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 sizeRead more ⟶
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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 attitudesRead more ⟶
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 turningRead more ⟶
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 watchRead more ⟶
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.Read more ⟶
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 andRead more ⟶
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 aRead more ⟶
Kuretake Graphite Colors and Circles
Today in the post I received my order of a set of Kuretake Gansai Tambi Graphite colors. I have been the proud owner of a set of Starry Colors since Christmas when I couldn’t resist the idea of using gold and silver on the cards I was making. But when I saw these Graphite colorsRead more ⟶
How to Paint a Rainbow
Exploring your paintbox can be an exciting experience especially if you decide to pick out all the bright and cheerful colors and paint a loose rainbow! Use the resulting splash of color to form the background for an ink drawing and make lovely bookmarks and greetings cards galore! Or use it in your journal asRead more ⟶
Home Sweet Home Greetings Card to paint
How about this little Home Sweet Home landscape to use as the jumping off point for greetings cards? Ideal for a New Home or First Home message, which you can personalise to include all the features of the home of the person who is going to be thrilled to receive it! And no need toRead more ⟶
Whimsical Sheep for you to paint
Here’s a fun sheep painting ideal to while away a few idle moments before you go to bed and maybe help you sleep at night! A great 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 thisRead more ⟶
Summer Flower Power – A Festival of Fun
If there’s one thing that’s bound to cheer up a petulant painter who can’t think what to paint, it’s got to be flowers. Dubbed a “perennial trending” subject, flowers can be guaranteed to lift the mood and raise a smile! Just like the feathers we did, the great thing about flower painting, which I onlyRead more ⟶
Paint Fancy Feathers for your Junk Journal
Yesterday I found four little feathers in the field where my studio sits, and couldn’t resist the temptation to paint a few feathery friends – after all, we’ve been painting a bird a day for a month now, maybe time to add a few fanciful feathers? The great thing about painting feathers like these isRead more ⟶
Relax in a Wildflower Meadow
I was reading a book by David Attenborough this morning and he mentions that only 3% of the wildflower meadows of England remain. I find this utterly tragic. But today I’m going to paint a relaxation exercise based on the notion of a field or meadow full of a large variety of blooms. One ofRead more ⟶
Dragonflies for your Junk Journal
I’ve got a new hobby! To my surprise I have started a Junk Journal. And what fun it has turned out to be. Why I haven’t done this before I can’t think. It combines everything I’m interested in – paper crafts, sewing, painting, decoupage, collage, and many other crafts – so I’m painting a littleRead more ⟶
Watercolor Fishing Harbor Scene
Paint this little fishing village harbour scene complete with boats and lighthouse in your Etchr sketchbook. Using A. Gallo paints and a Sakura Micron pen you can make up your own details to reflect your own experience of villages like this. Let’s go paint! What’s more delightful than hanging out by the water, and gazingRead more ⟶
Simple Olive Leaf Bookmarks
Here’s a sweet meditative and relaxing warm-up exercise for you to achieve two things – practice watercolor techniques and create a little gift in the form of these Simple Olive Leaf Bookmarks! All you need is your watercolor set, a brush and a fineliner. Plus half an hour of your time and away you go!Read more ⟶
A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies!
Some days it’s hard to raise a smile, let alone a chuckle! But if you can manage to find a paintbrush and stir your stumps as they say in the navy, then you can get your mood to lift and you might even laugh out loud! These pretty butterflies with their simple embroidery-styled embellishments areRead more ⟶