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Midnight Drive – Watercolor

It’s been a while since I shared a watercolor painting so I thought I would share three! This first one is a painting I did to start off Inktober/Artober. I haven’t really continued with doing that daily but have taken inspiration from the different prompts and I think that’s the most important thing, to love what you’re doing and to continue to be inspired. Then I have a painting I did of treetop mountains, and lastly a bookmark of a thistle-like plant.

A watercolor painting of a twilight sky with a crescent moon. Power lines stretch across the picture and there are dark green bushes and trees.

This painting that I’ve called Midnight Drive was for the prompt of ‘moon’ and was my best attempt at recreating a view out the car window when driving the back roads late at night. I tried seeing if I could create a kind of halo from the moon by using water in my brush to pick the paint back up after I had painted out the sky. I think it worked ok, but I would love to look into other methods that might recreate it better. I still feel like there is too harsh of a transition between the sky and moon. Otherwise I love the colors that came out in this painting!

A watercolor painting of light blue sky and soft green hills filled with pine trees.

This painting I am calling Daylight Forest. I actually started this painting in the hopes of drawing trees in fog but it wasn’t coming out quite the way I expected so I changed directions in the middle of the painting. I’m still debating whether I like the brown trunk line running through the trees or not. It definitely gives them a different look and it doesn’t quite feel like it goes with the rest of the painting. I’m glad I gave it a try so I could see how I like it overall!

A bookmark with a watercolor painting of a purple thistle plant.

This bookmark was a fun experiment in what happens when you make your paper a little too wet! I didn’t intend to start with such wet paper but I had just gotten a new brush for adding that first wet wash and it added quite a bit more water than I realized. I love the way the color spiders out but it does remove any crispness from the lines and creates a kind of fizzy pixelated look. This worked well for the purple thistle-like flowers but made a mess when I attempted to create a leaf. I tried to “fix it” by adding more thistle flowers but I created a kind of biological monster. It was a good learning experience and I still think the final product has a kind of whimsical nature to it.



I hope you enjoyed these paintings! Maybe it will inspire you to create something today. Let me know in the comments below if you make something. Wishing you creativity and joy.

Published in Watercolor Wednesday

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