art – Keeping it creative

In my last blog post, I talked about my new Daler Rowley watercolours. Yesterday, I put them to good use on a simple painting project which I found in a magazine. The magazine, pictured below, is a creative special from the makers of Project Calm which includes ‘a carefully curated collection of wonderful creative projects for you to try at home using easy to find art supplies. Following a quick flick through the pages, I decided it looked like the perfect mag to provide inspiration and some easy projects to get me started with my watercolours and also some cheap Gouache paints that I picked up in TKMaxx a few weeks ago.

The magazine, which retails at £12.99 and can be purchased from Sainsburys and probably a host of other retailers, includes artists stories, information about useful art tools and supplies, a range of projects, plus a 64 page sketchbook and paintable postcards.

I decided to start with one of the postcards. The idea is you choose seasonal paint colours to fill a floral, paint by numbers, image. I decided to choose the summer one and therefore selected bright and intense colours for my design. On the reverse of the postcard, you add samples of your chosen colours and this becomes your palette.

To be honest, this seemed like a good idea in theory, but in reality, you were unable to see the samples whilst painting on the front and you needed to carefully select the colours you chose for the paint by numbers system if you wanted a good looking image where the stems of the flowers were a green colour! I remedied the samples situation by taking a quick shot on my phone to refer to as I painted.

Although the results aren’t perfect, mainly because I could have done with a much tinier brush to keep within the lines, I did enjoy the process and found it very therapeutic. We all need some ‘me time’ and for me personally, nothing beats a little relaxing creative project.

I hope you enjoyed this quick post and it has inspired you to indulge in some creative me time or spend a few minutes doing something you find relaxing. On that note, I would love to hear about your favourite way to spend your ‘me time’ and why? Let me know in the comments.

Until next time…

Much love, Laura xx

In a previous post, I shared some pages I’d done in one of my TN inserts using Tiger watercolour paints. They were really cheap, and had quite a chalky finish on the paper I used but at the time, I just wanted to give watercolour painting a go as I used to enjoy doing it at school and found it really relaxing.

Now that I’m more experienced, although still very much a beginner, I decided to buy a small set of higher quality paints. This travel set looked ideal as it contains quarter sized pans and 24 gorgeous colours so only basic mixing is required. Plus it was discounted at The Range so I grabbed it (along with lots of other bits and pieces that I couldn’t resist!).

Before I start using them for projects, I decided to make a swatch of the colours to tape into the lid so I could see what each paint pan looked like on watercolour paper. I cut down an A4 sheet from a pad and then rounded the corners so it would fit nicely.

I’m really pleased with the colours and look forward to using them creatively. You can use lots of water to get a washy colour or build up the colour to create something more opaque.

The only issue I had with them was that the images on the plastic which had the colour names and numbers on came off onto some of the pans. This didn’t cause too much of a problem but it obviously a bit of a fault in the design.

Overall, it’s a cute little package and you get plenty of colours in a neat tin. There’s a handle on the back for easy holding if you didn’t want to place them down on a surface but obviously I haven’t tried this out yet as I was working at my dining table!

If you have any questions which you would like answering about the set that I haven’t covered here, drop me a comment and I’ll do my best to respond and provide a suitable answer. Also, if anyone has watercolour tips either as part of their blog or as a YouTube video, leave me the link and I’ll check them out.

I hope you find this post useful and I look forward to hearing from you in the comments.

Until next time…

Laura x

Tag: art

Creative time – using my new watercolours!

My new Daler Rowney Travel watercolour set