Look! Look! It’s baaaack! Aaaa, I’m crying from happiness--it’s back!
This little watercolor station survived winter flooding, spring flooding, gale winds, fallen trees--it was completely submerged beneath muddy silt and sticky river clay again and again these past stormy months. After so much digging and scraping and cleaning, the entire area is now sparkling, shining, and looking more beautiful than ever! Let’s make this a spectacular watercolor summer, and a super big RWBY nature scene year! 👏💖🎨🖌️🌿
Early spring is here, and it’s as beautiful as ever! Arcs of wild plum blossoms seem to float and cascade among the bright fresh greenery in my back yard. The earth smells wet and renewed after each passing rain shower, and nature everywhere feels alive with abundance and vibrancy. These are all aspects of this gorgeous season that I definitely want to capture more of in my art, nature scenes and watercolors alike.
Heavy winter rains led to an insane amount of flooding this year, and my entire outdoor watercolor station was very much underwater for quite a while. So now that the rains have subsided a bit, this week’s job is to unearth everything from the thick mud and sludge (as seen on the right) and return it to its former beauty (as seen on the left). I want to put all my watercolor ideas into action this year! Let’s goooo!
A soft and gentle moonlight makes for the most beautiful nighttime nature. It’s rare that I paint nighttime scenes, even though I’m no stranger to nighttime walks and star-viewing in the countryside. So it was an absolute treat to play with so many silvery dappled blues all at once, and it certainly brought back many good memories of my own quiet night walks beneath the stars.
This nature scene is a commission for @gladyscontrerasart and it’s the background of a two page colored spread for her fancomic. The scene here takes place during a gentle summer’s night at a long neglected and time-worn riverbank on the outskirts of Kyoto, Japan.
In 2019, I came across this gorgeous autumn lake during my travels. Now I’m turning it into a watercolor scene! It’s scary diving head first into something that still feels so shaky and new, but I’m also equally happy to have such beautiful and gentle colors as my guide.
A beautiful start to November with beautiful color palette inspiration right at my feet. See the little shimmers of blue on the leaves? The rain soaked leaves are reflecting the most brilliant blue sky as the rainstorm left and the sun came out again. It’s little details in little moments like these that are the spark for every new nature scene I paint. And ooohh, do I have a scene idea for this one! 🧡 🍂
The hot days of summer are gone at last, and fall is about to begin! Sketching out some ideas for watercolor scenes to celebrate the start of a new and beautiful day. 💛 🍂
A little collection of watercolor experiments and new idea sketches I’ve been creating this summer. 🌼💚
Painting outdoors feels wonderful, and all the shapes and colors are steadily becoming more and more consistent as I practice this new medium. Sometimes it’s unbelievably scary to pick up my brush and try again when things don’t work out as planned, and sometimes it’s horribly frustrating when things seem to go wrong in an entirely new and unpredictable way. But these are all invaluable lessons in learning, and you can’t gain the knowledge to help you move forward without them. I’m so incredibly proud of myself for these little triumphs, and I’m patting myself on the back for all the ways I’ve seen myself grow since I began. I’m only going to keep improving by leaps and bounds from here on out, and I’m already super excited happy for all the successes I’m celebrating here and now.
Thank you all so, so much for allowing me the time to learn at my own pace. It’s the greatest gift ever. 💖🌿
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I’m posting my watercolor doodles more regularly on my twitter and instagram stories/highlights as opposed to here on tumblr for the time being. But once I gain a little more experience with watercolors, full and proper scenes should start appearing here for you all to enjoy!
Sketch days and summer views. 🌼🌿 These sketches are for watercolor scenes! Some are original scenes, some practice ideas, and some RWBY Travels with Qrow scenes in the works too.
Little by little, slow and sure, I’ve been quietly practicing watercolors behind the scenes these past few months. The quiet outdoor study time has been so creatively healing for me in so many positive ways, I’m glad I took the time for myself. Now, at last, it feels as if I’m really close to a breakthrough in learning, and I know all the pieces will come together easily and far better than I ever imagined it ever would. And though I can tell I still have a little more ways to go before that happens, it somehow it feels as if I’m thriving already.
