Elephant Watercolor Painting & a Quirky Dutch Summer

Hi friends!  I finished another watercolor painting this week and it is not of a bird!  I really stretched myself with this one. :)  One of my dear friends was at my house and was talking about some of my watercolor paintings on the wall.  She said she loved elephants and would love a painting of an elephant.  I decided I would give it a try!  Now, since I love bright colors so much, I couldn't just paint a gray elephant.  I found some pictures of decorated Indian elephants and came up with this design.  It's not perfect, but I'm proud of how it turned out.

I'm excited to announce that I'm going to be a part of Another Quirky Dutch Summer and I'll be writing a Guest Artist blog post. Mine will be posted mid-June.  I was so honored that she asked me to participate!  You probably didn't know this, but I am 50% Dutch!  My mom's family is 100% Dutch.  I don't know when our ancestors came to the US but it was quite awhile ago.  Anyways, the series will have all kinds of fun prompts and techniques and you can play along with all of us.  There is a Facebook group too you can join to share your artwork.

Other than that, I am just trying to finish up the end of our school year!  Yikes!  Lots of report card writing in progress.

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Steps of Watercolor Painting: Parakeets in Watercolor

Are you getting tired of bird paintings yet?  I used to have parakeets growing up.  I had a yellowish-greenish one and my brother had a blue one like this picture.  Don't worry, I started a few other things this week so I'll have different types of artwork to show you soon.  Would you like to see the steps I take to add layers to my watercolor paintings?  I took photographs of this parakeet painting as I added different washes of paint and fine details.

Here is the finished painting:

Here are the progression photos.  I start with a sketch from some reference photos.  Then lay down light washes of color.

Add more light washes of colors in different shades.  I use a wet paper towel to dab up areas that may have gotten too dark.

Here I have added more texture and details. The fan brush is great to use for texture and so are these wisp brushes(these aren't the exact brand that I have but they look like this) .   I use a teeny tiny brush for details.

I ended up going back into the birds with white acrylic paint because I wanted stronger highlights.

 

Then, I added some drips and splashes of paint to frame the birds.  Which do you like better.. with the drips or without?

The paints I used for this painting are: Angora Watercolor Pan Set Crayola Artista II Watercolor Set
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Oops Painting

I thought I'd show you a nice painting I was making and then the oops part of it.  I'd love to see your mistakes too!
 

I have been having so much fun painting watercolor birds, I just keep going. I wanted to paint some parakeets and I was making a really nice painting of the birds, but then I couldn't get the eyes on two of them right, so it kept smearing and now there's smudges.  Ah.. it's too bad because I love that little yellow bird.  I might just have to cut him out and do something else with him.

I'm also thinking about cropping the bird on the right off and using that as a separate picture.  I need to add feet though.

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