Late Night Watercolor Art Session

I couldn't sleep but I was not in the mood for any crocheting at the moment. I was just scrolling through my facebook feed then I found this reel. I thought I'd give it a try. Have you seen those videos where the person was there, lying on their bed, just scrolling through social media then they found a really cool video then they thought "Oh, that's cool! I should really try this!" I became one of those people. Haha

Anyway, I made this watercolor painting of a coffee cup because I've been teaching myself how to paint these past few months. I now realize what people say when they say "It's never too late." Indeed, it is never too late. I'm still learning something new everyday. I'm actually thinking of joining a 30-day challenge next month. Hopefully, once my daughter's exams are done and my submissions are completed, I have a free month before we proceed to preparations for next schoolyear.

Let me share a few things I learned in this watercolor painting. My daughter narrated to me the wet on wet techniqye when she had her watercolor arts session last year. I thought that was interesting. I applied that in this painting. I used wet on wet to achieve that frothy texture. I also learned about lifting the pigment if you accidentally colored in too much of the space. I got a little bit too excited with the yellow and brown mix dabbed on the wet paper. The effect was really cool. I had to use a crumpled paper towel to make some white spots on the coffee.

Another thing I learned was blending. I started the shadows a little dark, then I added some water to kind of lighten up the gray. The teacher in the video also taught amazing color mixings. I did not know that if you mix some orange to ultramarine, you'll get a sort of grayish color. There's gray in my daughter's watercolor set, I planned on using that one but the mix of orange and ultramarine was a lot more pretty. It was a bit challenging to make thencolor lighter though because I started dark right away. That's the thing I re-learned about watercolor today. If you want to make a sort of fading effect, you need to do a light wash first, then add another layer if you want to make it darker. I used to tell that to my daughter, I just seemed to have forgotten.

I also tried a little bit of calligraphy, just like on the video. I've been trying to learn calligraphy but I couldn't seem to apply it properly on my arts. I thought now's a good time as any to just scribble away. And so I did. The letters look a little bit wonky. But I'm proud of it.

I used a Fabriano 200 GSM watercolor paper for this quick artwork. I was surprised at how quick it was done. The watercolor I used was my daughter's. It was a gift from her aunt. I am loving this set so I am going to buy one for myself.

I saw another tutorial on how to make a realistic coffee. I might give that one a try too. I think it might need a lot more time so I guess I will do it on the weekends. That's it for now. Toodaloo!