First Scan on My New Epson Perfection V600 Photo Scanner

What a beautiful scan. My watercolors never looked so good. The Epson Perfection V600 photo scanner is affordable, compact, lightweight, easy to set up, and a snap to use. Since I typically photograph my artwork in the evening, I was plagued with artificial lighting issues and shadows that I couldn’t easily correct in Photoshop without distorting the color. Bye-bye lighting issues and unwanted shadows. Hello gorgeous color.

The Epson Perfection V600 also solved a problem I was having with my camera capturing the texture of the cold press watercolor paper that I typically use. I don’t want that texture to appear on high-quality prints. Thank you so much for the fabulous gift, Mom, Greta, and my bestie, Tami. It looks like instead of doing housework and laundry on this rainy day, I’ll be playing with my new scanner.

Night fairy in watercolor on cold press Acquarello Artistico paper by Fabriano. This painting is based on a tutorial in the book, “Enchanting Fairies–How to Paint Fairies and Flowers,” by Barbara Lanza.

Fuchsia and Hummingbird in Watercolor

Winter has definitely arrived. It’s dark and rainy and cold today. Even the dogs don’t want to venture outside. It’s been pouring here for hours so lately I’ve been dreaming of spring–as you can see from my latest painting.

I’m a big fan of color so this brightly colored hummingbird tickled my fancy. This painting is based on a tutorial in the book, “Painting Garden Birds” by Sherry C. Nelson. The book is geared towards oil painters, but it translated easily into watercolor. This book has been sitting on my shelves for years. I’m glad I finally pulled it off the shelf and put it to good use.

Yellow and Orange Tulips in Watercolor

This tulip painting looks deceptively simple but it was time consuming and challenging to paint. I found the giant tulip on the left to be particularly challenging since I had such a large area to cover. The orange areas on the tulips required several washes to create an intense color. I painted the yellow areas first and then washed the orange on top; however, the next time I will reverse the process and paint the dark orange first and then apply a yellow wash on top. Each painting is a learning process.

This painting is for my sister with much love.