New Watercolor Palette!

What a treat for me to get a new watercolor palette!  People often ask me what colors I use and how do I set up my palette.  I want to share with you the best way to set up a new watercolor palette.
This is the biggest palette that I have ever bought.  This is the Mijello Silber Nano Palette.

It has room for 40 colors!  Yippee!!!

Now the fun part is to decide which colors will go where.  I always use a color wheel to figure out where to put my colors.

The first thing to do is to pull out the tubes of color that I want to add to my new palette.  This will take some time and careful thought.

Jacqueline Newbold DVDs

Good Colorful Morning!  

Are you new to watercolor and not sure how to get started?  I have just the DVD for you!  It is Watercolor Toolbox One offered for sale through Artful Gathering Online Art Retreat.  

I take you step-by-step on everything you need to know about painting with watercolor.  Exploring techniques to get you started on your artistic journey, you will learn the correct way to set up a palette and care for your watercolor art supplies.  

You will also learn a variety of basic watercolor techniques.  All your examples can be put into a file or journal creating a toolbox for future reference.  This workshop on DVD is the perfect introduction to watercolor painting! 

Using Black Gesso

I wrote an article for Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine a while back about creating a very interesting journal page using black gesso.  It is a favorite technique of mine and love the look of it in my journals!

Jeannine Stein blogged about it at the Cloth, Paper, Scissors blog.
Here is a little of what she had to say:
In the article “Black-and-White Journal Pages” in the same issue of Pages, Jacqueline Newbold has a fantastic technique for prepping art journal pages and turning them into paper art. Start by painting a watercolor border on all sides of the paper. The beauty of this technique is that even if you’re not that familiar with watercolor, you really can’t go wrong. I sprinkled table salt on some areas of the wet paint to get a textured effect. 

Coloring Books Meet Mixed Media

The new Cloth, Paper Scissor's Coloring Book,  Coloring Book Sketchbook, offers more than other coloring books.  Not only does it offer various mixed media art techniques, but it is a collection of sketches from many different artists, including one of my sketches of an old Italian door.  In her blog post, Jeannine Stein, shows how she uses mixed media to color my sketch of the door.
It was an honor to be asked to contribute sketches for the book and an honor to have Jeannine use mine sketch as a demo!

Here photos of how Jeannine Stein colored my door sketch:

Demonstration on How to Paint a Field of Sunflowers, Watercolor

Here is a free demonstration on how I painted a colorful field of sunflowers in my watercolor journal.  It has as a little cabin in the back of the field.  Watch closely how I negative paint around the sunflowers to make them pop!  The video is in fast motion, set to some fun music. so it only takes three and a half minutes to watch the whole thing.  I hope you enjoy watching. If you want to join me in ITALY, painting on location, I would love to have you join my trip with Adventures in Italy, May 2016!

Painting a Field of Sunflowers in Italy

Creating an Art Journal

Teaching in my studio in Bend, Oregon - I have been sharing one of my favorite things to do with my art journals - take them apart and reconfigure them to be more creative, artistic, and tactile!  We have been getting messy mixing acrylic products with watercolors.  We have been using ordinary office supplies and manipulating them into extraordinary journaling enhancements!  Would you like to join me in Orvieto, Italy for my Colors of Umbria: Keeping a Watercolor Journal Workshop?  We will be doing similar artistic creations in our journals as we slow down, observe and savor our time in Italy together!

Driving Around the French Countryside

We spent a day driving through the Southwest part of France coming across some very beautiful towns and sites.  This area of France is known for pâté de foie gras.  We saw geese throughout the countryside.  We even saw statues devoted to geese in the town of Sarlat.

A page from my watercolor journal

A page from Helen's watercolor journal

Italian Memories

Sifting through my many photos, I am feeling nostalgic for the lovely Orvieto, Italy.  I miss the warm glow of the sunsets, the bouncing light of shadows on the walls, the rolling hillside, the arches and the brightly painted ceramic pottery.  

I miss the angel statues and the cobbled stone streets.

 I miss finding hearts in unexpected places....

 The fun times we had together:

Orvieto - Thank you!

A Beautiful Time - A Peek into our Orvieto, Italy Watercolor Journals

Our time together in Orvieto was magical.  Each day was a new adventure filled with painting, creating, exploring and learning about the rich history and culture.   The Colors ofUmbria, Keeping a Watercolor Journal group was creative, fun and always up for learning new things.  I loved making new friends and painting with our artistic group.  As the week unfolded, our watercolor journals evolved into exquisite memories of our colorful time together.  Thank you to all the wonderful participants of this fabulous time together, laughing and sharing good times!