A Pretty Talent Blog

Sunday, 27 January 2019

Watercolours Landscape

I was simply passing the time during the last days of school last year, when I decided to take my watercolours along. This soon turned into a fun activity with the some of my colleagues joining in. One of the simple paintings I did, was a watercolour landscape. I show you how easy this is to do in today's blog.

The landscape I painted at school had pine trees in it. The pines were painted in the same manner as the ones I painted in the previous blog I did, where I showed you how to paint a snowman. I opted to swap the pines out for palm trees in today's painting, for the sake of variety.

Start your painting on a sturdy piece of paper. I use A5 sized paper. Wet your watercolour palette with drops of water. I will be using a medium sized round brush.

I start my painting by giving the top third of my page a pale blue colour wash. Make it an uneven wash as we will be creating the illusion of clouds in the sky.

Add more blues to create the illusion of the clouds. Note how the clouds all billow out to the top and are even at the bottoms.

I then wash the middle third of the page in uneven brown to create the illusion of earth and mountains or hills.

I add a strip of ochre to the beach area.

The foreground is painted blue to represent the water.

I then define the water by adding colour lines to create the idea of waves.

I soften the line between the beach and the water.

Then is draw tree trunks with dead branches hanging from them.

I add wild green branches.

I add some leaves in the same green.

Then I add some blue leaves to other branches.

I then add brown leaves to more branches.

I add a second green to the branches.

Then I define the hills in the background. I also add shadows to the trees and the ground. This is done with a flat brush.

I add blue to the tops of the hills to turn them into distant mountains.

The completed painting.

Marietjie Uys (Miekie) is a published author. You can buy my books here:
You can purchase Designs By Miekie 1 here.
Jy kan Kom Ons Teken en Verf Tuinstories hier koop.
Jy kan Kom Ons Kleur Tuinstories In hier koop.
Jy kan Tuinstories hier koop.
You can follow Miekie's daily Bible Study blog, Bybel Legkaart, here in English & Afrikaans.
You may prefer to follow the traveling blog, A Pretty Tourist.
For more crafty ideas and great product reviews, visit A Pretty Talent on Facebook.
If you are in a literary mood, follow Miekie's musings, stories and poetry on A Pretty Author - Miekie.
Remember to keep nurturing your TALENT for making life PRETTY.
You can subscribe to any of these blogs and receive regular updates by email. Simply register your email address at the top of the applicable blog.

Friday, 25 January 2019

Watercolours: Snowman

In today's blog, I show you how easy it is to draw and paint your own snowman in watercolours. I used these in my Christmas cards when I was done, and they were quite a hit. If you believe you can't draw or paint, this is a good project to get you started, as it is super easy.

The first step when painting with watercolours, is to drop a droplet of water on each pan of paint to get it slightly moist and wet.

I will use Derwent's Aquatone woodless watercolour pencils to draw the snowman with.

I draw the parts that are snow with a blue pencil. Using a watercolour pencil to draw with, means that my lines will wash out when I apply water to them, making them less defined than a grey pencil line.

I then draw his hat and scarf with a red pencil.

His tunic is drawn in green.

Yellow buttons are added, sewn on with red thread.

I draw his face in black, red and orange.

I then paint an uneven blue colour wash on the whole background. To prevent the blue from running into the snowman, I first paint the area around the snowman with water, before adding the paint. It creates a beautiful wash, as well as to restrict the paint to the areas outside the snowman.

I then use my aqua brush, withe the water reservoir in the handle, to paint the reds in the picture.

I then paint the greens.

I paint the snowman blue, leaving some white of the paper to show through. I also paint the and the buttons.

Then I paint the facial detail.

Now it is time to work on the background. I draw brown lines behind the snowman.

Then I dab a fan brush in green paint and, standing it on its tips, I dab it to the paper at the angle of the pine branches.

I come in with at least two more shades of green. You may opt to swap out a green for a yellow if you prefer your forest more sunny.

Then I use a flat brush to add shadows to the forest line, the snow and the snowman.

I define the shadows by adding touches of brown.

Then I use a fine round brush to add shadows to the woolens, the buttons, the face and the snowman.

The final picture.

It was only when I placed the snowman next to his lady friend, that I realised I had never painted an opening in his tunic. I quickly added this. In a follow-up blog, I will show you how to turn this cute pair into cards. Mine was part of my Christmas card collection last year.

Wednesday, 23 January 2019

Acrylic Sheep on Decoupage Background

A colleague was having a baby girl and we planned to throw her a baby shower. I wanted to give her something that I had made myself that fitted in with her colour scheme and theme, which was grey and sheep. It seemed a good idea to paint a grey sheep for the little lady's room as part of the decor. I decoupaged the background before painting the sheep in acrylics. I show you how to do this yourself in today's blog.

I did this painting on a wooden boxed canvas.

I painted the whole box with gesso to prepare the surface.

I then selected two sheets of craft paper that I wanted to use as a background for the painting.

I aimed to use Acrylic Gel Medium by Dala to decoupage the paper onto the box. I started by painting the top side of the canvas with the gel medium.

I then carefully positioned the paper on the edge of the box.

I then cut the sides of the paper to fold it in.

I folded the sides of the paper in, using the gel medium to stick it down with.

I then covered the rest of the surface with the gel medium.

I pasted the paper onto the box.

Then I sealed the top of the paper with the gel medium and waited for it to dry before continuing.

I then cut the bottom paper to the required size and shape.

I decoupaged the top sides as before.

Then I decoupaged the botttom of the canvas.

I folded in the sides and sealed the paper with a layer of gel medium.

Once the project was completely dry, I drew the picture on the canvas with a grey pencil. The lines were very light and did not really show on the photo.