Category: Practicing Art

Colour palettes are useful little things when designing, especially interior design. Colour palettes are a selection of colours kept on a board or paper as a reference, ready mixed for specific project/artwork. It helps you to keep focus on the selection of the colours that create concept consistency through the design/painting process. There are many ways you can create a colour palette. You can use different material swatches or magazine cutouts to create 3D colour palette. Computer generated swatches are quite useful too and easy to create. However today we are talking how to make a colour palette by mixing your own paint. This technique is especially useful when you need to use some colours to create wall artwork or want a specific paint colour when painting the walls or furniture (of course these swatches can be successfully scanned at the paint shop for a larger quantity paint).

Recently I visited the Lithuanian seaside that I get constantly inspired by. I blogged about it  many times across different seasons. This time I visited when there was still a little snow left! I used the photos I took as my inspiration.

So how do I create a colour palette using paint? First step is of course to choose the paint. Any type of paint can be used for this purpose, but acrylic is probably the easiest to handle. I used a mix of acrylic paint and also some kids washable water based paint because I did not have a good selection of acrylics. It is important that you have the primary colours (yellow, green, blue and red), plus black and white. The rest of the colours can be mixed.

To create the colour palette you really need to have a good understanding of a colour wheel. When you understand how to achieve secondary and intermediate colours from primary colours you unlock so many other colours. Once those colours are unlocked they can be further developed by adding adding white or black to lighten or darken them. Just remember that black and white also dull the colours as well. 

But first, before you begin creating the palette, you need to find an inspiration. You can either use photos like I did or pick an object (like a rug or patterned fabric) that has a colour combination you like. Mixing colours take practice, but it’s so fun when you get the right shade! Once I achieve the right shade I simply transfer them onto a clean piece of paper and let it dry. I particularly enjoy naming those colours, claiming ownership over them.

Hope you found this inspiring!
Rasa xoxo

It’s that time of year when the nights are long, Christmas cheer is all around us and neighbours started lighting up their fairy lights. It could not be a better time to learn how to do galaxy paintings (A must must have skill for water colour painters!). These could turn into magical magical Christmas cards, and invites, and so many other things as well as wall art.
First I began by working on my brush strokes. To achieve a deep night sky impression I moved my brush in circular movements to form cloud like patterns. It’s important to use a generous amount of water as well as layering the paint to build darker shades. To begin with I only worked with two basic colours which were black and blue.

Once the sky painting is dry, I sprinkled some “stars”. I used a heavy type of brush and using my thumb movement on it I successfully applied the micro sized stars. I then used thin paint brush to paint in bigger stars. Although majority galaxy paintings I have seen around are white, I thought it would be very cool to try gold colour acrylic paint to create some gold stars. I am totally in love with the variation!

Once I mastered the galaxy painting with two colours I of course then tried including more colours. I even tried gold colour! Now, I don’t have gold watercolour paint, so I used watered down gold acrylic paint. This experiment actually worked!! The picture bellow cannot do its justice though, the painting sparkles in the real life!

Finally I experimented with painting into confined shape (circle). What changed are the brushstrokes. I tend to do longer brushstrokes to define the edges. The borders also meant that the painting had some sort of structure rather than ending up looking like continuous repeating pattern.

Tip: when watercoloring with high amounts of water the paper becomes uneven and wrinkly. The best way to make the paper flat again is to iron it. Cover the painting with baking paper and iron it with steam free setting. I find this is safe even with the high temperature setting.

When the time came to make the Christmas cards I decided to experiment with foiling (I am so in love with gold right now!). Sadly this did not work out. I am sure it’s all my fault! This foil I bought meant to be used with the foiling machine, but someone suggested this could be used with iron. At the end the foil melted instead sticking onto paper. I even used PVA after unsuccessful application using toner pen. Nothing worked! I decided to leave foiling for later, I am sure I will figure this out some other time. 

I ended up using gold paint to paint the letters which was acceptable, but not ideal (hope my neighbours like it).

White acrylic paint works fine too. If only I did not misspelled “Christmas” over here!

Hope you found this helpful! Are you making your cards yourself this year?
Rasa xoxo

Last month I was reviewing my yearly goals and I realised that I was nowhere close to learning calligraphy. This is when I decided that I needed to focus on hand lettering, hence watercolour brush lettering! I also used bible verses for this project so that way I could meditate on the word as well as learning new skill.
I started with the basic handwriting style that I once learned from my friend Vicki. It was the type of handwriting style that you learn in old school where you draw all of your letters connected and within the lines (remember?). Except this hand lettering style does not require lines. It flows out freestyle!
I soon got bored with that writing style and was ready to add more character to my hand lettering.
This is when I came across brush lettering. Brush lettering is a style of writing similar to calligraphy, but done with brush pens. When doing brush lettering the key thing to remember is the pen pressure and the stroke thickness:

• Heavy pressure is applied in a downward motion to create thick stroke
• Light pressure is applied in an upward motion to create thin stroke

Although I was painting letters with an actual brush, it was not easy to control the strokes. At some places I needed to thicken the lines manually instead of applying pressure as I paint.

Initially I tried a round brush but then switched to a flat shaped brush that made neat thick lines. However I found it difficult to paint thin lines with it. The only way to paint thin lines with this brush was to paint sideways. I quickly ditched that and went back to a round shaped brush.

With the round brush back in hand I soon got got the hang of brush lettering. You know what they say, practice makes perfect ;-). I experimented with different types of font such as printed, joined or separated hand lettering. I even tried to format my hand writing. I drew lines with the pencil to mark the guidelines.

Once I learned to format the lettering I had a go with the bounce hand writing font. This was so so much fun. Bounce hand lettering is all about drawing letters outside their guidelines: one letter down, the second letter up and third letter down again (I hope you get the point). Essentially the letters bounce 😉

I loved loved loved learning watercolour calligraphy, hope you will too 😉
Rasa xoxo

Sooo, we are still on the mission to fill the walls in the kids room with pictures and Lukas is involved in this project as always (even if I don’t ask him to).

This months watercolour challenge theme is planes! Obviously because Lukas loves planes! This boy builds the planes out of lego, pretends to be flying like a plane and flies every possible object like a plane. You got the picture! I felt I had to make the boys room plane themed.

I have been imagining to paint those pretty biplanes and then an alphabet to go along with it. However (as always) things did not go to my plan. Although at least I have one artwork on the wall now!!

I started this month’s watercolour challenge with painting biplanes. It needed lots of attention to detail and lots of pencil work with rulers. The watercolour part only took few minutes. I did not like the end result too much. I can’t even explain why, definitely did not look what I had in my vision.

Next I started on the alphabet and I guess because painting biplanes did not work that much I looked at other planes to inspire me too. It was real fun to look through Joni’s plane books to find some planes that actually start with the letter I wanted to use it for. For instance I used the Avro Arrow aircraft to represent letter “A”.

I made plenty of mistakes, the letter “Z” is the wrong way round and plenty of mess that I could not quite rub off with the eraser. However I do love this artwork and it is hanging in the boys bedroom till one day I will decide to redo it.

Since I had so much fun painting different aircrafts from Joni’s book, I tried drawing one with propellers. Was not too pleased with this painting so decided to end painting here.

For now I am just so pleased with the plane inspired alphabet.

What’s your favourite painting?

Rasa xoxo