Diane Antone Studio

Find Your Inner Child with Whimsical Birds

Loose watercolor for recovery and relaxation I was sitting listening to the birds singing in our garden yesterday and realised for the millionth time how beautiful their voices are! So here’s a hommage to the birds as we go into the hard season for them, to thank them for the joy they bring us every…

Getting Back into the Flow with Florals

Loose watercolor warmup for recovery and relaxation If you haven’t painted for a while you’re sure to feel a bit rusty and stiff the next time you pick up a brush, but don’t let that put you off! Sometimes a break, be it for reasons of health, holidays or just being too busy, will bring…

Whimsical Rainbow for you to paint

Here’s a pretty, easy wet-in-wet rainbow ideal for all occasions. You can easily adapt it for any circumstances. The great thing about this little painting is that it can be personalised in so very many ways! Change up the embellishments to suit your style or the event and even paint it in non-rainbow colors if…

Loose Watercolor Pansies

We have a lovely collection of pansies in our garden. Nothing spectacular, but they self-seed every year and every year they come back with their lovely colours and cheerful faces! So every year I have to paint them, of course! So here is a tutorial for Pansies for Spring!

Flowers and Birds with Gold Accents

Today I’m using my Kuretake Gansai Tambi paints to create a richly detailed and stylishly colorful whimsical leaf design to help you practice your watercolor skills. Using a relaxed and enjoyable method to embellish the rich tones of the Kuretake paint with gold accents, you’ll be thrilled with your results and want to do more!…

Whimsical Houses on a Hill

This easy landscape solves all the problems that landscape paintings usually bring. With this style you don’t need to worry about realism, or perspective, or color mixing, or living up to anyone’s expectations or standards. You just paint from the imagination and from the heart. We already did a couple of 2D landscapes to introduce…

Two Fine Hens Greetings Card to paint

How about this pretty painting of two fine hens to use as the jumping off point for greetings cards? Ideal for a friend who loves or keeps chickens, and you can personalise to include all the features of the chickens of the person who is going to be thrilled to receive it! The great thing…

Whimsical Swallows in Flight

Before long our swallow population will be lining up on the power lines for their last assemblies before saying goodbye and heading south for their winters in Africa. The farm will feel much quieter when they are gone, and our skies are no longer filled with the swooping, sweeping curves of their flight. This summer…

Whimsical Teddy Bear Family

Here’s a fun teddy bear painting ideal to while away a few idle moments! Perfect gift for a new baby great or one to do with the kids and perfect for a card for your friends! Add your own personal touches to make it yours! The great thing about this little painting is that it…

Leaves and Berries with Gold Accents

How to bring Freedom into your Art

Today I’m sharing with you the most important secret in my artistic life! And it might just be the right thing for you to do too! Nowadays it’s very typical for people to choose a ready-made box of paints to paint from and this is definitely a good option for beginners. I’m personally very fond…

Whimsical Mushroom Forest

Using Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolor paints This beautiful mushroom forest painting is beginner-friendly, as well as being a challenge for more advanced artists. It’s easy to make the design different by painting only one or two of the mushrooms, and making the whole picture bigger or smaller depending on whether you want a full size…

Kuretake Gansai Tambi Watercolor Paints – How Good Are They?

Road test them with me and find out! I’m a bit of a traditionalist. Nowadays many people would call me a dinosaur. I actually heard that term used of anyone who believed in the difference between black and white the other day and admit to being somewhat miffed. However, I cast my traditional, dinosauric attitudes…

Paint Easy House Plants Fast and Free

Usually when I paint flowers or plants I do just that. Then, I have to decide what to put my creation in! The pot or vase are only too often left to a last minute sketchy thing which does nothing for the whole composition, or, even worse, left out entirely! Today though I am turning…

Pretty Floral Four Ways

There are days when you want to do something a bit different. Maybe your watercolors aren’t calling to you as loudly as usual, or you just want something quick and easy to do in a ten minute break. Here’s a design I did in four different ways and you can see how if you watch…

Relaxing Golden Doodle Circles

When we get a new set of paints, one of the first things we want to do is try them all out. It’s become quite the “thing” to “swatch out” your new box of paints in squares or rectangles to give you a record of what the colors look like, full strength and watered down….

Watercolor Summer Flowers

We all love flowers, and what is more delightful than to paint a bouquet of summer blooms? Here is a simple, loose, easy summer painting for you to enjoy. Flowers look their very best when they are painted loosely and with expression, and they are most forgiving, allowing you to freely redesign their leaves and…

The Village Walk

Landscapes are daunting. No doubt about it, with all that perspective and the arrangement of the features you want to include. Then there’s scale, and tonal values, and proportions, and and and…. But there is an answer. Why not try my two-dimensional fun landscape of your village or townscape? For this painting I used a…