Painting the Puppies in Watercolor

Lola and Stella

So I thought I'd try a new thing. Painting using water colors. I had never done that before except as a child I had a box of paints and a paintbrush and I guess those were watercolors. At that time I was more intrigued by the lovely names of the colors ; vermillion red and emerald green and other exotic names.

I had already bought a lovely box of water color crayons and found those interesting to use and wanted to find out more. So I looked on You Tube where you can find videos on nearly anything these days. Sure enough there were masses of videos on different types of watercolor painting techniques. I watched a few of them. Some are very detailed . Some are useless in as much as they have no commentary, or at least have no commentary that you can understand and some are too quick and short for you to get helpful details.

But armed with a few techniques from watching. I got out my tubes of watercolor paints. Threw a few out they had dried up. Then got Mike to open the rest for me as some of the tops had dried on. Found a sheet of watercolor paper. Sketched Chrissy and Ben's new puppies and started.

Original photo

Well it is harder than it looks but very enjoyable. You have to work to get the right color and to get texture and light in the painting. You have to keep adding layers and you have to make sure the first layer is completely dry. Those were the main techniques I learned in this first painting. I also learned that you use very little paint, quite different than using acrylic or oil paints.

I felt the painting was good enough to give as a present for Easter to the grand kids and will serve to remind them in future how cute their grown dogs were as pups.

Puppies grow up so fast !!