Life LackaDaisiCal

I'm doing an on-line watercolour lettering workshop - run by Val Webb....her blog "The Illustrated Garden" is wonderful. This is a set of tutorials - for every level of artist - including rank amateurs like me - and started with the basics.  (A lot of the participants seem to be professional artists of one sort or another - I am in good company!) Here are my two exercises from the first lesson... We first learned how to draw in block style - then the challenge was to create a personalized block style. This second piece was an exercise in watercolour brush control - draw the ovals, draw various forms of a single letter in the ovals, fill in the oval - leaving the letter white (negative painting). As basic as this lesson was, I learned a few things from it....things that I didn't learn in the watercolour workshops I've taken....so I'm happy.  I MUST find a pencil that erases easily....the pencil I used for these two projects didn't erase easily....it was a ...

Who would have imagined that "wash day" could be so much fun.  My Mother always did washing on Mondays.....I remember the washing machine in the basement.....they called them "wringer washers" because of the rollers that were used to wring out the excess water before the clothes were hung out to dry. The good old days! Nope.....around here "Wash Day" is when I play with my watercolours .....creating washes with no sense of purpose....just for fun.  Pick a couple of shades, get your water flowing, paint, run, splatter.....do whatever makes you happy.... Then comes the hard part......you have to just leave them, let the water and the paint do their thing...... One of my recent purchases included a set of 5 Quinacridone shades by M. Graham & Co.   I had used Quinacridone Gold by Winsor & Newton and just love it - so I thought I might give these other "Quin" colours a try.....Quinacridone Red, Violet, Rose, Rust and Gold. So, my first wash wa...