Tag Archives: watercolor

Watercolor Coffee Illustrations

Here was a wonderful opportunity to combine various things that I love: Watercolors, Coffee, and Croissants!

My mother often spoke to me and my sister about how she started drinking hot coffee at age six. She grew up in Georgia. Call it fate, kismet, or whatever you like, but she introduced me to the enticing taste of coffee at a pretty early age. In my case, it was “coffee milk” (cooled coffee with milk and sugar), and also coffee ice cream. Any way you look at it the dye was cast. To this day I absolutely adore my coffee.

Given my coffee enthusiasm – plus my love of visual art – it was only a matter of time before I would want to find ways of combining these two things. And, of course, watercolor seemed a great medium to pursue!

As luck would have it I found two relevant classes offered at Skillshare:

Fun and Easy Watercolors: Draw a Beautiful Coffee Illustration by
Mariya Popandopulo

Fun and Easy Watercolors: Drawing Cookies and Pastry by
Mariya Popandopulo

These classes were very helpful and quite enjoyable, and I recommend them both. But I should point out that there is no shortage of other great classes and tutorials available out there on how to paint with watercolors. Check out other classes and video tutorials at Skillshare.com, Lynda.com, YouTube, etc.

MATERIALS USED:

PAPER

Canson Watercolor Cold Press Paper (140 lb, 11 x 15″ )

WATERCOLOR PAINTS (a variety of Browns, Reds, and Yellows)

Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolors:
Raw Sienna
Cadmium Orange
Burnt Sienna
Burnt Umber

Pentel Watercolors:
Ultramarine
Yellow Ochre

Reeves Watercolors:
Deep Yellow
Red Ochre

INK

Sakura Pigma Micron Pen (01) in Black (for the bubbles)

A practice exercise in the first class involved exploring different watercolor techniques to illustrate different looks for coffee. The image below shows my results:

Coffee Illustrations Using 6 Watercolor Techniques
Coffee Illustrations Using 6 Different Watercolor Techniques

The techniques which were used in the exploration excercise included variations on wet on wet, wet on dry, single color, and incorporating multiple colors. The bubbles were done in black pigma micron ink. The shading was achieved by using mixing colors to create a blue-gray.

In addition to painting likenesses of cups of coffee, I also practiced painting croissants. Fortunately these pastries are fairly easy to draw, and the coloring was achieved by glazing different colors over one another.

Here is my final result.

Watercolor Coffee and Croissant
Watercolor Coffee and Croissant

All in all I am very happy with how my painting turned out. Looking forward to creating other similar works in the future!

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Nzeppel

Another week brings another Diva challenge. This time the challenge is to create a tile using ‘Nzeppel, one of my favorite patterns. Stepouts for ‘Nzeppel and Crazy ‘Nzeppel can be found here.

For months I planned on preparing some of my zentangle tiles with watercolor washes, and I finally got around to it! For this challenge I chose to tangle on a tile with a blue, green, and yellow wash. The wash was done with watercolor crayons and a Pentel Aquash brush. It’s really easy to do and I like the effects.

Carrying over last week’s Back to Basics theme, I decided to stick with official Zentangle patterns again. My tile features Crazy ‘Nzeppel, Crescent Moon, and Tripoli.

Diva challenge #367
Nzeppel

As long as I have you here, I’d like to call attention to two new tangles/tangleations which I have worked out. They are called Zazzle and Palmetta. The stepouts can be found on my Patterns page. Also, I made a blog post announcing Zazzle here, and there is an older post about Palmetta here (later revised to include stepouts). They haven’t gotten many views so I thought I’d mention them again here.  I would greatly love some feedback, especially since these are my first attempts at introducing new patterns.

Thank you for visiting!

 

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Zazzle – New Tangle

Pastel Zazzle Zendala

For a while now I had been playing with a pattern that I think is an original. Finally it’s ready for the unveiling…  and thus I give you Zazzle. I think that Zazzle allows for a lot of versatility. It  works well as a starter for a zendala, or however you might like to use it in your tiles.

Here are the step-outs:

Stepouts for my new tangle, Zazzle
Stepouts for my tangle, Zazzle

Please note that I added a new Patterns page to the blog, where you will also find these step-outs. In addition, there are step-outs for my other pattern, Palmetta. I hope to add new ones in the future.

Below is an example of Zazzle on a zendala tile. In this case I drew concentric circles to provide a string, so it is more structured than the more free-form examples seen in the step-outs.

Zazzle Zendala
Zazzle Zendala

Although I like it in black and white, I thought it would look pretty with some added color. Using blue, purple, and aqua watercolor crayons I colored in specific patterns, and repeated them in an alternating fashion from the center outwards. For contrast I left some areas white.

Feedback about Zazzle is welcome and encouraged! If you try out Zazzle I would love to see what you come up with. Please leave a link in the comments below or send me an email via the Contact page.

 

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Arts Classes Galore

Sorry to say that I’ve been absent here on my blog for the past couple of months. Following the completion of the Mandala Magic workshop (see previous posts), and also a busy holiday season, I found myself signing up for a Premium membership on Skillshare.com (referral link at the end of this post). Suffice it to say that I went a little wild taking a bunch of different design related courses! I’m very glad that I did, and I’ve learned a great deal.

For each class that you take on Skillshare you are invited to complete a project to demonstrate the new skills that you’ve learned as a result of taking the class. I’d like to share some of my projects here. There are more in process and I will add them to this post later on. Continue reading →

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