100 Days of Watercolor Flowers

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100 Days of Watercolor Flowers

Discovering what 100 days of practice will do

Hello all of you beautiful souls! Yes, you! I hope you are happy! I am happy and oh so grateful for each one of you reading this!

Many of you have been following my latest 100 Day Project: Watercolor Flowers. And you have been so very supportive of my journey! Some of you even asked if you could purchase one or two! This makes me smile!

I wanted to share some of what I learned along the way. I’ve had several artists teaching me as I tried to stretch myself. And so, to give credit and appreciation to those teachers, here is a list of artists with links to their YouTube channels. I’d much rather watch a video of an artist painting or creating something than most of what’s available on TV! I’ve learned so much about so many things by watching videos! And it’s free education! And now I digress; here’s the list of links in no order at all! I love them all for different reasons.

Shayda Campbell

Cee Cee Creations

Jeanna Rainey

I also have a paid subscription to CreativeBug and I love learning watercolor painting from Yao Cheng there!

Here are some random facts about my project:

I used the same paper for all my paintings: Fabriano Hot Press 140 lb. I bought a 9 x 12-inch pad and cut into 3 x 5-inch pieces. I used artist’s tape on the top and bottom to secure the paper to a small bamboo cutting board and keep it a bit flatter.
Some days I use a water brush and other days I used a regular brush and jars of water.
I used Peerless Watercolors exclusively on this project.
Every painting was done first before any lines were added, so no sketching first.
Often, my color palette was determined by what I had left on the plate from another day or project.
This is my fourth 100 day project (3 of the 4 involved watercolor!)
This is the first time I painted every day without missing any days!

Here’s what I learned.

Hot press watercolor paper does not like lots of water! It does much better with a smaller more controlled amount of water on your brush.
I have much more control of the water with a traditional brush vice a water brush.
Smaller paper size = smaller brushes!
I learned how to paint an overall pattern of flowers!
I finally created paintings that looked good without adding ink and line.
I still like the paintings better with lines!
I love working with the Sakura gray gel pens for adding line. It makes nice lines without a stark contrast of black ink on the softer watercolor. Sometimes that’s a nice look!

I love working on a 100 day project. It’s an opportunity to get some consistent practice which is powerful! And I always have at least a couple of pieces that make me happy! I love several of the flower paintings from this project!

I was able to practice several different styles of watercolor flowers, and I learned a TON of great information from watching all the YouTube videos! This project gave me the opportunity to practice what I was learning, and I had so much fun in the process.

I hope you'll consider trying 100 days of practice, I mean FUN!

Til next time,
Be You & Be Happy!