Finishing a Watercolor Painting
This week, I have a video about finishing a watercolor painting.
See more pics on the Finnish art store Taiko’s website!
Painting Freely and The Challenge of Finishing
I paint watercolors freely without models or reference photos. It’s exciting to see what appears on the paper and to examine random spots trying to find flowers and plants, which are my favorite subjects. I believe that if I manage to create favorable conditions, the plants will start to grow naturally on paper.
When painting flowers freely without references, it’s easy to omit the details. But I think that the details make the finished look. Everything doesn’t have to be sharp and intricate but focus on those parts that you want to catch the viewer’s eye.
Making a Color Chart
My watercolor set has colors from many different manufacturers. I use artist-quality colors and always as pans. If I buy a tube, I’ll squeeze the paint into the pan. I like to use a color chart. The colors look darker when wet and on the pans as well. And there are differences in how pigments behave.
My grid follows the order of the pans and I add the names of the pigments below the color samples. A part of the colors are in a separate box waiting for their turn to get to the 36-pan set. I make notes on them at the end of the chart. The color chart prevents me from buying several similar pans (that happened too many times before I made one!) and helps with memorizing which colors are my favorites.
Start Freely – Finish Slowly!
There are watercolor painters who wet the paper, draw a few brushstrokes on it and the painting is finished. I work on the same painting for several hours and slowly approach the result layer by layer. It requires patience, but on the other hand, I can always paint on fine-quality cotton paper because my approach is less experimental.
I love that the painting doesn’t immediately shout but first whispers timidly. Each painting is unique and I like to spend time getting to know it. In doing so, I will not only learn something about the painting or myself but about humanity and nature in general.
I want the result to look natural, although there is also a lot of decoration in my paintings. I love ornaments – swirls, decorative lines, and shapes, and my favorite historical style is Baroque. It is easy for me to see the luxury of baroque in plants. As a child, I imagined palaces and halls around me when walking in nature. Life in a remote small town in the 1970s was modest, but I got by with imagination.
Finishing a Watercolor Painting – Watch the Video!
In the video, I have footage from the finishing phase. There you can see that when proceeding little by little, you can add all kinds of things even in the final stages. It’s common for me that a shape is just a circle at first, but then I add notches to it and make it a leaf or a flower. Watch the video!
Freely Grown – Using Colored Pencils for Finishing
If you are new to watercolor painting, working with thin brushes can feel challenging. It’s then easier to use colored pencils for finishing a watercolor painting. I have a course called Freely Grown where you learn step-by-step how to make a layered watercolor painting and finish it with colored pencils. All this is done freely without models and by focusing on techniques, so your work has the same steps, but the result will be completely unique.
Freely Grown is now 15% OFF! >>Buy Now!
The sale ends on July 31st, 2024, at midnight PDT.
Drawing Sceneries with Watercolor Pencils
This week, I have a fun drawing idea: fill a paper with many small sceneries!
For this project, I have used watercolor pencils and Fabriano Accademia drawing paper (size: A4). The paper is very nice with colored pencils and goes well with watercolor pencils too.
Inspiration for Drawing Sceneries
Creating mini-sceneries is easy when you start playing with the scale. Think about a bumblebee – how it first flies over fields admiring the view and then finds a mini-world inside a flower.
Your mind can be a busy bee, collecting a variety of ideas – big and small.
Your hand can then pick some of those ideas and put them into one picture like it would be a treasured collection in a secret museum. “Faberge eggs,” said my husband when I showed my picture to him.
Watercolor Pencils
I often use regular colored pencils but slowly I have become interested in watercolor pencils too. I have had a few Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle pencils for a while and I love their quality – vivid colors, lovely to hold, and work well without water too. A couple of weeks ago, I bought 20 landscape colors to accompany what I already have.
Mini-Sceneries – Start Here!
Start your collection by picking a circle template, for example, a lid. Draw circles so that they overlap partially. Put one idea into one circle and color each of the circles separately.
This can be a “one in a day” project. Take your time to focus on each circle.
Watercolor Pencils in Use
Watercolor pencils are great for quickly filling larger areas. Color the area lightly and then add water over the colored area.
Let dry before adding a new layer on the top.
Drawing Sceneries – Playing with Styles
My favorite thing is to combine nature-related ideas such as landscapes and flowers with decorative motifs. I like to draw dots, other simple shapes, and lines so that they form frames and ornaments.
In this project, the circles are nature-related while the background has a more ornamental approach.
When you keep the background unified, you can use many styles in one piece. One paper then becomes a diary where anything handmade looks great together because it’s made by one hand and one mind.
Drawing in Ornamental Style
This project is another variation of the earlier blog post: Colored Pencils – Ornamental Approach. If you have taken the course Intuitive Coloring, would you be interested in creating something like this on a course next?
Motion Art – Ornamental Land
This week, I have a short video artwork that has motion and sound. It’s been made as a part of the big project that I am working on. I have received a grant for it from The Finnish Cultural Foundation.
