Watercolor: Hand-Painted Greeting Cards

Wednesday, July 8, 2026

As I moved out of my practice journal and onto paper, it became very apparent very quickly that I was going to have A LOT of watercolor paintings and nothing to do with them but toss 'em...so I started painting on 5x7"s, bought a bunch of blank cards, and started attaching the paintings to them with double-sided tape.

This little set is the first I turned into cards, and also, the first of a customized/personalized batch (meant for an astronomy friend).

It turns out that turning all paintings into little greeting cards is the perfect way to not waste your efforts, and not feel guilty about making so many paintings. And also, the 5x7" scale works wonders! If your little painting looks juvenile, guess what? It looks GREAT on a greeting card...

Watercolor: Walk-the-Dog Concentration

Sunday, July 5, 2026

The Walk-the-Dog technique with the black outlines that expand at the corners is one of the loveliest bang-for-your-buck techiques in watercolor. Draw pencil lines however, paint into the shapes, erase the pencil, and then outline everything with black marker to clean up wobbly lines. And remember, most people won't notice tiny flaws!

It's a really great approach for playing with color palette, value, ombre, while also working on basic brush control strokes.

Watercolor: Stencils and Free Hand

Friday, July 3, 2026

I've traced circles in previous posts, but more traditional stencils work, too. Or even just free-handing some nonsense...or throwing down some simple lines and then free handing within the grids...how does watercolor make such simple things come out so nice?

And then there's this little doodle piece, in which I'm just playing around with a new gradient color, lunar blue. Much more of this to come, once I figure it out!

Watercolor: Inkwork

Wednesday, July 1, 2026

There's already been some inkwork strewn about in previous posts, but adding in a bit of black, white, or gold gel pen or marker can make a piece really pop.

Not to mention, just adding some doodle patterns into the middle of this color bleed practice:

Watercolor: Color Fill

Sunday, June 28, 2026

On the one hand, filling in the background on these floral pieces if very difficult to get even...but on the other hand, the water-y-ness of watercolor always comes out looking good, even when not even!

Filling in shapes evenly with color is an ongoing challenge. It'd be nice to be able to control that effect a little more.

Watercolor: Circles

Friday, June 26, 2026

You can create some pretty unique designs just by tracing circles. Spacing them out works nicely, but even just randomly overlapping them comes out quite well, imho.

Heck, just free-hand painting these pebble circles looks quite nice!