Artful Journaling Wednesday

Hello! I've got another post for you today that shows some ideas of how to draw some cute birds, a few techniques on blending watercolors and how an easy change to your normal handwriting can create a new font. If you haven't already be sure to find and join the Journal Me Joyful closed group on Facebook!

Remember how I've said drawing is really about shapes? So for our cute, whimsical birds start with some basic shapes. They don't have to be perfect!

Now take those same basic shapes and add an eye, a beak, some legs and feathers and you've got several different cute birds. You can get as elaborate or simple as you want.

So getting to the watercolor, here are some basic blending techniques. If you want a lighter color you add more water as in box 1. If you want a more concentrated color use less water. Box one and two are the same blue. See the big difference you can get just with water :) Then you can get some neat effects by putting down wet color, the blue in this case, first and then right away dropping in another color that is also wet. For the little splotches that was just using the tip of my paint brush and dotting the red into the blue. For the bottom left corner I smoothed the red around a bit. It will dry with a very soft look. For a more clear color blending look the 4th box is technically called glazing. You first lay down your base color, blue and then let it DRY COMPLETELY. Then you can layer a new color on top of it. See how the red gave a purple and the yellow green? Neat huh!?

And now putting it all together you can create a quick, cute little scene. For the lettering I just used my regular handwriting but made all the letters capital and tall and skinny. See if you can see all the different blending techniques I used in my birds and flowers. I used all four! If you decide to create something using this post as inspiration please let me know, I'd love to come see!

Supplies:

*Strathmore Mixed Media Sketchbook

*Gansai Tambi watercolors

*Waterproof fine tip pen, such as a Sharpie pen

*#4 round paint brush