It’s been a great week filled with watercolor flowers–I’ve seen some of you playing along, hooray! Today I’ve got a beautiful planter in some purples I was testing – and a NEW WATERCOLOR CLASS! Whee!

Video

Watch the video below or click HERE to see it on YouTube.

Dioxazine purples – and brushes

I’ve not been a fan of purple as a color generally…but since I was going to be working on a flower class, I decided to do a little personal deep dive – and found Mom’s Cotman (W/N student grade) Winsor Violet, aka Dioxazine Violet. Buying that led me to being persuaded to pick up some M Graham too. Because, what’s testing without a head-to-head? I haven’t decided on which or either – I don’t think they’ll land in my Big Palette since they’re SO staining. But, I do like some things about the M Graham – it’s lovely for shadows in greens!

The brushes shown here are a Silver Black Velvet Round #6, Round #8 and a Da Vinci Maestro Kolinsky Sable Round 8. My fave Winsor and Newton seems so hard for people to find; this DaVinci is pretty close, so I’m going to try to change my recommendation to that for folks who want to splurge on a fancy brush.

Postcards

These Etchr postcards were on my wishlist for a while now – I had been thinking of a 30days watercolor class, and how perfect postcards might be for a format. But…..I’ll whisper quietly here that Etchr approached me about becoming a teacher for them! Stay tuned for more details, we have some dates but aren’t ready to release that quite yet. The postcards – not shared at their request, I bought them myself, worked out fine for the class; postcards will never be made with my favorite Arches or the like, because, well, who’s gonna put that in the mail? So these are thinner than regular good watercolor paper, which reduces the texture to being very little (and this “rough” paper lover is looking askance at it!)….but I was delighted to see a number of techniques still work on it just fine. Especially if you remember it’s a postcard – not meant for being an epic watercolor painting. Great for learning!

A peek at the textures…

This is (mostly) the style that’ll be taught in the 30 Days class – small flowers, a little bit of scene/background with flowers as the focus. Some will be loose and splashy, others tighter – all to give you lots of ideas that you can take or leave in your watercolor journey.

30 Days to More Confident Watercolor Sketching

New class alert! Intermediate students, have fun with flowers – and scene elements in this new class!

Sign up here!

ICYMI

In case you missed any of the floral fun this week…

• Flower box, 2.5 min video
• 10 Second Artists Challenge, short video
• Flower painting, short video
• Tiny Tutorial, Anatomy of a Watercolor Brush
• Tiny Tutorial, Caring for Watercolor Brushes
• 6 flowers – stamped and then painted in watercolor
• Join my friend Lisa Spangler, she did a live YT video lesson yesterday and taught some watercolor flowers….they were fun to paint!

Supplies

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• Watercolors used:
  • Winsor & Newton Winsor Violet (Dioxazine Violet)  Amazon •Blick
  • M Graham Dioxazine Purple Amazon • Blick
  • Daniel Smith Payne’s Blue Gray
  • Daniel Smith Sap Green
  • Daniel Smith Perylene Green
  • Daniel Smith Burnt Sienna
• Etchr Postcards:
  • Hot Press
  • Cold Press
• Brushes:
  • Silver Brush Black Velvet Round #6
  • Silver Brush Black Velvet Round #8
  • Da Vinci Maestro Kolinsky Sable Brush – Round 8
• 1/4″ artist tape