I finally painted, like, an actual thing! Not just blobs and quick doodles! Yay! This isn’t at all what I had in mind when I originally wanted to try watercolors. But whatevsies! This is just practice. And what a good practice it was!

I definitely feel like I’m improving. Getting a slightly better feel for how much water I need on the brush now. I have a hard time filling in large areas though. It never looks smooth enough. Like a solid color. Some areas will be darker than others. The snail’s body and the top of the mushroom are good examples of what I’m trying to describe.

Would love to hear what you think! Any advice/tips are always welcome! :)

Painting is very relaxing! I have a lot of things stressing me out right now, to the point that I have a hard time really focusing on or enjoying anything. Doing these paintings was successful at taking my mind off of everything for a while last night.

I apologize for the lack of posting and for being behind on replying to comments right now. I don’t mean to be rude, I just have other things on my mind.

Yesterday, I experimented with watercolors again. I guess I’m learning a little (blending, layering). But I feel like I don’t really have much control over what the paint does. I have a hard time determining if I’m using too much water or too little. I guess practice will help me with that. I wish I could take a class on watercolors. I’d probably learn things that I would never think to try on my own! Here’s my previous watercolor post. I like to compare to see if I’ve improved at all.

I love cacti right now :)

Sad cactus is sad because he has no friends :P

Also, I’ve been working on my blog layout. I added watercolor headings to all of the little sections in the sidebars, which I really love! I also did lots of coding stuff that I find very fun, but I’m guessing most people probably don’t, so I won’t ramble about it :P Now if I could just come up with a pretty header image!

Here’s a little bit of what I’ve done with watercolors so far. These are just a few of my favorites. I haven’t spent as much time playing with them as I should, so I don’t have much to show.

What do you think? I feel like I should go hunt for some inspiration and tutorials!

I suddenly want to try watercolors again. I probably haven’t touched them since I was a kid. The urge just kinda hit me today and I’m not sure why. I’ve been wanting something new to do, on paper. I don’t like markers or chalks, and if given acrylics, I’d rather paint on things than on paper. Usually if I want to do something on paper, I bust out my colored pencil collection. I enjoy them, but I’m not very good with them. That along with my childish drawing style, basically makes everything I draw look like a kid did it. Here’s an example. :P

There’s a style of watercolor work that I really like. It’s always outlined in black ink and filled in kinda (intentionally) sloppy with watercolor. I’m having a terrible time finding an example, so here is a non-watercolor piece that is very similar. This is something that I’d really like to try. I’m thinking that I may have to treat myself to some new watercolor goodies after Christmas!

Here are a couple pieces from Etsy that I like. :)

By keithnoordzy

By tamaragarvey

I hope everyone is having a nice Christmas Eve! My family has never done any celebrating on Christmas Eve, so I’m just waiting for tomorrow. I have a Christmas gift for my blog readers! I’m excited to give it to you tomorrow! :D

I’m not sure if it’s come up here yet, but I freaking LOVE Gnomes! I wish I could remember where, but (somewhere!) recently, I saw a Gnome that was completely covered in glitter. I thought that it was the coolest and of course, had to have one!

I had this little dude, who had done some time outdoors, and had gotten a bit faded from the sun. So I decided that I would make him my glitter Gnome!

This tutorial will of course, work with just about anything. But in my case, I was after a glitter Gnome, so that’s what I’m painting! :)

Supplies you’ll need:

- Extreme Glitter paint by Plaid/FolkArt
- Acrylic paint in a matching color
- Paint brush
- Something to paint. Obviously :P

This is really pretty simple and hardly even qualifies as a tutorial! :P

Step 1: Apply a base coat of acrylic paint and allow it to dry. Do multiple coats if you need to. Make sure no color is showing through.

Step 2: Apply a coat of the Extreme Glitter paint and allow it to dry. If you’re not satisfied with the amount of glitter, keep applying more coats until you’re happy with it. I did two coats on my Gnome.

I wish that I would have picked a different color (I’m totally lusting after the peridot color!) but I already had the glitter paint in red, left over from something I made for Halloween. And I swear that the original glitter Gnome I saw was red! So I went with red! I’m on the lookout for something else to glitter paint now. I love this stuff!

I hope you like it! I would love to see pictures if you give it a try!