Today is the last day of June which means it’s also the last day of the 30×30 Direct Watercolor challenge for 2019. Marc Taro Holmes created this challenge last year to prompt artists to think of shapes instead of line when painting with watercolor. Marc requested that when we posted our art on social media we tag it with #30x30DirectWatercolor2019.

I’ve painted a piece every day this month so I guess it’s about time I shared. These are in a very inexpensive 5.5 in. x 3.5 in. landscape format watercolor sketchbook by Arteza. This book has quite a few issues which I’ll go into later but I’ve enjoyed working with it this month as I adapted my painting style to work with this paper.

Poppies in my garden… I’m happy with the buds but the flower? … not so much. I forgot to leave white bits.

Whelk… I like how this more textured side of the paper allows for watercolor “magic”, a term popularized by Australian artist Liz Steel.

Poppies revisited.

Garlic done by starting with negative painting of the background, as I did with the whelk above… and only when that was dry did I go in to paint the bulb and roots.

People practice… something I should be doing at least once a week so it doesn’t seem so daunting.

Lucky bamboo. This turned out better than I expected… besides, it’s always fun to practice mixing my own greens.

Sunset. We’ve been decluttering old photos and this night I tried my hand at capturing the feel of of this before it was tossed.

That’s it for part one… stay tuned, there’s more to come.

#30x30DirectWatercolor2019