Watercolor for Cardmakers - Intermediate Techniques: Days 5 and 6

Hello!

I've finally found a moment to sit down to photograph and blog my homework from days 5 and 6 of Watercolor for Cardmakers: Intermediate Techniques where we were taught expressive florals. This style can be either easy or challenging, depending on your mental state! As a perfectionist, it was difficult for me to just let the paints do whatever they wanted to do with a tiny bit of direction from me.

My first challenge was to follow Dawn's direction to not worry about wasting my expensive and valuable watercolour paper, haha! She is right, how can we improve if we don't practice? And since the paints behave differently with different papers, you really need to practice on the paper you intend to use.

So I practised, and then I started making little paintings. I have made a card from one of the paintings I made during day 5 practice, and I will make more. I like some of what I created, and the others I learned from.

My first one uses just the natural shape of the brush to create the leaves and flowers. I like this effect. I've seen a few others in the gallery using the same technique but with quite different feels, and all so beautiful!

I love these little flowers. They remind me of crepe myrtle. I'm thinking I'll explore this technique a bit more, to see if I can actually create something that really does look like crepe myrtle. :-)

Oh, how I struggled with these little roses! It's such a loose painting style, and you really don't know what you'll get until you're finished.

This one I did not like at all. But I can see things that worked in it, so it was a good practice.

So after the rose that I didn't like, I decided to try one more time and created this one, which I do like.

I liked it so much I decided to scan it and make it into a card. (I'm not happy with my stamping of the sentiment, but since it is a scanned copy, I can just fix it later with another print.)

I then moved onto day 6 homework. First I tried Sanketi's lessons. I've successfully used Sanketi's techniques previously, but this time I really found it challenging. I love her style and I always learn something when I watch her videos. :-)

So after that, and feeling frustrated I gave myself a day of rest. I returned to the expressive florals with two ideas. The first was that I wanted to experiment with what happens when I use less water and a smaller brush. I was pleasantly surprised! I can see some potential in this style for me.

Then I tried to create some cosmos with wet flowers and drier leaves and stems. I played around with my greens to create some variation, and I really gave it a good splatter!

So, that's where I'm up to. I've loved these classes so much. I knew that I would learn from Dawn and my admiration for her has just increased over this class.

Thanks for visiting!

Michelle
xxx