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.

Moth Fairy in Watercolor

My daughter and I have an ongoing disagreement over this painting. My intent was to paint a male fairy since all of the fairies I’ve painted thus far have been female, but she insists that this fairy looks like a girl, too, because of its long locks and the way it’s sitting on the daisy. I disagree. I think it clearly looks like a boy. What are your thoughts–boy or girl?

This painting is based on a tutorial in Linda Ravenscroft’s book, “The Fairy Artist’s Figure Drawing Bible.”

Happy Holidays

Happy holidays from my home to yours. I hope your holiday is filled with laughter and love. I can’t wait to spend the day with my family and friends.

Holiday fairy in watercolor.

Water Lilies in Watercolor

My goal for this painting was to keep the subject simple so I could complete it quickly. But looks can be deceiving, and these water lilies proved to be quite time consuming and challenging. It took me several attempts to render realistic dew drops but I finally began to nail them on the leaf on the bottom right-hand corner. Once I figured out the technique, painting dew drops was surprisingly quick and easy.

The swampy water, on the other hand, was even more challenging. It’s definitely not what I envisioned; and I obviously need more practice painting water. If anyone has any tips or tricks for painting water that they’d like to share, I’m all ears!

This painting was based on a tutorial in Linda Ravenscroft’s book, “How to Draw and Paint Fairyland: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the World of Fairies.”

Purple Fairy in Watercolor

Good morning, everyone. How was your weekend? Mine was busy. I spent time visiting with relatives from Ohio, went to the D.C. Big Flea antique show, visited a local farmer’s market, and did some housework, laundry, and yard work. And I managed to squeeze in one quick watercolor painting. This purple fairy is based on a tutorial in Linda Ravenscroft’s book, “How to Draw and Paint Fairies.” It’s an indispensable source of information for new watercolorists.

Normally, I paint fairy wings quite pale, so I thought I’d change things up a bit and use a more intense color. What do you think, are the wings too dark? Here’s a close up view of the fairy’s face. Thanks for visiting. Have a great day!

My Niece’s Watercolor Tulips

My niece, Karen, also painted rainbow tulips then tried her hand at stippling with a micron pen, choosing colors to match each flower. She painted the cloudy background without the use of masking fluid, which can be tricky, but she did a fabulous job.

I’m still completing my painting since I spent more time as a host, helper, photographer, and instructor during our family paint-a-thon than I actually did painting. I’ll be posting my painting next.

Sometimes You Just Have to Stop and Smell the Flowers

Little Stevie, our Yorkshire Terrier is such a curious boy. He just couldn’t wait to check out this bouquet of pink tulips–a Valentine’s gift from my sweet sister. Aren’t they lovely? Thank you, sissy. I snapped dozens of photos of Steve and my flowers in hopes of recreating them in a watercolor painting.

One-Year Anniversary

February 18th will mark the one-year anniversary of my blog. Since I began this blog to share my efforts on learning how to paint with watercolors, my daughter, Greta, thought it would be a good idea to repaint our first painting and share the results here. We’ve developed a lot of new skills in the past year–and I’ll share some lessons learned in an upcoming post–but we still have a lot to learn. Our plan is to repaint this little lion–which we intentionally kept simple since it was our first effort–each year on our anniversary to show our progression.

My blog has grown into much more than an art blog over the past year. I’ve also branched out and included posts about the things I love most–art, cooking, interior design, gardening, and spending time with my family and animal friends. Life is good, and I’m pleased to share the goodness with you. I’d like to thank my loyal followers and readers for all their encouragement and lovely comments over the past year and I hope to continue to share all the goodness life has to offer.

Watercolor Morning Glories

This was such a simple drawing, yet I found these morning glories quite challenging to paint. Challenging = difficult, which usually means it was a learning experience, and that’s a good thing. This painting was based on a drawing lesson from Janet Whittle’s book, “How to Draw Exotic Flowers in Simple Steps.”

Sunday Evening Paint Session

I spent the evening painting with my daughter, listening to Christmas and classical music, and sipping peach iced tea. I love spending time with my daughter. What a lovely way to spend a Sunday evening.