My love of painting began with watercolor. No wait, it was acrylic paint! I’ve always liked the way the paint feels on my fingers. I like making a mess with paint. I’ve been working with acrylic paint so much that I had to step away from comfort and paint with watercolor. I’ll finish the last three journal pages with watercolor.

I have a watercolor, acrylic, markers, pens, pencils and crayons in my tool box. I like trying different tools and usally the artwork comes together.

I layered and layered for these roses. Throughout the layers I learned to keep going. There was a point when I wanted to reference the photo thinking my roses needed to look a certain way. At one point the colors where pretty close. Am I going to include this in the book? No but in every painting there is a gem.

This painting had lots of gems:

• As much as I am admiring roses, I think I should change the roses book into an expressive flower book. For some reason my roses always end up looking like other flowers. Why go against that. I should just surrender.
• Light soft strokes are best. Either I paint or think about what my flowers should look like. I thought too much. The strokes are thick. There’s no contrast. These flowers do not reflect how nature makes me feel.
• My oranges look dark and muddly. I layered with watercolor and layered over that with acrylic
• Layering with Basics wasn’t working for me
• If you paint with watercolor and discover you don’t like it, you can add water and blot out the paint with a towel. That was good practice!
• My color palette is ok but not the bright colors I had planned

The biggest gem here is I now have a new direction for my book. The other big gem is that my artwork is neither pretty or ugly. It’s practice. It’s flow. Do I feel like it reflected hoe nature makes me feel. Was I flying by the seat of my soul. No. I painted and learned.

Thank you for being a fan! Hope you are having a wonderful summer.

I have a month to paint and paint I shall. Maybe I’ll sign up for a course. I do have a course to plan and film. There is so much more I want to work on. Thank you blooming beauties for finding joy in my journey.

Siempre,

Mireya