Watercolor Wren among Fall Leaves | Paint Along Tutorial

Hello, in this watercolor wren paint along, we used some more intense fall colors to brighten the wren a bit. It is an artist’s choice and decision, and I hope it turned out nice and fun for everyone. Colors used on the bird are burnt umber, sepia, black, quin burnt orange and some transparent red oxide. I was very diligent in this painting pointing out almost all the details of the color used and the color combinations. I also stressed color harmony quite a bit. You can use French Ochre or yellow Ochre, whichever one you have. If you don’t have either, you can sub for a darker yellow, or you can mix a yellow with some dark brown– that would be very nice. Just a very light touch of dark brown or sepia. I also use quite a bit of lamp black color from Daniel Smith Watercolors. I think because of my Chinese painting training, I use Chinese black ink a lot in traditional bird paintings, and so I did here too. We painted the leaves with green and fall colors, and that was very fun. I hope you enjoy the process and the learning! Please comment with any questions you have.

I have been doing a lot of drawing practices lately. As I always mention in the video, drawing is the fundamental of a good painting. We must do our best to try to draw in order to fully understand our subjects. We must understand the forms and shapes, understanding of lines and angles, and eventually and hopefully we become comfortable with an object no matter what position and pose it is in. I know I need to practice more and put in more hours.

I always find drawing a very relaxing activity. I understand it is not like watching TV, or listening to music. I guess the relaxing moments are when a person is fully focused on the subject. The mind is not available for any other thoughts and distractions. So it has been in the making, or my thinking and planning for a while. I will be making some drawing video to post here too, hopefully is not very long ones, and we will have a chance in a more relaxing setting to look at objects, look at other’s paintings, and ancient art to learn to see carefully and train our eyes to see what is in front of us. I hope you guys will like it, of course as always I look forward your comments.

I have told you guys that the library is my comfort place. I could spend hours and hours there, going through old books, novels, periodic, and of course major time is spent in the art section. I also realized art is everywhere, not only in the art book session. Since my husband is a faculty of the university, we can check out a lot of books. A big sadness for me is that in our library we have a reserved section, and the books in there are very ancient books that we are not allowed to check out, or even go to a comfy spot to read and look at them. If you want to view those books you have to go submit a form and then wait 15 minutes or longer for a staff to fetch it from the dungeon, then you can view the book in a locked glass room, with no pencil nor paper nor your phone. They do give you a little pencil and a 2 by 2 piece of paper to write something down. I totally understand, books are good, they are valuable and sacred too if I may say so. Libraries have a moral obligation to preserve books, so I humbly comply with their rules and hope that maybe someday I can freely enjoy those precious ancient books.

Meanwhile there are many very good books available. I like to copy artists, not for commercial purposes, just for practice. When you try to draw like a very good artist, you can experience his style firsthand, as well as the technique. That is fascinating to me. Therefore I am always in library for hours at a time. I will draw and draw , and sometimes paint until I am very tired. Now that my children are gone, I have more time, and my husband is very supportive. I really am quite spoiled when it comes to cooking– he likes to cook, sometimes we will just eat a bit of nothing spectacular and he never complains, always helpful. I am very excited to show you some of the things I do to help me learn to draw. I even sometimes learn from children illustrations.

I may as well find a job in the library, as big as ours is, I can pretty much tell you where everything is in certain sections. I know, I am such a nerd right? Do you guys like libraries? Do you have a close one where you live? Is it comfortable, and can you can spend a lot of time there? I liked it last year during the pandemic because I could wear a mask because library–old books means lots of dust. Well, our library is still enforcing masks, but I do ok. Lately because of making video I go down there less. I need to pick up the pace and go more. It truly is a happy place for me. I have a locker with watercolor stuff in it, and I have never been told by anyone I shouldn’t have an open jar of water, I guess they all put up with me. I hope you all have a very nice week, and can make time to paint along with me. I hope I can hear from you soon and share the joy of painting and art together. Next time maybe I will go to our university museum and we can talk about the current show, I think it is on French posters, how exciting. Ok, Keep your brushes wet.

Kathy