Sometimes as artists, we forget to celebrate the little triumphs in our works as we go. A difficult challenge overcome, or the pure happy feeling of completing something we’re super proud of. Today I’m celebrating both! This little summertime lotus pond may be a very small corner in a very large RWBY nature scene, but it’s the final piece of the pond completed at last! I’m so happy for this little success!
are you okay with me using that chunk of your rwby painting with the cherry blossoms as my header? i would credit you in my bio, naturally. (so sorry if you've already answered this before) (also it's totally fine if you say no)
Thank you so much for your question! I'm assuming you're referring to this very happy chunk of blossoms here:
A lot of people enjoy these blossoms very much, and it has me incredibly overjoyed to hear it's still receiving so much love. It's actually a small section of an Okami fanart, rather than a RWBY one. Believe it or not, there is indeed a RWBY nature scene I'm working on now that also has spring blossoms in it as well. It's Penny's scene here:
But the short answer to your question is, yes. As these two blossom paintings are either a small section of a full artwork (Okami blossoms) or a wip section of one (Penny's blossoms), you may use them as your tumblr header as long as you provide clear credit and a link back to me in your bio. The link may either lead to my main tumblr blog or to the original art post itself.
Thank you so much for taking the time to ask me and for so warmly respecting the outcome of my decision. I'm consistently in awe of how many wonderful people like you continue to show such beautiful politeness and immeasurable kindness and understanding to me as an artist. It's so heartwarming to receive 'Ask Me' questions like these, and I'm always touched by each person's great sense of respect and gratitude. Such selfless acts and warm understanding not only encourage me to continue creating art, but to also share my artistic journey as I try new things and paint new scenes.
Do you take commissions? Also, do you sell your posted art?
Sadly, no, I don't take commissions. With the considerable amount of time and care I put into creating fully detailed nature scenes, they're not really feasible to actively produce. A lot of the art you see here on my blog is actually small sections of larger scenes, so I know it can be a little misleading sometimes as to the kind of finished art pieces I create. The full scenes are quite big and quite detailed!
You might see this drawing here as a full painting in itself, and it very well could be:
But it's actually a small section of this full nature scene painting here:
RWBY nature scenes will be the same as well! So far I've only posted little snippets and sections of them as I work, as I love to share as I go. But once they're complete, they're going to be quite the sprawling landscapes just like you see above. So because of the nature of my nature scenes (a very small pun intended), any one-of-a-kind commissions would end up falling within a fair industry price range for what I'm creating. So generally speaking, I don't offer them.
However!
I am currently looking into what it would take to open an art shop! 💖 This means all my nature scenes big and small would be available to everyone as art prints and postcards. There's still a lot for me to research from choosing a good printing company, finding eco-friendly packaging and supplies, setting up a shop website, and all the little details that fall in between. Finishing RWBY nature scenes and learning watercolors are my main goals this year, so an art shop probably won't come to fruition until next at the earliest. But life's always full of surprises, and you never know what's just around the corner. Ultimately though, I would love to have a seasonal art shop that offers beautiful high quality prints to everyone!
I'm really happy to receive another "Ask Me" question like this that inquires about where to buy my art. It lets me know that you really do in fact want to have brilliant shining nature art prints to hold in your hands and post on your walls. I love having that too, haha! So the more I see this question pop up, the more time and effort I suddenly want to put into making this daydreaming idea into a reality.
I discovered your drawings not too long ago. There are no words to describe your drawings, they are so beautiful! I am only a small designer, and seeing your drawings I had inspirations and also ideas to apply my colors. I thank you ! I hope to succeed in honoring these ideas. From now on I will diligently follow your account. I give you all my blessings so that you can continue to do this art that you love and (which in my opinion) is a resplendent mastery!
Aaaww, that's so incredibly sweet of you to say! Thank you so much for your beautiful words of kindness and gratitude. I'm always over the moon with happiness to hear that my art inspires others in unbelievably positive ways. Especially colors! It's a song to my heart, and it encourages me right back to keep sharing my nature art with everyone. I truly do love painting and drawing, just as you say! 🥰🌸
Your words and blessings are so sweetly heartfelt and uplifting, but such diligence in following me is not all necessary. I am truly touched by your incredible support though, as it really does make a huge positive difference in my life and enables me to continue pursuing the art I love to make as a way of life. I'm already sitting here blushing and smiling at your wonderful compliment like there's no tomorrow, haha! 🌟💖 But inspiration aside, I'd much rather see you use your amazing dedication and diligence and pour it all into your own wonderful designs and creations. The world needs shining moments of good and inspiration to move forward again, more than ever these days. Art can definitely help inspire that positive forward motion in ways we hardly ever think to put words to, immeasurably and extraordinarily.
I'm glad I inspire you! I know you're already inspiring others with your creations too! We'll all keep inspiring the world in the many little ways we can. Always. 💚🌱🌿
Starting the year off right with a Snow Weiss! ❄️🤍 I’m feeling so super pumped for all these RWBY nature scenes! One by one, they’re growing and blossoming and becoming something more. They’re already artworks I’m so proud of!
