My oldest – Rachel asked me to create a project for her upcoming wedding – an artistic guest book.  You may know it by a Jewish Ketubah, or have seen it from Quaker weddings as well.  It’s basically a large sized declaration of the couples love, and vows signed by all who witnessed the union and celebration.  It makes a great keepsake of a very special day.

Well, any of these online go for a pretty hefty price tag.  I saw the norm between $300-$500!  SO, enter the crafty step-mom.  The kids had given me watercolors for Christmas (how ironic), as most of these I found online were done by watercolor artists.  Thus, my experiment in Watercolor.

I’ve been playing around learning exactly how to watercolor.  I of course know a little from watercoloring my images on my cards.  Since I do consider myself somewhat creative and artistic…I thought, why not?  Well…the art world is a whole other animal!  And me with my K-8 art training!  Thankfully I am a crafty paper crafter who happens to love making creative scenery with dye based inks – a head start!  But learning the world of color, perspective, negative and positives, notation, and so much more without the proper education has been quite…well how do we say it – thrown into the deep end with cement shoes! 

So, since I’ve been laid up with a nagging thumb and wrist injury that’s kept me off my blogs on the computer and stamping…I you tubed, googled, pinterest and researched till the cows came home – mostly with my left hand and on my smart phone!  I stumbled upon some great watercolor artist instructional sites and waded into the water.  To my surprise, painting doesn’t hurt me the way stamping does at the moment – I can keep being creative while I heal– yeah!!!  My first project – a basil leaf.  Now, if you know me…you know that I don’t do anything half way, and certainly not simple!

Getting into botanical watercoloring is precise and I decided to learn from a great self taught UK artist – Anna Mason.  She came up with her own technique to layer (that’s an understatement) colors over one another to create gorgeous 3D watercolors.  Since Rachel wants a floral motif, I wanted to paint as realistic as I could and Anna’s technique suits my purposes perfectly.

The small one was my first go at it – and then I went life size – 10 inches in height.  I still have a way to go to master this technique – but this leaf looks amazing in real life close up!

I also ventured out to take a local watercolor class.  It’s always great to learn something from someone trained.  And honestly, nice to be a student too – doesn’t happen often!  Tanya – my local art teacher is well…let’s just say uber talented!  She bit off a little more than we could chew in the class – as no one was close to finishing either project in the 5 hour class!  Yes, you read that right!  Boy did I learn a ton!

Our class was on positive and negative.  We basically threw some paint down randomly in certain areas and created scenery out of the space!  It was quite interesting.  I think you’ll laugh at my piece that I created in class…but be amazed at what it turned into!

Here is the initial piece with the spaces that I identified as rocks (Don’t be scared – keep reading…it turns out okay!)…

Now…here’s what I turned in into – I’m still a bit amazed!  Note – rocks suck…they are SUPER hard to do, and I really had to keep perspective and light in my mind.  Creating a shape that actually looks like something out of a blob isn’t all that easy!  But it’s amazing what your mind does start to see. 

You can see it all start to take shape.  I removed some color and ugly patches – not that my paper liked that…and once I did a more drastic transformation – here is the finished piece…

I know…there were colors in places that did not belong – and for all the stuff that went wrong – I just love it.  It was definitely a work in progress and I learned so much from the experience.  I think that’s why I love the end result.  I doesn’t always have to be perfect – I know…pick yourself up off the floor!  Here they are side by side – cool to see the transformation.

I’m still working on the forest scene that was our second project, and I”ll share that someday in the future when I’m ready to!  I hope you enjoyed this watercolor journey with me today.  I’m excited to keep going and learn more – always the student!

You’ll have to let me know what you think – Don’t be shy…I’m very much in the beginning stages of this – do you watercolor or paint?  I’d sure love to know!!