Painting Party! Kids' Birthday Party

 A friend of mine recently asked if I would be interested in doing a painting lesson for her daughter's 8th birthday. Um, yes! Her daughter loves butterflies, so I came up with a pretty simple butterfly.

 I prepped the canvases by lightly spraying them blue, leaving plenty of white splotches for clouds. I was concerned that with the limitations of time and attention span, painting a background was out of the question. I guided them through, step by step, teaching them how to paint the butterfly section by section, how to use the end of their brush to make dots, and other little tricks.

 There were 18 girls at the party. That is a LOT of girls! It was so much fun to do, and they seemed to really love it. I had a hair dryer with me to dry the paint before did the designs on the wings. That worked out great. I had them use Martha Stewart craft paint, which is cheaper than 'artist' acrylic, but nicer than the cheapest acrylic you can get. I experimented a bit and found the advantages of the Martha Stewart brand were that it was thicker and could easily cover on the first coat. It also dried fairly quickly and had cool sparkly colors!

 When I came up with the image, I wanted something that would allow them to have good results, as well as allow them to use their creativity. I have found that often people are paralyzed by the idea that it has to look 'just like yours/mine/hers'. Only a few girls got hung up on that, and the rest of them seemed to really love being able to personalize their own paintings. Now they have their own masterpieces to take home!

Artemis, The Watercolor Armadillo

It is finally framed and finished! I painted this armadillo for Rachel and it is finally framed and ready to send! I ended up for various reasons being glass-less, which is just about blasphemous if you ask me when it comes to framing most artwork. Thankfully, my parents trash-picked a piece of glass and cut it to size for me. Thanks, parents!

 

This is a different style than I have painted before and it was really fun. I love tedious stuff like this. The black was all done using a tiny brush.

 

I splattered paint over the page before starting to add a wild and crazy touch of color.

I'm kind of sad to see this guy go, but I hear Rachel already has a nail in the wall for him!

Quick Watercolor Card

A few weeks ago, I had a chance to play with my watercolors. I did a quick little feather and turned it into a card for a friend. I really love painting, and I really need to make the time to do it more often.