Susan Chiang

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Loose Watercolor Flowers Practice Session

According to my mom, I’m not great at painting flowers. And she’s not wrong. I have yet to find my stride when it comes to painting botanicals. But I know if I really wanted to find it, I could. But it will definitely take some practice.

Back when I started watercoloring, one of the first subjects I tried painting was flowers. Even then I knew I didn’t truly find joy painting flowers in the style that I was attempting. I showed my mother and she told me those paintings didn’t have “life” to them. I totally agree with her statement and I am also not surprised because my heart wasn’t in it when I was painting them.

Since then I haven’t spent a lot of time painting flowers, but since then I’ve also grown as an artist. I’ve been curious to see how I would approach flowers after making progress and practicing with the medium over the past few years.

So I decided, for the whole month of March, I will just paint flowers. The first practice session felt like I was trying to learn to ride a bike after not riding for years. A little unsure and wobbly, but the muscle memory was definitely still there.

I filmed my practice session and decided to share it on YouTube. Most YouTube videos for paintings are nicely presented processes that result in a final painting. So this one is a bit different since it’s just me experimenting and trying to get a hang of flowers again.

I painted 3 different pages with a variety of styles just to get a feel for it again. If you want to follow along and hear about some of my thoughts on these practice attempts, click below to watch the video!

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As always, thank you for reading & watching,
Susan