Wishing you all a very happy and beautiful new year of art to come! May all your dreams, hopes, wishes, and goals come true and thrive with shining abundance this year! I’m cheering for you! 🌷🌿🖌️
My artistic goals for 2022 -- finish RWBY nature scenes and paint more watercolors! That’s it! Just going to paint my heart out his year and embrace the art I love making so much. I’m already onto painting the actual RWBY characters in their respective scenes right now, so it’s taking me a bit longer to share wip snapshots with you. Drawing people is something I don’t do often enough, but watercolors are going to be key in helping me improve this by leaps and bounds. I’m super excited for all this to happen this year, aaaah!! 💪✨ 🤜✨🤛
Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your beautiful and uplifting support that’s kept me going. I always feel so blessed to see that you’re still just as excited as I am for all my new ideas and art pieces to come to fruition at last! And it makes me feel happier than ever to continue sharing my work with you as I paint. ☺️💖
You’re all so beautiful! I wish each and every one of you the confidence, the courage, and the inspiration to actively shape your own positive reality in your life this year. You can make that happen with blossoming success!
hullo! I hope you're having a good week! I really like your art, and I was wondering how you paint water! If it's Ok, can you tell us how you paint water (especially when it's reflecting something), please?
Thank you so much for the lovely compliment! I hope your week's been wonderful too! 👋🌸 Haha, water is a tough one isn't it? My process for drawing water is ever-evolving, but I'm happy to share some solid insights I've learned along the way:
There are two main ways I approach water reflections in my nature scenes. The first is the more open brushy method you see in the painting below. I simply take one of my textured ink brushes and 'boop' it in my scene with a quick dabbing or stamping motion.
While this approach doesn't create an exact reflection, it's a much more impressionistic one I like to use for large bodies of water or for water that's actively moving. The water in this scene is a river with lazy eddies and shimmering light qualities. So by booping my textured ink brushes here and there, I can easily and quickly capture the feeling of flowing reflective water. Below are the two major ink brushes I used for the autumn tree reflection. They already have a lot of built-in ripply texture to them, right? So a few aptly placed boops underneath the autumn tree not only gives me a nearly instant reflection of the tree's red leaves, but it simultaneously makes it feel like the water itself is gurgling away with slow moving ripples - just like a river should! 💙
The second approach I use for drawing water is the old "draw it once and flip it vertically" tactic, haha. I use this approach when I'm drawing water that's very calm and undisturbed with a near perfect reflection. But even then, I won't flip every single rock and tree in the scene. I'll only flip key elements at the center of attention in the artwork, like this snowy rock you see here:
With the 'draw and flip' method, I always make sure to take little eraser bites out of the reflection itself or add a few streaks of water across it to help the flipped shape blend in with the rest of the scene. Most of the time I will actually use a combination of both approaches to make my nature scenes:
Here you can see the booped ink brush approach being used along the river bank, while the smaller rocks off to the right-hand side use the 'draw and flip' method with some ink brushing atop it to smooth out the effect. By using both methods here, I've created the rough impression of rippling water moving closer to the shoreline and calmer currents that lazily slow down towards the center of the river stream.
SOME OVERALL TIPS:
🏞️ 🌊 Pay attention to what kind of water you're drawing. In a river or a big lake, you'll have a fun interplay of fast and slow moving currents that can be represented with an equally fun interplay of short and long brushstrokes in your art. I always observe the way water works in nature first before I draw (either by looking at photographs or going outside on a walk and studying all the little details I see) and then with those details in mind I find a brush or combination of brushes that'll help capture the texture or feeling of that type of water in my nature scenes.
🏞️ 🌊 When drawing water, I always use a solid or nearly solid brush opacity to capture a very crisp wet feeling (usually somewhere between 75% - 100% opacity). If you're finding your water's looking a bit dull and lackluster, check to see what brush opacity you're using as you paint. It's very natural to want to lower your opacity to softly blend all your colors together for that smooth water effect. I did that too, haha. But over time I found that choosing higher brush opacities while using a wider range of color values works far better for a crisp refreshing water feeling.
