Let the Water Coloring begin!

I was trying to think of what wouldn't be to hard to paint, I decided on flowers. I didn't want to paint landscape, this image is actually out of a tattoo flash book! I combined the yellow flowers and vines to make the picture more interesting. I realized having a plain white background is extremely boring!! I also learned that it is ok to use water, i tried to do the cool, tattoo "spit shading" for this, but it didn't do what i hoped it would.

Attempt #2, I decided to put a background to my painting, out of the same tattoo flash book, I grabbed a few different flowers to paint, but i did my own colors. I also tried to add a Koi Fish, i don't know if it was very necessary. I used water this time for the background and most of the flower stuff. I used a little "spit-shading" on the flowers. I also was told after this painting that when you do water color, you always paint LIGHT TO DARK. that was a huge help!! Probably the best peice of advice I have heard up to this point.




Here are more flowers out of the same book. Painting the background last is not a very good idea! I tried to use the back of the brush to make a "grass-like" background, but it looks like a cat got to it. Flowers were all spit shading, so i could control the amount of water on the brush.


I did this painting much later, it was my present to my wife for our anniversary. My first painting with no previous sketch on the paper. I ended up looing up what the heck a hummingbird looks like up close online! I just went for it! I painted the background before hand and only did parts that i knew would show. Advise: paint the whole paper the same color if you are going to do a background, otherwise it has different colors in the painting where you want the same color (e.g. my hummingbird wing and top of the blue flower!). It's not the best, but it is cool because it is all out of my heart and mind, not another artists!