Feel Good Friday - The Cowboy Painter

A Texas artist who is recording the life the cowboy.

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Tiny Watercolor Vignettes Tutorial

Here is a tutorial from Ellen Crimi-Trent for some cute little watercolor vignettes. These are quite easy to do and they would be nice for adding to a greeting card or scrapbook or other paper craft. Use your imagination.

Enjoy! :-)

Just for Fun - Watercolor Time Lapse of English Cottage

I enjoyed watching this painting being created by this very talented artist and thought I'd share it with you. :-)  Enjoy!





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Happy Floral Watercolor Greeting Cards Tutorial

Here is a tutorial for some bright cheerful floral cards from Sandy Allnock. You do not have to use the same greeting stamps that she did. You could use whatever you already have, or you could hand letter them with black pen or ink after you paint them. By the way, the flowers she calls snapdragons look more like celosia (cock's comb) or astilbe to me.

Beginner Watercolor Greeting Card Tutorial

Here is a tutorial for a simple watercolor card done by Sharon Cullen. One way to make this easier would be to use watercolor greeting cards that are already pre-cut and folded and just paint directly onto the card, skipping the torn edge look. Also, you could do this with cheap watercolor paints and still get an acceptable result. Be adventuresome and mix your colors for more interest.

This project is easy enough that some kids would enjoy trying it. If you don't have a stamp to use for the greeting on the front, these cards will look pretty without, or you can write one on a bit of card stock and glue it on the front.

As I like to mention as a reminder - I do not have any control over the ads that may show up on these videos, or over the "suggested" links offered at the end. :-)

Watercolor Painting with Three Colors - A Tutorial

Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors are my favorite student grade watercolors. Probably this is because they are the almost the only ones I have ever used. :-) They are what I started with and they helped me learn quite a lot about watercolor and to realize that I wanted to proceed to the professional paints. As this artists says, it is not necessary to buy a large set. It is probably better not to if you want to learn to mix colors.

Working with three colors is a good way to learn to blend and mix colors - something good for water-colorists to be comfortable with. I did some tiny paintings using just three colors earlier this year and it was very interesting and satisfying.

Because these paints are not very expensive, they are also good for the hobbyist who wants to paint some simple greeting cards. They will give you better color saturation than many of the really cheap student paints. Of course, for good results you will need to buy watercolor paper.

Three Fun Watercolor Texture Techniques

Here is a tutorial from Teela Cunningham for three interesting watercolor techniques. These would be fun to do on greeting cards, or just fun experiments for the kids to do with their watercolor paints.

NOTE: Parent supervision is advised for younger kids using the bleach method.
Also please Do Not leave your paintbrushes sitting in the saltwater or bleach water solutions! I recommend not leaving them in any water, but these solutions could cause damage to brushes. Also, I'd suggest using a cheaper or older brush for the bleach solution as it might cause some damage to the brush even if you rinse it soon afterwards.

Painting with Leaves Tutorial

Here is a tutorial from Jay Lee showing how to paint using leaves. This technique is obviously more difficult and may not be suitable for young children as it looks like it would be a challenge to keep one's fingers from leaving smudges. You could use tweezers to lift the leaves to help with that. Also, I'd probably wipe off the aluminum foil periodically in order to reduce the amount that gets on the backs of the leaves and could then be smudged on to the paper more easily. He says to use washable paints. I think you could use craft acrylic paints or poster paints for this. It looks like fun. I might try it with watercolors just for fun. These would be great for greeting cards as well as Fall or Thanksgiving decor.

Re-purposing Less than Great Watercolor Paintings

This tutorial from Sandy Allnock shows how to use watercolor practice paintings or "strays" for other projects. She demonstrates making them into bookmarks, but this method could easily be done for making smaller pieces for adding to homemade greeting cards or for scrap books or journals.

One thought that occurred to me is that you could have you children paint some fun watercolor washes and then use them to make other projects. This would be a fun way to work together to make some pretty gifts or cards.

Demonstration of Water Color Paintings of the Four Seasons

This is either a demonstration or a very simplistic tutorial, but whatever you want to call it, I have enjoyed watching it more than once and I thought today I'd share here with you.  I hope you like it too. :-)

Genesis 8:21-22  And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.  While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.