Art Journal Joy: 27 Days of Watercolor Flowers - Week 2

I had another great week of painting watercolor flowers. Honestly, I'm a little surprised to admit it but this practice has become a part of my day. It's something that I always make sure I've done each day. I rarely have a plan when I start. I pick up my brushes and practice making flowers until I make something that I like and then I practice it over and over again.

Here are the pieces I made this week.

I was trying to figure out how to paint poppies. I am inspired by real flowers but I'm not trying to paint photo realistic flowers. My goal is to paint flowers that I think look pretty. Sometimes, it takes many tries to come up with something I like.  I forgot to add the black centres and debated adding them later but I decided to leave them like this for now.





These flowers are poinsettia inspired. I was thinking that I could hand paint my own Christmas cards this year. Well, not all of them but maybe a few.





This is also the week that I discovered floral wreaths. I'm obsessed and not just because I love wreaths. It's a great opportunity for me to practice how to make a flower over and over again.












I love the bright colors of this one. It also feels balanced which is not always easy for me to do with these wreaths. I also experimented with overlapping blooms. It makes it look more realistic but I'm always afraid that I'll end up ruining it. I also had trouble with the leaves but that's why I'm practicing.






And finally, this pretty soft wreath makes me so happy. I like how I was able to get really soft, watery colors for the blooms. I debated adding leaves and decided not to. I love how tone on tone looks and I didn't want to add anything else to this one.






To create the shape of the wreathes, I trace very lightly around a jar of gesso with a Pilot FriXion pen. When I'm finished, I heat it with my heat gun and the marks disappear. You can see some of the pen marks I left in the piece above to show you. To get rid of them, I just have to heat the piece again.

If you would like to see more of these watercolor pieces, please follow me on Instragram. I'm @cathiereed. I'm sharing my progress each week on my blog and you can see how I get started and what Week 1 looked like. I hope you'll follow along.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cathie