Soothing Blue Watercolors

Today I have selected some of my watercolor paintings in soothing blues to share with you.

Hope your day is wonderful!

This loose floral with gray blue flowers is very calming.
It’s just simple and delicate. I really like that.

Playing with the gray blue here with a single flower. I love the lost edges and the pale petals in back.

A little abstract landscape with some soothing blues in the distance. I love the bright flowers in the foreground. I’m always inspired by o_aquarelles on Instagram. The ease with which she paints beautiful landscapes always makes me want to pick up my brush and paint away!

Limited palette leaves. Playing with a plastic card, brush, and watercolor pencil. The little lines with pencil add a touch of detail that wakes up this painting.

As I was putting together this post I was looking back through some recent paintings. The single flower and landscape jumped out at me. I’m always amazed at how much more I appreciate some of my paintings later on. As for the landscape above, I’m loving it now.

I hope you are inspired to create art and have fun. Until next time, share a smile and sprinkle kindness everywhere.

Patty Anne 💙

Join me on Instagram @pattyanneart

Something new – painting figures

I recently decided to try painting figures. I’ve been wanting to add people to my landscapes for a while now so I watched a few videos online to help me get started. Today I have a few tips to share with you that have really helped me.

My thought is to keep it simple starting off with views from behind.
-no hands or shoes necessary
-keep brush stokes to a minimum (that is a challenge)
-start off with a jacket first then add legs with simple brush strokes.
-be careful with head size, not too big
-add few darker areas of shadow

I love that little pop of color on the scarf and hat.

Here I started with a few figures and then played around and added a background of city buildings.

Out for a walk hand in hand. This simple scene makes me smile.

Chilly walk in the park was a good practice too.

I’m not sure where my art will take me this year but I hope to keep working on landscapes and dropping in more people and animals. I needed a new challenge and something fun to work on. I think this will be a good direction for me this year.

What are your creative goals this year?

I hope you are inspired to create art and have fun. Thank you so much for your kindness and support. Wishing you all the best this year friends! 💜

-Patty Anne-

Join me on Instagram @pattyanneart

Cardinal watercolor painting

Happy Sunday! ❤️

A quick post today with a sweet Cardinal that I painted a few months ago.

I hope you are inspired to create art and have fun.

Until next time, share a smile and shine on!

🌸 Patty Anne 🌸

Join me on Instagram at pattyanneart

Inktober and Mini Landscapes

Today I have a few more #Inktober sketches to share as well as a few mini landscapes.

Hope your day is wonderful! 💚

I really enjoy sketching potted plants. For this sketch I used a few micron pens. I have a variety of sizes and colors in my collection. 😉 I decided to use sepia and burnt orange colors for this one.

This sketch I started with a few light pencil marks as a guide for the leaves and vines. It was fun to play and see what kind of shapes I could make with the pen.

When I attempted to remove the pencil markings with an eraser things started to go a little sideways… the ink smeared on me. Oh well that’s how it goes sometimes.

I worked on a few more mini landscapes in my 5 x 7 inch sketchbook. This one above was a quick five minute painting. I love the freshness you can achieve with when there’s no time for fussing.

I spent a few more minutes on this mini. These little landscapes are a nice warm up and a great way to build painting skills. I hope theses little paintings also lead to new ideas. I’m thinking about filling an entire sketchbook with more of these quick paintings.

I hope you are inspired to create art and have fun. Until next time, share a smile and shine on.

Patty Anne

Join me on Instagram at pattyanneart

Inktober Sketching 2022

Today I have a few ink sketches to share with you. My sketching time has been limited this month but I was able to find a little time to play in my sketchbook.

A little botanical sketch using my Pentel pocket brush pen. It’s been a very long time since I’ve used this pen and I’m not sure why. I love this pen!

A quick little floral playing with patterns on the flower petals.

Magnolia sketch playing with the brush pen

This sketch was done a little before October. I was really exploring what I could do with the long lost brush pen. 😊 I like that you can make delicate marks and fine lines as well as large bold stokes using this pen.

I hope you are inspired to create and have fun. Just grab a sketchbook, pen, and see what happens!

Until next time, share a smile and shine on. 💜

-Patty Anne

Join me on Instagram @pattyanneart

Little seascape painting

Today I have a seascape to share with you. I was playing in my 5×7 inch sketchbook and was pleasantly surprised with the results.

Happy Sunday! 💙

My first step was color mixing. I painted a few samples in my sketchbook documenting the colors that I planned on using.

The next step was deciding where to place a light pencil mark for the horizon line. The space is quite limited in the 5 x 7 inch sketchbook but I didn’t let that stop me.