This is my first video artwork that also has audio. I recorded bird sounds and other natural sounds earlier in the spring and composed the soundscape from those recordings.
The 3D shapes are modeled in the 3D modeling program called Blender, and I have programmed the movement in C# programming language. Everything except the audio was put together in the Unity game engine. I added the soundscape in the video editing program called DaVinci Resolve. These are all pretty complicated tools, and it has taken time to learn them. If you are interested in the process, watch my video: “From Painting to Digital 3D Art” where I tell about the first half of the grant project.
Motion Art – Working with New Media
The big project is called “Unknown Land,” and I call this video artwork “Ornamenttien maa” which is “Land of Ornaments” or “Ornamental Land” in English. It has been a challenge to transfer my drawing and painting style to a new media, but I think I am getting closer and closer. What do you think? Does it look like my work?
Creating movement and sound has been new to me, and I will also add interaction to the final piece.
Even if I have spent a lot of time on my computer called Turandot (named after my favorite composer Giancomo Puccini‘s opera), I am not leaving painting and drawing. You will see my digital artworks from time to time, but there will be a lot of other content too. For an artist, working with one medium can help with other. My main inspiration always starts from drawing what ever I create.
Selling Watercolor Paintings as Gifts
This week, I talk about making and selling watercolor paintings as gifts. At the same time, we celebrate the playfulness of watercolors.
See more and bigger pics at Taiko (online art store)
I love gift shops. My dream for a long time has been that, in addition to large oil paintings, I could sell smaller pieces as gifts. Recently, this has come true. I have sold many of my watercolor paintings not only directly but also via the Taiko online art store and the Gumbostrand Konst & Form gallery.
Art as Gifts vs. Art for Homes
An art buyer never buys art just for need. The work must appeal to the buyer on a deep level. Still, large paintings are chosen more according to the interior, and smaller ones are purchased as gifts. Sometimes a small painting is a gift to the buyer himself, often to someone else.
As a professional artist, I am more known for oil paintings, but I have dreamt that also my watercolor pieces would be in demand. I love to paint them and the idea of a perfect gift inspires me. However, it has taken time to grow my vision of how they should look.
Because I have grown many of my general painting skills with watercolors, my watercolor paintings have quite a similar style to my oil paintings. But with watercolors, I step in a slightly more illustrative direction. I want my watercolor art not to be too abstract, but approachable and atmospheric. See a collection of my recent watercolor paintings here!
Flower Art But With a Playful Attitude
My watercolor pieces usually have flowers. However, I don’t paint just static and spiritless flower arrangements. I see flowers as adventurous human or animal figures and get playful with them. On the one hand, the flowers are like dolls and teddy bears, and on the other hand, they are imperfectly perfect, feeling natural and real.
When the playfulness really kicks in, painting is fun.
I love to discover plants in the middle of random watercolor spots. I have also a course called Freely Grown about this kind of process.
Taking Several Sessions to Grow the Idea
Usually, the first layers of the painting are fast and only take an hour or two. But that’s when the painting is just a regular flower painting, not a special piece that has a special appeal. Within a couple of hours, there’s not much time to grow the idea further or adjust the details.
I usually paint in several sessions where the first one or two lay the foundation and produce the basic painting, and where the next sessions (usually 2 to 4) grow the story and produce the finished look.
For example, for this painting, I took walks to see flowers and to add some more to the painting. But after a while, that felt too traditional and then decided on the gold mining theme.
The further I go, the smaller the brush strokes become.
Working with a Progress Photo
I find it helpful to take a photo of the unfinished piece, and then use it as a reference. The small-sized picture makes it easier for me to spot the areas that still need adjusting.
Looking at the photo also helps with distancing myself from the actual piece. I can ask: Do I love this? Would I buy this? When selling watercolor paintings as gifts, never underestimate the quality, always try a little higher.
Color over Color
Pigments are very different from each other. Some colors require many layers, and others can be used very thickly. Most artist-quality yellows have good coverage and work well for the finishing touches.
I have recently used smooth (hot press) watercolor paper because it’s best for tiny details.
Gentle Breakthroughs
I want to break boundaries with all my art, but in watercolor, I try to do it more gently than usual. In this painting, the flowers have caught Hokusai’s great wave from Japan and taken it to Lapland to pan for gold. And so it happened that the gold and the flowers started a decorative baroque party and everything small became surprisingly big and grand. Despite all this, this is a flower painting where the viewer can relax and enjoy the joyful atmosphere.
But whatever the story is, I try to express it so that it can evoke different memories and associations in different people. Somehow, the painting must make a gentle breakthrough in the eyes of the viewer – find a soft spot where the immersion can begin.
See more pics of “Kultaa huuhtoneet – Gold Panners” at the Taiko art store!
Freely Grown – Paint Watercolor Flowers with Me!
In the course Freely Grown, I walk you through my watercolor painting process. Because the finishing touches with a small brush are the most challenging, we take the easier route and do them with colored pencils. In Freely Grown, you paint flowers freely without reference photos and create a unique painting from the given techniques and guidelines. >> Buy here!