Think Spring!

It's dull and cold outside. While beautiful shades of grey, brown, and blue are abundant, I need some more color!

I have been in a rut when it comes to painting. I make excuses as to "I can't paint or create that", "I don't have the colors", or "It takes too long to set up or paint". I have this problem of having hundreds of pins on Pinterest for all the activities that I want to create but I never do them. Do any of you have that problem? Do you have a crazy long list of recipes or DIYs that you haven't been able to make time to do yet? Lately, I have been only watching people create on places like YouTube and Pinterest and not learning, practicing, and CREATING.

Well Saturday, I decided to find a fun short painting on YouTube. I found a video on how-to create an abstract COLORFUL painting by the Art Sherpa. Link to her YouTube Channel can be found here. This painting was so much fun it not only painting with the colors of the rainbow but creating essentially a color wheel (CYM), and using cling film to create an awesome background. I had a canvas that I had an old painting that didn't turn out. While I didn't have any white gesso, I just painted over with white acrylics and that covered the old painting quite well.

Here is my finished painting. What do ya'll think?

If you would like to create this painting, PLEASE go check out the Art Sherpa and her tutorial here.
I have included the materials that I used along with links to find them yourself:

• 16 in. x 20 in. stretched canvas
• Various brushes, here's the link to the ones I used
• Liquitex BASICS Acrylics 
• Phthalocyanine Blue
• Quinacridone Magenta
• Cadmium Yellow Medium Hue
• Titanium White

I hope I was able to inspire you to create today. Find the time and create some color in your life! Just do it and you'll be amazed with how you feel when you are done! 

Happy painting and creating!!

Watercolor Spiderwort

I have been really enjoying using watercolor with permanent ink sketching. I will sketch with a pencil then go over it with a permanent ink pen.

When looking for color inspiration, I found it from a photograph taken by Gary Tonhouse. To check out his photograph, click here. It is really pretty and I love how it has purple and blue.

I hope you enjoy my painting. Please leave a comment or suggestion!

Show and Tell

Hey there! I thought my first post on this blog would be a bit about myself and some of the art that I have done in the past year or so.

Now a little bit about myself. I am a recent undergraduate that is now on the path of trying to figure out what to do now that I have my bachelor's degree in psychology. I now awaiting to find out if I have been accepted into a graduate school for a master's degree program for social work.

Art for me whether it includes watching others create art or creating it myself, is a way to help me release emotions but to create things that make others and me happy. I love making things for my family. It is also away for me to get away from things and to have a healthy release of emotions. I really do believe that art is a wonderful and beautiful therapy for many people. I would love to eventually help others use art as a type of therapy.

I am not very good with words, whether expressing them on paper or verbally and having a camera, a pencil or brush in hand is a way to help me tell my story of that moment.

Art is a learning experience. I am always learning whether it is different mediums or working on different techniques among those mediums. As of right now I am working on watercolors. I actually created a two month Watercolor Challenge that includes challenges of subjects that I want to work on or learn how to paint with watercolors.

I have recently found a love with experimenting with watercolors as I enjoy their transparency and brilliance and the techniques that come with type of paint. I love how different colors dance on the page that is covered with clear water or how they mingle and merge with each other. I also enjoy other works of art with this paint as they can be as abstract, luscious, realistic or impressionistic as the artist wants. I have found some wonderful artists during my search for tutorials in watercolor.

Now here is some art that I have done in the past year. I hope you enjoy!