I worked from top to bottom with the wet on wet technique. I simply wet the paper by brushing on clean water first and then added some paint on the damp paper.

I like to focus on the sky first and then move on to the middle and foreground areas. There’s something very calming about painting a water scene and I love all the blues of the sea.

I placed a matt over the painting to see how it might look in a frame. I think it looks pretty good that way. 😊 I hope you make time to play in your sketchbook and have fun.

Until next time, share a smile and shine on.

🌸 Patty Anne 🌸

Join me on Instagram at pattyanneart

Sketchbook tour

Lately I’ve been trying to work more in my sketchbook. Today I have a few pencil sketches to share with you.

I decided to work more on sketching birds.

This was a quick sketch. I like the idea of limiting my time on a sketch which helps me focus on shape and form. Having a time limit also keeps me from getting lost in detail.

More work on shore birds… I hope this will help build my confidence when adding birds to landscape paintings.

Another page with a few quick bird sketches. I really liked this one more than the others on the page. I cropped the others out but kind of love that they are sneaking into the photo a little. 😊

More quick sketches with different views.

Finishing off our sketchbook tour is a quick flower sketch. I was thinking about painting but didn’t have enough time so I just started sketching a poppy. I’m happy that I opened up my sketchbook.

I hope you are inspired to create art and do something you love. Until next time, share a smile and stay excellent!

🌸 Patty Anne 🌸

You can follow me on Instagram at pattyanneart

Calming leaves in my sketchbook

Today I have a few pages in my little watercolor sketchbook to share with you.

I’ve been painting leaves using a plastic card and brush. I just can’t seem to get enough of this. 💙

I like simplifying my color choices. Here I used just three colors.

I push paint around with the plastic card and use the watercolor brush to wet the paper and smooth out any areas that need it. A damp brush helps encourage the paint to move around a bit.

I am so in love with these colors. I decided to let the paint to bleed out a little on opposite corners. It needed a little something extra and that worked well.

I hope you are inspired to create art and do something you love. Many thanks for all of the kind words and condolences on my last post. It was very much appreciated.

Until next time, share a smile and shine on.

🌸 Patty Anne 🌸

You can find me on Instagram at pattyanneart

Daffodils & Tulips

It was a very difficult start to Spring this year with the unexpected loss of my beloved brother. Although I try to keep my personal life and struggles out of my art blog, this is where I am and what I’ve been going through. I just thought I should let you all know.

Today I have some pretty pictures of the daffodils in my garden and a few other paintings to share.

The daffodils this year did not disappoint. They’ve since faded but I did manage to get some nice photos when they were at their peak.

I really love this close up view.

Once again no luck with tulips this year. The critters outside have enjoyed snacking on them. I think I will just plant something else in the fall.

I painted some pretty pink and red tulips in my sketchbook. These playful loose watercolor flowers are so cheerful.

I also filled a page in my sketchbook with butterflies. I used watercolor brush pens for this and really like how it turned out.

I hope you are inspired to create art and do something you love. Creating art has always been very therapeutic for me. I shall continue to lean into my art and give myself time and space to heal.

Until next time share a smile and sprinkle kindness everywhere.

🌸 Patty Anne 🌸

Join me on Instagram at pattyanneart

A few pages in my sketchbook

It’s been a while since I opened up my sketchbook for you. Today I have a variety of sketches made using pens and markers.

It’s been challenging getting nice photos of different pages in my sketchbook. It always seems to be either too bright or too dark when I’m taking photos of my artwork in winter… 🙂

I layered tiny flowers and vines in this sketch using both Tombow markers and Micron pens. The little unexpected blue leaves and flowers make me happy.

A practice page of flowers and leaves. I love how this little sampler turned out. It was a good way to try different colors together and see what works. Most importantly, it was fun and very relaxing.

A simple little bird sketch found its way into my sketchbook. I think I’m going to start adding more birds in my sketchbook.

Tulips with marker pens. I love how the stripes of different green markers look on the leaves. I played around using the large and small tip of the markers. Parts of this sketch I really like and other parts not so much but this is a sketch and it’s important to explore and try different things.

This was an in progress piece. While prepping the photo for this post, I accidentally rotated it to the left and now it feels complete. In my sketchbook the top of the page has the three magenta vines on top. I really like it better with them on the left as you see here.

I’m going to have to remember to try this with my paintings as well. Sometimes simply changing the orientation can make all the difference.

I hope you enjoyed this walk through my sketchbook. I encourage you to play and have fun sketching. I really need to remember to do more of this myself.

Until next time, share a smile and shine on!

🌻 🌼 Patty Anne 🌼🌻

Join me on Instagram at pattyanneart

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