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?
In my new online course Freely Grown, we will use watercolors and colored pencils for a flower painting. Here are the basics for using both in the same piece.
Watercolors and colored pencils have quite a lot in common, even though one is used for painting and the other for drawing.
Choosing the Paper
Both like thick and smooth watercolor paper. Of course, watercolors like textured paper too, but colored pencils are a bit more selective. I find it most enjoyable to color on Hot Press quality paper that has very little surface texture. But if you only have textured Cold Press paper in your stock, just start experimenting right away and buy smoother paper later!
All Brands Work Together
In both watercolors and colored pencils, you can combine different brands.
I also have many different brands in my watercolor set and even though I work with pans, some of the pans are pressed from tube colors. And I love to try different brands of colored pencils and organize them by color family.
Proceed Layer by Layer
When creating, it is good to start carefully with both watercolors and colored pencils. Introduce a new color little by little and change it layer by layer. Always dry the lower layer of watercolor first before adding another layer on top.
I like to use at least three brushes for watercolors: one flat, one round, and one narrow.
Translucent layers produce new color mixes. By saving the effect of white paper, you will have a more effortless look than if you color white later.
Watercolors First, Colored Pencils Second
You can color over a dry watercolor painting with colored pencils, but not vice versa. Sure, there are watercolor pencils that dissolve in water, but I usually use all of them dry. So I do a watercolor painting first, and then finish it with colored pencils.
Painting with watercolors is fast, but drying between layers takes time. Colored pencils are slow, but the mark is detailed and you can immediately add a new layer.
The quickest solution is to paint most of the work with watercolors and only emphasize the highlights and add details with colored pencils.
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I’ve been going through my art supplies lately and reflecting on my path as an artist so far. In recent blog posts, I’ve featured drawings, but now we’re moving on to watercolors. This post is about painting watercolor fairies and the wilderness around them.
Watercolor Surfaces – Aquabord vs. Paper
I love thick watercolor paper, but I made a special find in my stash: a hard base meant for watercolors. I bought it years ago but had forgotten it. But now I had to try this Ampersand Aquabord!
Watercolors have a built-in sense of surprise that keeps me interested in the work. Still, you can also do accurate and illustrative details. I like to use a lot of water at the beginning and less at the end. Even if Aquabord is surprisingly absorbent, I prefer the effects that a good-quality paper creates. But maybe this is the thing that would need more practice. It is said that to get to know a certain paper, tens of experiments are needed.
When the painting progresses I move on to negative painting, so paint the background in such a way that I leave the shapes from the previous layers exposed to maintain the brightness.
Aquabord turned out to be more convenient than paper in keeping the painting light. It is easy to wipe off color with either a rag or a dry brush. But even if lifting color is harder on paper, I still would prefer watercolor paper, especially 100% cotton, because it feels so wonderful! However, for beginner watercolorists, Aquabord is great because you can erase and start over!
Watercolor Fairies
About four years ago, my watercolor set was a close friend, and I thought I was at my best in watercolor painting. One of my favorite subjects in watercolor was fairy-tale characters – spirits of nature that rise from the surrounding greenery and have the sensitivity of a butterfly. It was also fun to come up with names for them!
CherimonaShyelingAquanoraMirimer
When painting a watercolor, a character can appear by accident. It’s fascinating to see who comes up as the round shapes of the plants encourage the spirit to emerge.
Even though nowadays I mostly paint with oil, I still want to step into wild nature with a brush and listen to my intuition. Watercolors have taught me a way to first splash freely and then finish with intention.
Magical Forest with Watercolor Fairies
I have also made a watercolor course about this kind of intuitive nature painting: Magical Forest.
Magical Forest combines light with hope, trees with spirituality, water with flow, and wilderness with curiosity.
Flower or Fairy?
In this work on Aquabord, I first thought that the weird purple flower could be enough of a character. But after looking at the flower for a while, I felt that someone was squatting under it.
And it wasn’t a shy spirit either, but quite lively.
I even painted hands for her.
The butterfly flew there too as if by accident!
What Makes a Fairytale?
In my opinion, a watercolor painting with a fairy tale character can leave a lot of guesswork. The mystery is allowed! There may be abstract shapes that only describe the atmosphere rather than anything else.
When the shy watercolor fairies started appearing in my art in 2019, they represented the part of me that is needed for making art. Now my artist fairy is more confident and cooperative and is not afraid to appear when called.
