"oh... I love... my pretty little flower... "

Have you guys seen Young Frankenstein? You know the little girl who's sitting by the well that sings that song? well, that's all the words and she repeats it over and over and over and over... and I've had that in my head the whole time I was painting tonight. So... TAG, you're IT! heehee

Tonight I was working on the cover for a commissioned booklet.  I forget how much fun watercolor can be. It can also be a bit intimidating if you try to think too much about it. But I find that if I just jump in and work from the lightest to darkest, you at least have a game plan. The rest will fall into place.

I wanted to post up some work in progress pics and then post the final image :)


This is the beginning stages, I worked up some washes of lights and since this flower was so vibrantly red, I didn't have a lot of yellows or pinks to add in. I don't normally like "local color",  which is basically light and dark of the same color hue, so I've tried to take some liberty and add in different tones of red. 

here you can see a bit more, I've used some magenta and added in some yellows on top of the red. To get the deeper tones, I did washes of pure violet on top. It doesn't change the red too much but definitely makes it richer.

Here's the final image :) after I was finished, I scanned it and removed the paper scribbles in photoshop and enhanced the red back to the original color.  The scanner sometimes tends to wash things out.

Hope you guys enjoyed this! I certainly got into the mode of painting and this project inspired me to keep these paints out!

Have a great rest of your week!!

Plantable Seed Paper

Hey guys!

Sorry I've been so MIA lately. Summer has been a busy time! You'd think that not being employed would give me more time on my hands, but apparently word gets around that you're available haha.  I went a lot of places, helped a lot of people, did GREASE at the local theater, and got a job! I'd call that a successful summer :)

The last few weeks have been pretty busy still, I started at my new job about a month ago and it takes a bit to get into the schedule of things and teaching is a whole new experience for me. So far so good, though! I've begun the design and editing for the Womens' Society booklet this year and that segues to the topic of this post.

I came up with a garden-esk theme for this year.  Last year was fancy jewelry and lace so I wanted to bring something to this one to make it rival the former.  I'm watercoloring a bright floral design on the cover, then inking it, and as end papers to the booklet I'm adding in some plantable seed paper! I'm really excited to see how the ladies react to this part. They FREAKED (in a good way!) over the actual lace I included last year as end papers, and as they pretty much all have gardens I'm hoping this paper gets the same reaction.

I ordered multiple sheets of this 8.5 x 11 petaled paper.

If you are interested in looking up how this works, I ordered from this company: Botanical Paperworks They have some big clientele such as Starbucks and Martha Stewart, so I'm really anxious to see it in person. Actually, I remember getting a Starbucks card for Christmas that came in a plantable little envelope. I didn't plant it because it was so cute, but it was remembered for sure!