Yeah ... the Painting is Finished

Last night I put the finishing touches on what is probably the most complicated, painstaking and detailed watercolor I have done for any of the cards to date. I am working on a card that is inspired by the amazing art nouveau stained glass windows by Louis C. Tiffany.


Transparent watercolors are perfect for capturing the vibrancy and luminosity of light filtering through a stained glass window.


The first stage, painting the frames of each individual glass pane in black ink took about a week of full time work. The ink is water soluble but waterproof once dry, so can be applied before the watercolors. Although this makes painting in watercolor a bit easier, it still took another week and a half of days, evenings and pretty much all my free time to complete the painting.


But now that it is complete I am rather thrilled with the result. I hope you will be to when you see the final card which will be set to Ave Maria, one of my favorite music pieces.

Free Watercolor Demo

In my previous post Striking a Balance I introduced some of my favorite watercolor books, including "Vibrant Flowers in Watercolor" by Soon Y. Warren as well as a free online demo from the book made available by the publisher. Here is another free online demo from the book that shows you how to use complimentary colors when painting objects from nature arranged against a background with a complimentary color.


Free Download: Soon Y. Warren on Using Complementary Colors

Art Class

On Sunday’s I teach an art class to Emil, Esben and three of my friends’ kids, Karina, Rachel and Lauren. There is a big age span from 5-12 years, so finding suitable assignments isn’t always easy. The older kids are able to learn a bit of technique, while I want the younger kids to just draw or paint whatever they are inspired to do. Last week we made sculptures from aluminum foil, a great way to get them into sculpting without all the mess of clay – and with five kids and a distracted art teacher that has to be a consideration. While the kids get into it, we mommies sit around and commiserate to a glass of wine. We are all European women married to Taiwanese men. We would probably commiserate even if we were married to European men … Tim wisely goes and spends time with his second wife, his computer:-)

Watercolor Paper

I have set up my painting studio in the brightest corner of our home with linen curtains filtering the light. A little while back I was in a real bind because I could not find the paper I use for watercolor painting anywhere here.

I use Windsor & Newton Hot Press, 300 lb sheets, because the ultra fine smooth surface is best suited for scanning the images I use in the flash animated ecards. Tim frantically called a long list of stores, but each store said the distributor had stopped carrying the paper. Finally he convinced an employee at the distributor to go and dig around in the stock room. Low and behold he found 200 sheets! Yeah, we bought it all, and stuffed it under our bed. I would have been better to have all the money we paid for it stuffed into the mattress, but hey, at least the paper should last a few years I hope …