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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New Watercolor Bird

 I'm having so much fun continuing my bird series.  I just finished this colorful little guy.

So I need your honest opinion.  Do you like it better with the background paint splotches or without?  Here's it before I did the background.

These are some of my favorite watercolor paints to use.

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A World of Artist Journal Pages: Book Review

I am excited to share with you the book A World of Artist Journal Pages.  It just arrived in the mail yesterday and it is thick.. just full of inspiring art pages.  And I am super excited because five of my art journal pages have been published in the book!


I put together a video flip-through to show you some of the pages of the book.  I have really low voice and my voice is even scratchier with a sore throat I have now.



Here are four of my pages that are in the book (I couldn’t find a photo of the final page.)
Soul Affirming Journal Page
Every Creation Journal Page
The Whole World Journal Page
Page with Bird and Boy



(I’m a little bummed because the scans I sent off for printing didn’t show the colors as bright as it really is in real life, but oh well!)


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Mixed Media Collage

Hello there!  I have not had a lot of time to make my own art, but I did make this art journal page with some cut outs of my old drawings and watercolor pieces.

My first graders at school also made this super cool assemblage.  Details about our process are written up on my art teacher blog.  Isn't it always a blast to glue a bunch of junk together?

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New Cards and Prints in my Etsy Shop

I wanted to let you know that I put a few new items in my Etsy shop!  Here are some of the colorful new things.

Bird Greeting Cards

The watercolor bird is also available as an 8"x10" print.

 

 Watercolor Bird Print

Artsy Watercolor Greeting Cards

There are many more colorful artworks and collage packs in my shop.  I'd love for you to stop by and visit!  The money I earn just goes back into buying art supplies and things for my art making hobby :)

Drawing a Girl in my Sketchbook

I picked up the book Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces by Jane Davenport and practiced drawing and painting some faces.  I like the technique that she shares for drawing eyes.  Looking forward to drawing more!

Our Mural is Finished at School

For those of you who don't follow my other blog, Art is Basic, I wanted to share pictures of our finished mural!  I also made a video slideshow of the progress.

Shine Bright

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Cover of New Sketchbook

 

I cut out many pages from old sketchbooks and rebound them into a new sketchbook.  I wanted to show you the cover of this book. It's a little crazy!  And then some painting on the inside.  More pages to come later...

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New Mini Art Cards in the Shop-- ACEOs

I ordered some artist trading card prints (Art Cards Editions & Originals or ACEOS) from I Print From Home and I'm very pleased with the quality!  I divided them up into two sets.  You can get the whimsical girls & animal set in my shop or a set of 14 abstract and colorful artworks. 

Art trading cards (or ACEOS) are fun to collect or tuck inside a greeting card.

If you want to print your own cards from www.iprintfromhome.com and receive $10 off your order, enter "TWEET-Marcia Beckett" in the referral code box.  I will get referral credits and you get $10 off your order. 

Watercolor Abstract

What does this remind you of?  Maps?  Islands?  Microscopic things?  I was teaching my students about art that has been inspired by microscopic things and also I had checked out Map Art Lab: 52 Exciting Art Explorations in Mapmaking, Imagination, and Travel.  So this has influences from both.


I am starting a huge mural with my students at school.  I will keep you updated as we start to paint it.  It's hard to see what's going on in these pictures, but we traced figures on to large white banner paper, cut them out and then traced those on to the wall. Next week the painting begins!

I was thinking of something school themed and since the wall is so long a parade of kids would be fun. The idea evolved organically through casual conversations with the principal, other teachers and students. We talked about how each kid could be holding something to represent subject areas of school. It started with just a few figures but in order to represent all of the subjects it kept growing to 8 silhouettes. The silhouettes will be painted black with the objects in color. We have music (blowing a horn, leading the parade), reading/social studies (a book), science (magnifying glass and flower), athletics (shooting a ball), computers ( holding a laptop), foreign language/cultures (holding a flag), the arts (paintbrush/drama mask) and math (ruler and protractor). There will be words written along the figures that say key concepts from the subject areas. There is also an eagle flying in front of the parade because our school is called Eagle. I had seen figural murals before and then the silhouettes of Bansky kind of gave me a more solid idea.

 The kids were able to trace a classmate using a projector and the shadows against the wall. The other art teacher and I (and other teachers and older students I grabbed in the hall) looked at the images and tried to make sure the proportions/lines made sense. 

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Watercolor Bird Painting

Hello there!  What a long and cold month this has been.  I was feeling sick for about 3 1/2 weeks there.  I'm starting a new bird series with watercolors.  I painted the bird below this week.  It's fun to show my elementary students my sketchbook because it's a big ego boost.  Ha ha.  "WOW!! You should be an artist!"  they say.  Well, I guess I am an artist.. art teacher.. 

If that colorful little guy above looks familiar, that's because I painted the same type of bird a few months ago.  Here he is below.

Stay tuned for more colorful birds.  Growing up I had a couple parakeets... maybe parakeets are next?!

If you like my art, you can purchase a Happy Mail Pack at my Etsy shop or maybe you would like a 5" x 7" postcard of one of my watercolor paintings?  If money is a problem, feel free to message me for a trade of some sort (I collect zines and love stickers).  Anyways.. I'm just excited when someone else likes my art enough to want something from my shop! :)

Have a great weekend, friends!

New Mixed Media Collage on Canvas

I love painting on canvas boards, because they are sturdy and can take a bit of scraping and wiping.  Materials in this collage include black and white images, acrylic paints, rub-on letters, stenciling, graphite, stamping, tissue paper and patterned paper.

I love to include things that are floating, like the upside down gingko leaf.  I also like to make things look a little ethereal.

EE Cummings is also one of my favorite poets.  I love his unconventional! use of punctuation.
 

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