brushes of Billy Showell

Yesterday I received the brushes I ordered with Billy Showell.
Wow! they are lovely. Long hairs and a beautiful fine point. Just the brushes I was looking for and great additions to the brushes I already had.

I am studying hard in working with watercolor, but it takes a lot of time to finish one.
And yesterday I ruined a watercolor painting of an orchid. I made a red smudge and I could not get rid of it. So I decided to paint a background. But I know that I am not good at backgrounds and .......................... yes, I ruined it:-)))))) Ah, well, I learned from it.

So today I started a new one, this is the very first stage.
The grey dark forms are the stems, I covered them with masking fluid.

The other pictures are some of my colourmixing cards I make when I am painting. They are realy useful references while painting.

oilpaint: selfportrait

Last year I made a selfportrait with oilpaint. I do not have much experience with oilpaint. It was a real struggle and of course I am not satisfied about the result That's why I decided first to learn painting with watercolor and than to try painting with oilpaint again.
Painting with watercolor is faster and I can learn much about mixing colors and built up layers of color. I hope that once I have much more experience, working with oilpaint will be a bit easier.
I placed this selfportrait on a shelf in the livingroom and she is (I am) looking at me and acouraged me to keep painting.

watercolor exercise: bud

I just finished another exercise, this time I choose this bud because I wanted to practise long lines. The bud is approx 22cm/9 inches so I could not scribble:-))))

I am using the book of Billy Showell to practise, such a wonderful book. I also bought her DVD.
I can highly recommend her book and DVD's. She uses brushes with long haires and a fine point and it is a joy to see her working.

So to give myself a present I bought 2 brushes she offers at her website. I am waiting for them at the moment. I can hardly wait to work with them. Good brushes are so important but they are so expensive and it is difficult to know which ones to buy. So when I saw Billy working with those brushes I know for sure that they were the ones I wanted to purchase.

tulip watercolor in progress

I am painting a tulip, a great excercise. Not finished yet, I still have to paint the leaves. The flower itself is finished.

little bee

This little bee was posing for a long time, so I could take a lot of photos. These ones were the best.

butterflies Atlanta and Little fox

The butterfly at the top is called "Atlanta".
This is a detail of his head.Funny eyes.

The Dutch name of the butterflyat the bottom is (translated) "Little fox".
The outside is very bland, the inside so beautiful.

Click on the pictures to see even more detail.

butterfly and want

Yesterday I was sitting in my garden and suddenly I heard a loud noise and an insect flew over my shoulder and landed at a branch. I had never seen such an insect. I looked it up on the internet and it is called a "want".

At the moment there are so many butterflies in my garden. Not many different species though. This kind of butterfly is very common and is enjoying the flowers in my garden.

first attempt watercolor flower

This is my first attempt in painting an iris in watercolor. This was a real struggle, I have so much to learn.
But this was a good excercise with all the leaves turning and twisting.

It is not easy to take good pictures, in real the colors are softer.