Art Journal Joy: 27 Days of Watercolor Flowers - Week 3

This week I did a little bit of everything - some bouquets, some floral wreaths and some new shapes. I'm still figuring out how to paint flowers that I like. Sometimes it's harder to do than I think it should be but I am still eager to paint each day and that helps a lot. If I didn't want to paint at all, I'm sure I would have abandoned this challenge.

I'm still struggling with sharing what I'm painting and making the time to practice.

I don't have a set time to practice my painting. That's largely because my kids are still on summer vacation so I don't have much of a regular schedule right now. I was planning to paint first thing each morning but most mornings that just isn't possible. I'm usually trying to find time somewhere during the day's events for painting. Maybe it will be easier when they go back to school - we'll see. One thing is certain, I do like having a daily art practice in my life.

Sharing my daily pieces is still a struggle because I don't always like how they look. I know I'm learning and it's a process but it's not easy to be patient with myself. Happily, there are some benefits of sharing my daily practice pages. First, sharing what I'm working on forces me out of my comfort zone and practicing things that are hard for me. I know I'll never get better if I don't practice the hard stuff but sometimes I need the pressure of having something to post on Instagram to get me to do that work. The other benefit is that I receive a lot of support and encouragement by sharing my pages on Instagram. It helps keep me motivated and focused on making and sharing pages.

So, let's take a look at the pages I painted this week.

I was doing so well with this page. I love how the orange tipped blossoms turned out and then I tried to add leaves. I just couldn't paint them to suit the page. So there are parts of this page that I like and parts that I don't.






I love this page. It's simple and it's blue.






August 21 was the night of the 2016 Olympics Closing Ceremonies so this page was inspired by the Olympic Rings. I like the shading on the blooms although I don't love the shape. I like how the stems and leaves turned out. I added some details with a Signo white gel pen.






I like how the sunflowers turned out on this page. I'm not sure about the leaves though. I still like painting floral wreaths because they give me an opportunity to practice painting the same shapes over and over again.






I decided to try some flourishes on Tuesday. I have always loved illuminated medieval manuscripts and the flourish down the side of a page reminds me of them. Flourishes are another shape I will keep working on. It's great for practicing shapes over and over and for filling up a page.






The next day, I tried another flourish using different blooms. I was going for Gerbera Daisies but didn't quite get it right.



I do love the thin vines and...



the tri-coloured leaves.  I think those turned out really well.



Here's my final page for the week. I love the color combination for this page. I used lots of layers while painting the blooms. I didn't want to add leaves. I liked the white space on the page as if someone had scattered flowers there.









I am nearing the end of this challenge. Next Wednesday is my last day and I'm trying to decide if I will continue painting flowers or try something else. I have come a long way but I think that I could make even more progress if I keep practicing.We'll see. In the meantime, I have a few more days painting pretty flowers.

If you're interested to see my other pages, here are the links: Week 1 and Week 2.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Cathie

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

Art Journal Joy: 27 Days of Watercolor Flowers - Week 1

Today, I am sharing all the art that I made this week as part of my Practice Over Perfection exercise. Last week, I wrote about my plan to spend the rest of August painting watercolor flowers and sharing my progress. This week, I created 7 6x8" pieces and 3 4x6" pieces. The 4x6" pieces are rough drafts that I used to practice on before working on the larger 6x8" pieces. I have also doodled and practiced all over 12 4x6" cards.

Here are this week's cards in order I made them.















I have been using Prima's watercolor palette's for everything - the Tropicals and the Classics - and a variety of round brushes. I like to use what I have when I'm learning something new but I will probably add new supplies once I'm comfortable with what I already own.

I originally planned to spend a minimum of 10 minutes day painting. I haven't kept track of how much time I have spent painting but I know I have gone way beyond my 10 minute minimum. Partly because I don't want to stop once I get started and partly because it takes me a while to figure out what to do and how to do it.


As I complete each flower, I am sharing them daily on Instagram.  This is an important part of the process for me. Sharing pieces that I don't like is hard sometimes but it encourages me to keep practicing so that someday the pieces are easier to share.

I am eager to continue this project and will come back next week to share the next batch.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Cathie

Art Journal Joy: Seeking Progress Over Perfection

Lately, my art journaling hasn't been very satisfying. It has been driven mainly by the need for a blog post about art journaling. While that's been forcing to make something each week, I haven't always enjoyed the process or liked the final page.

I feel like I need a project that helps me improve a skill that I can use in my art journaling. It needs to be a daily project like sketching or lettering or faces or watercolor flowers. I've been thinking about this idea and yesterday I made the decision to follow through and pick a project and start it and work on it daily for the month of August.

So, I cut some sheets of watercolor paper to 6x8" and stamped the date on each one. I decided to spend 10 minutes each day practicing watercolor flowers because it's something that I have been enjoying this summer and there is so much to learn.   Thankfully, Pinterest and Instagram and YouTube are full of tutorials to help me learn and keep me inspired.

It's a little scary to share pages that are not going to be pretty or perfect. However, I need to do this and I want to share the process. Maybe I'll learn that I'm rubbish at watercolor flowers but what I'm hoping to learn is that I can get better with a daily practice.

I will share my pages on Instagram each day and I'll share my progress here each Friday.

I only started yesterday so this week I have one watercolor flower to share.



I found a tutorial on YouTube for painting watercolor tulips. My first flower (the one on the left) didn't  turn out like the video so I tried to combine what I saw with my abstract watercolor floral techniques to create the one on the right.

Here are some closeups.





I hope you'll follow along and cheer me on. If you have any tips or techniques to share or a favourite YouTube channel with great videos, please leave a note in the comments.

Here's to picking projects and learning something new.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Cathie