Floral Season

Hello everyone, and welcome back to this week’s edition of Loose Watercolours with me, your host! How’ve you been? Did you have nice weather? Did you get any painting done? Whatever you got up to, it’s Monday again, and time for a fresh start. And what better way to have fun and relax in an new week than to play with some loose watercolours?

It was lovely to see so many of you join in with last week’s live broadcast. The topic was ‘Lavender Table,’ and I’ve very much enjoyed having a look at all of your art on the Beginners Facebook Group. Spring is clearly just around the corner, at least if the weather here is anything to go by, so I’ve been enjoying floral painting especially at the moment, and I hope you all feel the same. If you want to join in the fun this week, the live broadcast is at the usual time of 8pm GMT, and you can find the link here. The topic this week is ‘Blue Cup Tulips!’

As a side note as well, the Beginners Facebook Group is a fantastic resource for all of you budding artists if you’ve yet to join. Now with over 2,500 members, there’s tips and tricks posted frequently, as well as lots of lovely pictures created by the loose watercolour community, which are always a great place to find inspiration for a painting or two. Plus, it’s the best place to ask me any burning questions you might have, as you’ll often find me in the comments section giving some feedback and advice. If that’s inspired you, be sure to drop by the Beginners Loose Watercolours Group here.

For those of you on Patreon, you might have noticed that there’s a new tutorial available this week, ‘Window Floral Line & Wash.’ Here, we have some fun adding some ink into our typical watercolour scene, which helps give a little more definition into our painting. If you’re interested in watching it back, you can find it here.

I’ve also been experimenting a little this week with pen and ink, and I came up with this little robin – what do you think? I combined some loose watercolour flowers with a cartoon style, and I don’t know about you, but I think it’s turned out to be quite cute.

I’ve also been honing my painting skills in a European sense this week, as I’m doing some painting in Italy this summer, so I thought I’d get some practice in. Can you recognise where this painting is set? Here’s a clue: the water might give it away. Let me know all of your best guesses, and whoever gets it right will get a little round of applause from me.

All this talk of spring and summer just being round the corner has made me think back to what we did last summer, though, especially when I stumbled upon this picture of Toby investigating the Eden Project! It’s a beautiful botanic project down in Cornwall, where they repurposed an old quarry as a home for all sorts of exotic plants. He really enjoyed it, but was a little bit sad that he didn’t get to go and investigate inside all of the biomes, due to him being – well, a dog. It’s well worth a visit if you’re ever in the area, and it’s full of floral inspirations for all of your loose watercolour needs. Plus, it’s a great day out!

That’s all from me, folks, as I’m off to do a spot of plein air painting whilst the weather is nice. As always, there’s an exclusive tutorial at the end of this post as an enormous thank you to all of you paid subscribers – after all, it’s your support that helps keep this Substack running. This week’s tutorial is ‘Beginner’s Blue Flowers,’ and there’s a line drawing just below as well so you can sketch out your painting beforehand.

I’ll be back with you all next Monday (and for you paid subscribers a little sooner), but until then, happy painting, and Toby and I hope you have a great week!

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