Welcome to the very first post of the new year! I’m watercoloring a loose little robin bird in the snow today. In this video, I share some insights into the painting process (including the benefits of taping down your paper) and I also have a favor to ask!

I almost titled this video ‘Ugly Dogs’ because I struggled so much with watercoloring them! I did 3 attempts at painting Pumba the Dog from a course I purchased on Enterclass (enterclass.com) because I just couldn’t get it right and also because I wanted to practice this very wet watercolor style that instructor Denis Petrulenkov does so beautifully.

 I’m painting the same painting on two different watercolor papers to explore the difference between hot press paper and rough paper.

In today’s post, I’m sharing my approach to painting gradient watercolor skies. The first approach is my simple method and the second approach is a little more complex. Gradient skies serves as useful backgrounds of landscapes and are a great way to practice how to paint color transitions.

It took me more than 2 years of watercoloring to finally purchase my first handmade watercolor paint. I’m not sure why it took me so long to look into them but I’m just now starting to discover this world of handmade watercolors.

I painted a fun little project a few weeks ago that I'm sharing on the blog today: rainbow watercolor borders.

For these watercolor borders, I was going for an "abstract" look. I used bold strokes, wet-on-wet mixed with dry brush, some splatter, and a bit of dabbing to paint 12 sheets in all the colors of the rainbow.

Today, I’m sharing my attempts at painting a dog from a course I purchased on Enterclass. I’ve always admired watercolors painted in a loose and wet style and thought I would share the learning process (and progress) I’m making as I try it out!

In hopes of encouraging the people looking at my work and thinking “I could never do that”, I want to share my mistakes (my practice). Because we all have to make mistakes and practice before we can make something that we are proud of.  

I’m still not sure if “behind the scenes” is the right term for this but in today’s blog post and video I am sharing the story behind where the idea of painting these watercolor ultrasounds came from and the process of how I paint them.

So where did this idea come from?

Well - it wasn’t an “idea” that I came up with while brainstorming one day or anything. And to be honest, I love that it didn’t originate that way.

Today, I’m sharing with you how I painted these simple, abstract ballerina figures using watercolors.

I received this question from a student in my online watercolor course, Just Watercolor and thought it would be a great one to share on the blog.

Here was her exact question:

I absolutely love your ballet girls. How did you do them? How did you keep them simple and abstract? Was it a happenstance movement of a brush that created them initially, or were you trying to create exactly that? What inspired them? How did you do them? How big are they? Did they turn out differently than you envisioned? Did you make mistakes and have to start over?

I painted a bunch of peach slices the other day to digitize for September's monthly wallpaper and decided to film it just in case I wanted to share it with you. It’s not the best quality, but I thought it might help to share the video and talk through what I was thinking when I painted them.