Cat Fish City Before and After

I finished this one today, painting it with watercolor and then outlining in black ink. I think it turned out pretty well. Pastel colored paintings like this don't show up as well online as the bright colored ones.

Sleepy Spiral Cat before and after

It's amazing how much it changes after the watercolor and ink additions. I used acrylic paint for the moon and stars, and then outlined with ink.

Watercolor Crayon Paintings in Progress

These look awful! But they will be good paintings once I complete a few more steps.

I start these by drawing a basic sketch on watercolor paper. Then I draw patterns and some details with colored pencils. Next I take the watercolor crayons and put some color and shading in.

Tomorrow I'm going to do the next step of using watercolor on top of these. That will make all the crayon parts turn into watercolor. I could just use water but I like to experiment with just a little more color. I may put in some metallic detail with acrylic paint, and then ink the outlines in.

I like this technique because I can do the first part in my home office at my desk. There's no water to spill! I will do the rest of it in my studio upstairs where the cats are not allowed.

It's also really fun to get the paintings to this stage and then see what happens to them when the water is applied. It feels magical.

New paintings and techniques

Did you ever have any of those children's activity books where they had pictures colored with dots, and you activated the paint by painting them with water? I had those and I found them very fun.

Recently I started using watercolor crayons. Using them feels like a cross between wax crayons and oil pastels. They are water soluble though, so painting them with water activates the colors and turns them into watercolor.

The fish painting uses water color crayon and colored pencils and then it's painted with regular water colors in the background. The lines are done with black colored pencil.

The tiger lily painting was done with colored pencils first. I did detail pattern work on the tiger lilies and the background. Then I colored them in with the crayons and painted with water.

The tiger lily painting took way to long with that background! It's a learning experience.