Our November project is different! Let me tell you a bit of a story. So recently, I felt stuck and a bit burnt out from painting very detailed paintings and, let’s put it this way: keeping within the pencil lines   That’s why our latest project was very loose flowers. I just needed a break.

A few weeks ago, I bought a set of colored pencils. Just regular school pencils, nothing fancy. I started drawing in a sketchbook and you have no idea how much I loved it. I mean, it’s completely different than sketching with a regular, gray pencil. I enjoyed those colorful freehand drawings and exploring new medium so much that I decided to carry that joy to watercolors. And these anemones are the result. Compared to my regular style of painting, I did many things differently here:

  1. I didn’t pre-wet the paper, although I stapled it to my gatorboard, because I knew it would buckle when painting wet on wet. In the end the painting was flat.
  2. I didn’t trace the reference photo. I created a new composition based on a reference photo with many flowers.
  3. I draw the sketch directly on watercolor paper. It was not perfect, I used an eraser many times, but I was drawing freehand without worrying too much about the perfect proportions.
  4. I did the drawing using a blue colored pencil! And guess what? I even liked the effect better than when I was tracing perfect lines with a pencil. Blue colored pencil lines are visible here and there and I really like that. It was such a relieving experience.
  5. I masked the flowers as usual, I used wet on wet technique for the background as usual, but this time I also used salt for some special effects. Do I love this effect? Well, I’m not a fan, however it depends on the area. I love it in some areas. You will see which ones and why in the video.
  6. I painted the flowers in a totally free, loose way, although it may not look as such. But I did, you’ll see. I so enjoyed that kind of painting style.
  7. I added some “ghost flowers”, as I call them. A scrubber brush is inevitable.

The effect is as it is. It’s different, some of you may enjoy it, some of you may not. But I can’t tell you enough how enjoyable it was for me when I didn’t worry about any mistakes at all while painting. I just told myself “Ok, this is an experiment, I don’t care if something goes wrong”. I hope you’ll enjoy the videos!

I hope you’ll enjoy this one! ☺️🌷🍀

Take a look at the tutorial preview. The full tutorial is available in my Online Watercolor School and in my Gumroad Shop.