home for ghosties and stray into being a village…but it was where it started, so I went with it! 

The new class has footage of how I made the pencil drawing first, since there was no room for it on YT – and then more on the inking. Including over an hour of the realtime inking!

Spooky Mansions Wash & Ink class

This Spooky Mansion class is a little different than some others; I almost included just the one project in the image below, but then decided to include the extended teaching about the barn, then for the last lesson the crazy huge drawing and some more thoughts on approaching perspective. I really hope to make it something that doesn’t melt people’s brains – it’s empowering once you get your feet under you! 

Supplies

Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art

Part 2: Watercoloring a White Rose (Glazing tips)

Part 2: Watercoloring a White Rose (Glazing tips)

by | Sep 2, 2022 | Watercolor

Painting white subjects – or coloring them in any medium – is challenging! Our EYE tells us it’s white. No color. But how do we handle the shadows? There are shadows – we just need to look very very carefully! Each shadow also has a hue – and assessing that can help make shadows look realistic …. the secret is in glazing.

 

Tutorial: Watercoloring a white rose (layering tips)

At the end of the video feel free to “scrub” through different stages to see the differences created during each adaptation with paint color. Sometimes through wet-in-wet color charging and sometimes wet-on-dry glazing.

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

No true “first” pass

Unlike the peach rose, I didn’t create an overal first pass. I could have for sure – but I wasn’t sure where color was heading. With some subject matter you’ll really WANT to create an overall light wash first, but with so many clearly divided sections I opted to begin with the part of my reference that fascinated me most: the warm yellow glow inside the center of the rose.

Building out from around that center led me to yellowish and yellowish-green colors, experimenting with adding a little brown as well; the palette had puddles of several colors I could keep pulling from.

Once the center area was ‘set’ I added a very pale Paynes Blue Gray wash for the outer petals. Yes they have color in them!

In this case, I chose to charge a little of the warm colors from my palette into the wet wash – giving me subtle blends I’d never get when creating a glaze on top.

True glazing! After the paper was completely dry, painting over the blue gray covers and re-tones the petal underneath. Don’t scrub with your brush – or you’ll lift colors underneath and sometimes that creates pure mud.

Always check that your hues and contrast go with any extra elements added to the painting – like the leaves here. They were so dark that I decided I needed more contrast in the flower.

In the final painting you can see the center is clearly the focus of the painting; even though the green leaves are powerful, they’ve been kept soft and non-detailed so they take a back seat to the star of the show!

Paintings for sale

As usual i’ve added works to the fine art shop – the peach rose went right away but you can see others there. If you didn’t see all my roses this week it’d be because of poor reach lately on Instagram and Facebook…there’s some mighty pretty roses that never survived the algorithm but you can check my page directly.

What white subjects do you struggle with?

I’d be happy to add some suggestions to my list for subject matter you might need some help with or examples for. Shout them out in the comments!

Supplies

Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art

2 things and a rant: Changing our Art Language

2 things and a rant: Changing our Art Language

by | Jul 29, 2022 | Watercolor

Today’s video is a little different….it’s not a tutorial, but it’s something I hope we can have a substantial conversation about! I really want artists to feel better about themselves; but we are our biggest saboteurs! We trash our abilities and our work, even in subtle ways with words we don’t realize are speaking negativity into our minds—hampering our ability to grow.

 

Video: Changing our art language

In today’s video, a flashback to “two things and a rant” that I used to do years ago, I’ve got two things:

  1. Sea Shepherd fundraiser printable continues through Sunday
  2. July’s HUGE list of classes on sale ends August 1!

And the rant…all about the language we use and how it can damage our psyche – causing us to have major artist block when facing a blank piece of paper!

Watch the video below or click HERE to see it on YouTube and leave comments over there or at the end of this post.

If you’d like to hear more about how I worked through this painting, it’s over in Patreon for members of that community.

Changing our art language

For years now I’ve been working through peeling certain words from my vocabulary; and as Toastmasters has showed me, once we become aware of our language issues (like uhm and uh) then we hear it more in others all the time! As I get further from the place I used to be, and am no longer dissing my work or skills, I’ve really seen it happening all over the place. 

Don’t say: “I’m just a ____.” It makes the art medium/genre we work in less important. Less artistic. And….imply that it’s less valuable. While it may come from a humble heart not wanting to sound like a pro/expert, it’s also dismissing your own creative efforts as not very good.

Do say: “I’m an artist who makes ___.” This honors your work, your talents, and your supplies.

Don’t say: “I wish I could ___.” Wishing implies there’s some magical fairy who needs to sprinkle you with pixie dust. We know that’s not coming! It implies that those who can do the thing you’re drooling over have had that pixie dust – and not that they’ve worked hard for decades to get where they’re at.

Do say: “I’m working toward ___.” Even if your steps are halting beginner ones, this tells your mind that you have a goal. You have a vision to get toward that place in your art. Your brain will respond! Not instantly but in time it will stop blocking you every time you sit down because there’s a goal you’re working toward.

