When asked how I wanted to spend the Saturday before my birthday week, it wasn’t hard to decide what I wanted to do. It has been ages since we painted last (to be specific the last time we put watercolor to paper was on our trip to Bluffton back in May). We loved working with the liquid watercolors (they are by far my favorite way to work with this particular medium both for the vibrant colors they produce and how easy they are to mix) and we still had Sarah Cray’s (of Let’s Make Art!) class to take from the Watercolor Summit (insert gasp here) that we signed up for last year. The wonderful thing about the Watercolor Summit is that you own the classes for life, so you can always come back to them.
Another thing to love about working with artist Sarah Cray is detailed worksheets that she includes along with her videos (and the kits available on her website) and given the intracities that are involved in recreating one of my absolute favorite birds (the hummingbird) we wanted to make sure that we did this beautiful winged creature justice.
Here are the Dr. PH Martin’s colors we used to create this project.
- Black
- Cyclamen
- Cherry Red
- Juniper Green
- Olive
- Slate Blue
- Golden Brown
- Turquoise
Also included in the class was the outline that we needed to get the basic shape of our hummingbird, and having this as a guide is always helpful. To get the exact outline on our watercolor paper we put a piece of carbon paper (which can be used for multiple projects) between our printed outline and our watercolor paper.
Adding some color, line and shadows…
I just love the color values that you can achieve with liquid watercolors. While I did mix different colors together and change some of the color values for some parts of the bird, I’m glad that I went for a more vibrant look.
The very last detail we added to our birds was the eye. Up until that point, despite all of the color, the bird’s personality had yet to come to life, but after a few strokes of the paintbrush, voila. Bonjour, Monsieur Hummingbird!
To see all three of our hummingbirds, pop over to Instagram and check out my Insta-Stories.
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