Baby Giraffe



Baby Giraffe, Watercolor, 18 x 24'

I have been inspired this past week to make my watercolors look more brilliant and lustrous on the paper, so I was excited to hear about a nifty little product called Gum Arabic. When I worked on this cute little baby giraffe and mixed some gum arabic with the paints, I did notice that the colors were brighter somehow.

Gum Arabic seems even more exciting though when used to controlling spread of paint in wet-on-wet, so that rather than getting a big muddy mess of colors pooling together I was able to separate them to some extent and just get some nice bits mixing at the edges of overlapping colors. Here is a flying parrot I created using gum arabic mixed with watercolor. It has a rather nice, loose abstract feel to it I think:

Parrot in Flight, watercolor, 18 x 24'

Have you ever used gum arabic with watercolors? Did you like the effect? There are all sorts of watercolor mediums I haven't tried yet but which seem rather exciting: Ox Gall, Aquapasto, Texture Medium, Granulation Medium etc. etc......I will try them all one day!

Linking up to Paint Party Friday and Creative Every Day! Click the buttons and come join in the fun....

giraffes art for sale

children paintings for sale

Mice Amongst the Poppies

What fun to try my hand at painting some tiny mice scurrying around in a poppy field. I started with putting masking tape around the edges of the paper. Then I put in a lot of the grasses with masking fluid and a fine brush. Next I started painting in the vivid poppies with watercolor. And the background, and the little mice.

Next I removed the masking fluid....what fun!

Ripping off the masking tape was tricky but fun too.  Then I really felt I needed to put in more detail in pastel and I really wanted more vivid color with the poppies...so I grabbed my pastels and went to work. Enjoy them! Squeak squeak

Mice Amongst the Poppies, mixed media, 9 x 13'

Linking up to Illustration Friday under the theme of SUMMER  ..... and to Paint Party Friday! Click the button and come join in the fun....you can buy this print at Redbubble HERE