So, I’m an artist. I frequently tell people this with the addendum that I have not actually drawn or painted in awhile. Many people ask why, and I give them my  usual reasons including that I have a 3 year old son and that I have a one bedroom apartment. Sometimes I just don’t have time or sometimes I have the time, but I don’t have the space. Let’s be honest, when you are not just a beginning artist, or a beginning painter, you have a lot of supplies and need a lot of space. When I paint an acrylic painting, I pull out an easel, a box full of paint, a box of brushes, a palette and palette knives, etc. I literally only have room in the middle of my living room to paint because of how small our space is. So I pretty much don’t do it anymore. Don’t confuse that sentiment with giving up or quitting; I have more or less just put it on hold.

Today I want to talk about the beauty of watercolor painting. I never thought that I’d become a watercolor artist simply because I actually find them difficult to master and also because I never had the supplies. I looked into it recently and realized that there are surprisingly few supplies you need and that I really wouldn’t need an easel to paint. I could compact the number of supplies I kept with me and paint almost anywhere. I even looked into watercolor pencils, which are a new tool for me.

I haven’t yet had the pleasure of using them, because I’ve been doing some research on watercolor techniques instead. In the interest of beginning my new blog “facelift”* I have decided to post some of the tutorials here that I’ve found for your viewing pleasure because I find them really interesting.

1. Using salt or alcohol to make the paint behave in interesting ways. Hearts and Trees talks about using rubbing alcohol to make a bubble effect in your paint. Another website, watercolorpaintingandprojects.com demonstrates the use of salt to create texture effects for objects like trees. I find these really fascinating!

2. Making realistic water droplets on a wet flower sounds really difficult, doesn’t it? But this tutorial on www.artistsnetwork.com shows how to make them with masking fluid. I don’t know about you… but I bookmarked this one for later.

3. Here on www.coffeepaint.com we see a dedicated artist that has spent 15 years learning to master watercolor with one of my favorite substances… coffee. His paintings are detailed and unique. I would have never guessed that coffee could create such beautiful paintings!

Anyway, as you can see watercolor can be quite interesting! I am going to keep my out for more interesting techniques to try. I am constantly trying to change and evolve my art and this is one way that I do that.

*My blog is undergoing a facelift. What I mean by this is that I’m going to try to become a daily blogger, so I wanted to add some sort of structure and purpose to my blog. While my blog doesn’t have exact themes, I do try to keep it limited to specific things I’m interested in such as art, painting, knitting, crafts, reading, my family, etc. Each day of the week will have a different theme. Friday’s theme is “Interesting Things On the Web,” which will encompass interesting things I’ve found on the web that are somewhat related to my blog’s topics.