Watercolor dandelions and little bee checking out the seeds paint along tutorial and demo. I have discovered a good trick to control feathering of pigment, come check it out and see if you can use it.

Hello and thank you my friends for making it to this post. I went on a walk on Sunday down at the university and actually there was dandelions popping up here and there, not full force yet, and it was a delightful yellow after long dry winter. So I came home and started preparing for this painting. As I was practicing, I discovered that in order to make the dandelion head soft, the one with the seed pappus ( I googled the name), we have to work fast and keep coming back to paper to fix the feathering. So I decided to let the water soak into the paper for a few second and then come in and dab the wetness off, and the feathering didn’t happen. So I did that for about 5 times in this painting and hope you can follow it nicely. And maybe have a chance to practice that. Because you can imagine now that we know how to deal with feathering of the pigment, we can use it in so many other places. I hope you can also practice the flying seeds a few time and then come paint along with me. The bee was fun, but in no way perfect, I will one day do a bee painting with you guys together, I absolutely love bees, too bad I am very allergic to the acid in honey, but it will be a fun happy yellow painting for us to do. I didn’t want the green to be too strong, I hope you like it, the painting was too busy with strong leave. I only did three heads of dandelions because of time constrain, if you like, you can add flowers and flower buds as you like and make a bigger painting. I am so happy to be doing this with you. Please enjoy and let me know how it goes.

The color I used here are cadm yellow light and cadm yellow medium, lots of indigo, prylene green, and quin gold, if you don’t have daniel smith’s quin gold, you can use a darker yellow, yellow ochre will be a good sub in this case, but not always. Or just gently mix a dab of orange into the medium yellow will also work. Also quin violet to give the eye a place to rest from the green and yellow, I quite like that. And a little sepia for the seed, maybe a dab of black for the bee. I really hope I will work into getting some fun color to try with you. Meanwhile we will just keep having fun with painting. Also I am going to do a little drawing and let you see how I draw , tomorrow morning I will do the filming, wish me luck, because drawing is hard to predict but I will do my best, you can watch me make mistakes and see the process of how I practice drawing, and then I will show you a couple of things that I used my drawing. It should be somewhat interesting to you guys. I really love you guys and your email and messages etc to me, I love quiet support for subscribing to me. My daughter is working on a alert when I do a post here too. That would be fun. She is now deep into one week before finals, she didn’t seem too stress but I am sure she is. And then we can party, meaning she will help me more. Also the drawing will be a lamb, just for easter holiday, and then I will proceed to do the painting. It should be fun. Then I will do a magnolia painting because it is so much fun, and hopefully then I will have time to do Queen Anne lace, sort of like a wild flower painting. I hope you guys will support and watch me and paint with me. I am so grateful for all of you, you are my motivations, because of you, I am more motivate to do art, and spend less time on thinking and worrying about things that caused anxiety, I am so much happier as a person. Thank you so much.

Oh I also promised Lori that I will do a detailed dealing with water and the amount very soon, I need my daughter to film me, so that will be about two weeks, but I think you will like it. Meanwhile keep at it, because the time will come when it will be natural and you will know it. And it will be an accomplishment and you will not want to miss that. Meanwhile, be happy, you are precious, you are good, and keep painting.

love, Kathy