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I now got the fourth one finished, and I couldn’t resist taking a photo of them together. These are only 6 by 6 inches, and the small size enables me to study a style or an idea before making a bigger painting. So, in a way, these are like pages in an art journal – small art that is delightful to create and look at but that doesn’t fill a wall. It’s the first time I feel I can create quick experiments directly in oils. And this brings us to the topic of art supplies.
Crayons, Inks, and All the Possibilities
I have now painted on canvas in oil for over two years, and most of the other art supplies don’t inspire me so much anymore. I have all kinds of crayons, inks, and paint tubes that were purchased in a different mindset many years ago.
I like many of the pieces that I created back then, but now when I look at those boxes of crayons, the magic has gone away. All I can hear is the calling of my beloved oil paints.
There are two exceptions though.
Colored Pencils Are the Easiest Art Supplies
Colored Pencils bring me back to my childhood when I was drawing with my elder sisters, admiring what they did with them. For me, colored pencils were not just pencils, but dolls that had names. It was sad to see a doll that I loved get shortened and then finally thrown away!
Compared to oil paints, colored pencils have an advantage. There’s no preparation involved. When I paint with oils, I need to build the palette, clean the caps, select the brushes, protect the tabletop, etc. But with colored pencils, I can just grab a piece of paper or open another page in a journal and start coloring freely. When I am tired but still want to create something, it’s really nice.
I have also liked to maintain my illustration skills, and colored pencils are great for that too. For example, see the newest course Doll World!
Watercolors Are a Great Teacher
I am also emotionally connected with my watercolor set. Even if I haven’t used it much lately, I feel that painting in a watercolor set my style. Many techniques that I use in oil were learned when I was painting in watercolor, for example, negative painting and building an image layer by layer.
After Winter – Talven jälkeen, 38 x 28 cm, watercolor, 2019.
I also learned a lot about pigments and their behavior back then. It was a good learning experience to paint many pieces in a row.
Watercolor paintings from 2019.
I have several courses on watercolor, for example, Magical Forest for fairies and Floral Fantasies for floral still lives!
What about all those inks, crayons, and such, did I learn anything from them? Yes, of course, but when I look back, it feels like when I started to focus more on one media instead of mixed media, I also took a big leap forward in skills. My art went forward when I no longer tried to find a solution by changing the media but by growing the skill. I was also able to get a more emotional connection with the supplies and somehow that feels very important to me.
Oils vs. Acrylics as Art Supplies
Before oils, I painted in acrylics for some time. They are more practical. They don’t smell like wet oil does. The painting mediums have less odor too. They dry fast so painting is much faster, no need to wait for days before adding a new layer or making the finishing touches. Acrylics don’t require a similar kind of knowledge of pigments and painting mediums as oils do. In oils, you have to be careful with some pigments and the use of mediums because they may cause crackling.
Varnishing small oil paintings. I do my best to build the layers of the painting so that it will last the test of time.
Despite all that worry, when I open my box of oil tubes, I feel different than if I pick acrylics.
The Emotions I Get When Painting in Oil
The oil paints connect me to the past. They take me to the time before I was even born.
Within seconds, I travel back to the beginning of the 20th century, meet the early abstract painters and impressionists, then continue my journey to the 19th century and meet pre-raphaelites, and move from them to those who wanted to capture the realism, and to those who were more romantics. Then again, within seconds, I go to the 18th century and admire all the floral still lives and women in beautiful dresses.
And at best, I continue the journey to the 17th and 16th centuries and see big paintings full of details. Then I also meet the masters that had the patience to make really thin layers and wait for each to dry before adding a new one.
This time traveling enables me to meet long-time friends like Wassily Kandinsky, Peter Paul Rubens, and Leonardo da Vinci and if I do some browsing before I start painting, I always find a new one that I want to meet and learn from.
One of the paintings that I will show you later this spring!
There are many great artists today, but I feel that tracing what you love back to history is essential to artistic growth. I also get satisfaction from knowing that I belong to the chain of generations. Artists from the past, still live through me.
Paintings In Progress
I have been painting quite a lot recently, and there are many more paintings in the queue.
These are in-progress pictures! I will show you the finished ones in the near future!
I usually reserve a whole day for painting and try not to do anything else at the same time. If you want to follow a painting day, look for my Instagram stories where I usually post in-progress photos when I am testing the composition and such.
What are Your Favorite Art Supplies?
Tell us what are your favorite art supplies at the moment! It would also be interesting to know which supplies raise emotions in you.
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