🏞️ 🌊 For that crystal clear drinkable mountain spring water look, use streaks of light color values snuggled right next to really dark color values. Don't be afraid to go bold, as the higher the contrast between two colors, the more shimmery your water's going to look. But make sure to balance it all out by using some medium color values in key places. Water that's nothing but really high contrasted values is going to look overly glaring with light. Similarly, if you use colors that are closer in value to one another without much contrast, your water's going to look murkier. Which in itself can be a desired look if you're drawing something like a lotus pond that's rich with mud sediment. So finding a balance is key, and the direction and angle of your sunlight will play a huge role in determining where the intense high contrast sparkles are and where the calmer softer sections will be on your water.
🏞️ 🌊 I will only ever use pure white for the brightest most shimmery highlights on water. It's tempting to use specks of white everywhere for those sparkling highlights, but you'll find that if you use a wider range of color values and a mixture of hot and cool colors throughout your water, it'll look much more vivid and fluid without the need to rely on white so heavily for the effect. It'll look much more natural too!
🏞️ 🌊 One thing I love about painting rivers and lake shorelines is that sometimes you can see both a reflection *and* see all the way down to the bottom of the water at the same time. It's a really cool effect to try and capture if your river or shoreline lends itself to it. You can see that effect in the making here:
🍂🍁⛰️🎨🖌️ There's really no right or wrong brush to achieve an amazing water look as long as you pay attention to how you're using it to capture the texture or feeling of water. That being said, I get the feeling some of you are probably eyeing those ink brushes you saw me using above for making instant rippling water reflections. You're in luck! Those handmade brushes of mine are indeed available on my Patreon if you want to use them in your art.
My Patreon right now is merely donations only so I can focus on watercolors and RWBY nature scenes, but there are a lot of tutorial/brush bundles and painting insights there if you're interested in learning more about how I paint. Be sure to select the tiers with the starter packs and tutorial sets for all the goodies!
I hope this gives you a little more insight into how I paint water. It's a difficult subject to say the least, but painting water can be a lot of fun once you get past the tricky part of understanding how it works. Have fun splashing with colors!
As I practice my watercolors (like this little practice doodle you see here), I’ll be posting them more actively on my Twitter and Instagram accounts rather than here on tumblr. I feel like tumblr doesn’t really lend itself well to casual posts like twitter or Instagram stories do, so if you’re interested in seeing my explorations in watercolors as I create and play and figure out this new medium, feel free to hop on over to my Twitter or Instagram to see what I’m up to. Of course, any watercolor doodles I’m super proud of, polished nature scene wip, or finished art pieces will still be posted on my tumblr as per usual. So you’re more than welcome to hang out here as RWBY nature scene wip and belated watercolor compilations or nature photos around my watercolor station make their way to my blog for you to enjoy.
I’ve been receiving some really sweet messages lately from super supportive people cheering me on for art posts in the most polite and cutest way ever expressed, haha. You're all really lovely, and your enthusiastically positive messages are filled with nothing but wonderful encouragement and much respect towards a busy, busy artist who’s up to her neck in wip all while taking on a new medium. Thank you so much for your understanding, your patience, and your great excitement towards the art I’m creating! My heart is always thrilled by aesthetic themes and the notion of actively exploring new art possibilities. And that sometimes means posts will lag a bit here even though my day’s been filled to the brim with so much new artistic growth.
Again, you’re welcome to chill here as new art posts naturally arrive when they’re well and ready to be posted. But if you’re more of the eager type who likes to see what’s happening as it happens, my Twitter and Instagram stories/highlights are the place for you.
During inktober proper, I tried sketching a couple of Qrowtober prompts among various other inktober themes. And oh my goodness, Qrow is *so* much fun to draw! And the prompts were absolutely brilliant to work with creatively! I had a happy smile on my face the whole time, haha. All together, it actually turned into a little series of art ideas centered around traveling alongside Qrow as he treks through different types of autumn scenery. Which I thought was a really cute scenario to help me jump into a watercolor style that’s uniquely different from my digital nature scenes.
My watercolor skills still aren’t quite where I want them to be just yet, but I’m super excited to try and work towards a casual ‘Travels with Qrow’ watercolor series of paintings based off Qrowtober 2021 prompts. Watercolors are a very yolo medium, so to help myself more accurately visualize the exact colors in each watercolor scene (so I don’t keep messing up sketch after sketch on good watercolor paper, haha), I spent the past week making color palette guides for each theme I wanted to try. It’s definitely helped me pinpoint much better autumn colors for all my autumn scenes, traditional and digital alike!
Though I’m back to RWBY nature scenes now, I’ll be dedicating two to three days a week toward practicing my watercolor doodles as I aim for a style and approach in which I can have a lot of fun turning these vivid ideas in my mind into an adorable little series of fun watercolor art.
