Calm Week

Below are some key points to painting with watercolor:
- Always paint lighter colors first.
- Never paint two wet colors next to each other unless you want them to blend/bleed together. Give it plenty of time to dry.
- Use different size brushes depending on what you're painting.
- If you use an eraser before you paint make sure that none of the shavings are left on the paper.
- Use the right amount of water in the paint. More water = lighter/ More pigment = darker

Now go make something beautiful!

Digital photography is so ridiculously cheap and easy that a weekend trip can result in 150 jpegs. Sure you can post them on Flickr or Picasa, but what then? Yes, your friends looked at them once, but does anyone ever look at those online photo albums twice?

On the other hand, a small painting that you made with your own hands? That gets matted and framed and hung in a place of honor. You can make a painting for yourself, or make one for your friends at home. (If they're into that kind of thing ... don't give art to people who aren't arty. It just makes everyone uncomfortable)

Watercolor Resist refers to the process of creating a masked surface before inking with watercolors, or any liquid pigment. In this Instructable, I used rubber cement as a resistive medium to create water-repelling shapes and words on watercolor paper. Dried rubber cement is able to permeate into the paper fibers so that any water-based paint is unable to dye the paper - it's a cool technique!

I recently had a birthday and received some really nice things from some of my favorite people. I wanted to send those folks a nice thing in return as thanks. Everyone loves receiving a letter in the mail, and I thought to make it extra special I would make each card by hand.

This process is really fun, and a little bit like writing a secret message that you have to unlock with a rainbow of watercolors.