Loving These Florals!

I love these big bold floral designs!

They are such a surprising and pleasant experience!

 Like I've mentioned several times before,

I am taking some classes from Alisa Burke.

You can check out her entire website here.

Look for her classes and you can see what

I am up to these days.

 This page in my journal started with Schmincke watercolors.

I love their bright, intense pigments!

 Those little specks of lighter colors were made

by flicking droplets of water from a paintbrush

over the page. You could also flick water

from an old toothbrush.

(Or a new one that you use just for water flicking :) ).

I let the water sit about 30 seconds,

then tapped a paper towel down to pick up

the excess.

 Then I just looked for areas that looked like

flower shapes.

And if they didn't - I pretended they did!

I used a regular black sharpie for the drawing.

Sharpies are permanent when dry,

so you can paint over them.

Or add any wet media.

 Which I totally did here.

Again, I used my Schminckes and a size 0

round brush to add color.

Last came the white highlights. I tried adding those with white acrylic, but my hand wasn't steady enough. So I used a Sakura gelly roll pen to highlight and add color to a few flowers. And I'm ready to move on to the next lesson now.

Amping Up the Backgrounds

 Yesterday I posted about an Alisa Burke class I'm taking.

I showed you various water color wash backgrounds

I worked on in the class.

Today we take it to the next level with some drawing.

 

Again - since classes are one way Alisa makes her living, I can not give you the steps we followed to make this background. I can tell you this beautiful color comes from Tombow markers.

 Here is the beautiful background I showed you yesterday.

My absolute, hands-down favorite from the class.

 I used a black sharpie for my line work.

Sharpies are permanent once dry,

so you can add more ink or paint if you want to

without messing up your line work.

 The white highlights came from a Sakura gelly roll pen.

You may notice my highlights are a bit messy in spots.

I still am not back to 100% great vision after

my surgeries . . .

. . . so I went back over some lines with my sharpie. And this is my result. Got to say this is one of my all time favorites. Thank you, Alisa!
You can go to this link to check out her classes.