Christmas Watercolour

This week, I’ve been slightly obsessed with watching beginner watercolour videos on YouTube.  I’ve watched loads of videos - they’ve kept me entertained (distracted?) whilst I’ve been on the treadmill!  The artists all make watercolour painting look so easy.  I’ve never painted but have fancied trying out watercolour for a while, so thought following some guidance would be a good place to start.

First was a scene with a colour washed background with fir trees in the foreground from Maremi SmallArt.

I colour washed and dried the background before painting in the trees in varying shades of grey/black.  This gives depth to the scene by making it look like the lighter trees are further away and darker ones in the foreground.  Once the pictures were dry, I splattered on some white acrylic paint for snow.  I was very happy with how these turned out.

After completing these two, I went downstairs to show Mr L and found that he had been busy creating himself.  He’d fashioned a ball pit play centre for the kittens, inspired by the bridge from the Indiana Jones The Temple of Doom film!  Like you do.  Dill loves it but Scooby prefers to take the balls out and bat them around the floor.

Anyway, back to the art.  This next video was fascinating to watch.  It’s a loose watercolour Christmas tree by Andrew Geeson.

This is so against my natural inclination to neat and tidy lines with a perfect finish so I was well outside my comfort zone with this painting.  The colours were also not what I would have used but they work.  I was completely gobsmacked how well this came out and I keep looking at it, amazed that I created it.

My last painting was inspired by CreationsCeeCee. 

 

I colour washed the background first and then tried painting the tree in a leaf shape as per the video.  However, my paper is quite textured so when I tried to feather out the paint with a dry brush, it didn’t work so I painted some feathery branches in instead.  When this was dry, I added baubles using my Fintec metallic paints and then added stars with a white gel pen.

 

All that’s left to do now is to mount them onto cards.  I’ve really enjoyed my first foray into watercolour painting and found it very relaxing.