Fearless Friday, Ranunculus x 3

the Painted Apron

5 years ago

I treated myself to a new set of watercolor pens for an early Mother’s Day gift and I have had much fun playing with them, look at these beautiful colors!

note: even if your pens or paints come with a printed color chart, always swatch your own colors for reference, and it’s a good idea to laminate your chart for protection and durability

A couple weeks ago I did a fast and loose watercolor of a bunch of colorful ranunculus I found at Trader Joe’s

So pretty!!

The first painting was done with traditional watercolors in a fast loose style

The second painting was done with Arteza watercolor brush pens,

working more slowly and adding more details

Which one do you like better?

As you can see in the collages below, #1 was done more quickly with fewer steps:

For #2, I went a little slower and added more details

I work on a watercolor block pad, which to me is easier than taping the paper to a board, but sometimes the paper does warp a bit- as you can see above when I added the green background wash–but once it dries it lays down flat again

And

Just for fun I did the same painting a third time with markers on marker paper. Marker paper is slick, {it’s also bleedproof} and I tend to paint quickly as the markers glide along the paper