I actually said that in a class I was teaching, and cracked myself up. LOL, and I turned bright red.

Back to watercolors, it’s true the size matters. If you look at the plastic hose in your mister bottle, the diameter is what determines the amount of spray. This is important to know when you are misting your watercolors.

​Fine mister = the type that comes with your eye glasses cleaner. Very light spray, good for when you want to blend an edge or cause slight movement in your paintings.

​Standard art mister = the kind you can pick up at your craft store, standard size plastic hose. Good for over all misting of watercolors, to encourage movement and blending.

​Household type mister = this is the type you use for spraying cleaners. In art, these are good for wetting your paper. They tend to be too much and too hard to control for blending and encouraging paint to move.

​Blaster mister = the kind with the largest hose, you can find these in your garden departments. These work great on the stream setting, to add in streaks of light, after you’ve finished a painting.

​Note: Practice moving your hand across your painting as you mist.

Bend Me Over Baby

​Yup that’s its name!  And no, I didn’t name this one.  My friend Peggy did.  She was here at the studio with a group of fun and crazy fun women, and she recognized it, because it is very similar to another painting I call “Dip Me Darling” (G-Rated),  She said, “oh I recognize this painting, it’s called uh uhm, it is called ‘Bend Me Over Baby’!”  All the girls cracked up laughing, now we all know what Peggy was thinking!

 Coochie Coo – You’re looking at it upside down. Yes this painting originally started with the feathers coming down from the top.  I was in a hurry to go get it framed for a show, and I had forgotten to sign it, so I quickly signed it, and stepped back and realized it was upside down. I guess that’s the way this painted wanted to stay. These cute little peacock feather’s look like they were flirting, so I named them Coochie Coo, like the way you might tickle a baby or someone you love to get their attention.  My friend Carol keeps calling it Hoochie Coochie. LOL  It went on to be published in “Splash” The Best of Watercolors.   Life is funny sometimes.

“Publoom” – (the tiny sound a blossom makes just has it bursts into bloom) yup I made it up!

This award winning painting has two stories to go with it.

Publoom – The tiny sound a flower makes, at the first moments it pops to open. Yes I made it up.

​Story number 1 – It started off as a great idea gone wrong.  Off to the garbage it went, until my darling husband pulled it out of the garbage and asked “what’s wrong with this one?”  My reply was “everything.”  The salt exploded in areas I wasn’t expecting, the paint moved where is was supposed to stay put, etc. etc. It just wasn’t talking to the artist in me.  I kept it out of the garbage, only because I love my husband.  A few months later, I took another look at it and I knew what it was supposed to become.  Thanks honey, because of you I won the award!

Story number 2 – While on display at WSU, I was standing behind a gentleman who was analyzing this painting, and he said, “Her palm leaves are so perfect!”  At which point I smiled, then he said,  “It looks like she took a template to make all her palm leaves.”

​There went my smile….. I kept my mouth shut and thought WHAT?! I absolutely did not!! I spent a lot of time getting them to look perfect.

This was a great lesson for me to learn, “Perfect”  can look like a template.

Water to Vine

Most all watercolor artists love salt, the textures it adds to our paintings is beautiful yet unpredictable.

​Salting tips:

• Try different sizes of salt, including rock salt, margarita salt, and course salt (my favorite).

• Wet your paper with clear water first and let it soak in before applying your paint.

• Be patient #1 – wait for the paint to settle and your paper to get a nice sheen on top.

• Be patient #2 – After sprinkling on your salt, wait for it to do it’s magic.

• Try salting around a subject.

• Try salting the subject.

• Try salt with staining and non staining paints.

Screwed
11×15
Original Watercolor

When you paint and let your mind move into your right brain (creative side), it activates a side of your brain that is most often dormant in this primarily left brained world. You are literally activating the other side of your brain, and that is powerful! This gives you balance.

When you paint and you paint for yourself, it is a rare time that you are you. We are usually busy as bees making everyone happy, our spouses, our families, our peers, our co-workers, etc. We even make people we don’t know happy, we are polite, we let them go first, etc. Wouldn’t it be a terrible world it if we didn’t? So when we allow ourselves to get to the quiet place in our heads, and paint or draw or however you like to create, that is for YOU. This also gives you balance.