Painting Loose Florals

This journal page surprised me for many reasons:

1. I was not familiar with the medium
2. I had no intention of painting flowers
3. I couldn’t find my gesso so used a different way of separating my background from my foreground — and it worked!

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This watercolor journal and the Peerless Watercolor Sampler Set were holiday gifts from crafty friends and I had been waiting to play with both! To be completely honest, when I saw the Peerless samples, I thought they were swatches of colors I would need to buy from the website and they would either be in tube or pan form.

Yeah, well, I’ve been living under a rock. Turns out these colors have been around since 1885 and are deceptively vibrant! You’ll see me fumble with them in the first parts of the video … I was going with the “less is more” philosophy given this medium was completely unfamiliar to me. But I soon realized that these colors need a lot of water to activate them. More is more!

I initially thought I’d just paint layers of leaves but as I continued adding shapes with my dagger brush, I reached for some red and lo and behold, flowers had made their appearance on this page. Also, the direction of my painting changed.

It’s the kind of thing that happens when one doesn’t have a plan. I just love how images appear and I get lost in the process of creating without knowing what my next step will be.

When the whole page was filled with flowers and leaves, I reached for my gesso. Only to realize it was still packed away in some box. My white pen would have to do. As I created the veils around and over the flowers, it brought so much movement and such happy energy to the page.

I had no clue what the colors would look like, what I would paint or if I would even like the end result, but I truly enjoyed the process. And I share it here with you, with no inhibition, to inspire, encourage and invite you to do the same.

Allow yourself the experience of child-like experimentation. Give yourself the permission to “fail.” And see where it takes you. You don’t need to purchase new supplies. You don’t need fancy tools. Just YOU and your heart are enough to create something beautiful.