Don’t say: “I can’t/won’t ever be able to do ___.” Talk about training your mind to believe the goal is beyond you. Now there’s not even a fairy to hope for. It’s just a fact that there’s a brick wall, and you’ll be filled with fear every time you try. Remember it may take you longer or shorter of a time to reach where someone else arrived at; just because it’s taking time doesn’t mean you won’t get there.

Do say: “I’m excited to be learning to do ___.” Tell that little guy in your brain that he’s supposed to be happy every time you sit down to practice. That the blank page is supposed to be filled with anticipation and not dread.

The trifecta to avoid is saying “I wish I could do more than just stamp since I can’t draw.” How about turning that around: “I love to stamp other artist’s drawings and give them my own flair in coloring them.” That honors you, honors the artist who drew the stamps, and honors your supplies!

I’ve begun unsubscribing from channels or social feeds that are full of negative language, even if not intentionally done, so that it doesn’t creep back into my brain again. That might seem extreme, but we need to guard our minds in order to grow. Finding encouraging voices who help me see my potential and not my roadblocks is what keeps me in a good mental place.

The Painting

The results of the first pass, which happened while everything was very very wet:

The finished painting was a delightful surprise to me; I was applying techniques I’d learned in architecture classes I’ve taken from mentors of mine….proving once again to myself that a technique has so many more applications than just what it was taught to do!

ICYMI

In case you missed out on the fun on social media this week….tap on an image to go see more!

Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art

 

 

Artist Tip: Develop Your Visual Vocabulary (all mediums!)

Artist Tip: Develop Your Visual Vocabulary (all mediums!)

by | Jul 22, 2022 | Artist Tips, Watercolor

You may not have heard of the term “Visual Vocabulary” – but I’ll bet you’ve been using it! To many people, “Visual Vocabulary” refers to the foundations of art— line, shape, space, texture, color, etc.

But I find it more helpful to think of it as the artist’s toolbox, which has everything in it that you use in creating your art. That broadens it to techniques and a good understanding of the subject matter as well.

If you think of a toolbox full of screwdrivers, clamps, nails, and carpenter’s glue – a beginning worker might only have a few things available to them, but an expert may have an entire rolling cart full of tools. As artists, we grow our own toolkit over time, and tuck in all the little things we learn. Occasionally we even rediscover a tip in the bottom of the box that we’d forgotten about, too!

 

Supplies are linked at the end of this post.

Video: Develop Your Visual Vocabulary

Since I had posted a TinyTutorial about Visual Vocabulary yesterday, a few responses had come in while I was creating the voiceover, so included some of those in the video. I hope it’s helpful!

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

3  areas to grow your Visual Vocabulary

  1. Foundations: Add more information about the basics of art to your toolbox! If you’re just starting out, take small bites, you don’t need to know everything right away
    • line quality (rough, smooth, thickness, strokes)
    • shape (component shapes, perspective, shading)
    • space (positive/negative areas, composition)
    • texture (smooth, rough, detailed, simple)
    • color (complementary, analagous, all sorts of color theory)
    • and so much more
  2. Technique: The basics of practice exercises with the medium itself will help your hand, brush, and brain remember what you’ve practiced.
    • understanding the pigment and how it moves, blends
    • mastering the tools needed
  3. Subject Matter: Begin to really study a subject and how to render it well. Once it becomes part of your toolbox, you’ll be able to pull that information back out when needed.
    • break it down to an element needed…instead of “landscapes” work on trees for a time, then skies, then fields. Study that element in a variety of circumstances, angles, times of day, etc.
    • study for extended time periods. A week, a month, whatever works for the amount of time you put into your art.

I learned so much from the process to create this painting! I didn’t realize how important to me MOTION is. The other paintings were pretty, but…what I wanted to create was a design that flowed across the page.

The other pieces created this week aren’t bad. They’re not what I hoped to create, that’s all. And just to make them feel better and not get dropped in the circular file, I’ve posted them as originals for sale. (The third one is a eucalyptus-only version in Cascade Green, not shown in today’s video.)

ICYMI

In case you missed it – here are links to this week’s social media posts!

Related Online Classes

The two classes mentioned in the video are Branching Out, a Level 2 class, with bigger, simpler shapes. Then there’s the new Christmas Berries class, which has more small detail in it.Both are great  and are still on sale for the remainder of the month for World Watercolor Month!

Closing thoughts 

Please do let me know in the comments if there’s an aspect of Visual Vocabulary you’d like me to address in the future; I’m finding there’s more interest in discussions like this, so I hope to be able to answer some questions for you!

PS: The paintings shown today are for sale over on my fine art website.

Supplies

Some product may be provided by manufacturers for review and use. Compensated affiliate links are here at no cost to you. I appreciate your support of my work with your purchases! Full affiliate and product disclosure | My trusted partners in art