Spring Watercolor - Cherry Blossoms

Yay, my first post on this platform with my long time website! 😄 I hope this is the start of many more posts. To begin, I discovered watercolor three years ago and really enjoy it! After cosplaying for about 15 years, making costumes, this feels like a walk in the park. It's actually pretty relaxing, I enjoy the process and the end result is satisfying. You do not need many materials to watercolor, also making it easy to approach and set up for a quick activity.

I was trying to think of something that wouldn't be too difficult, which for me, usually means I fall for something difficult. I already went outside and snapped some pictures of the cherry blossom tree in our yard, as the blossoms don't last long. So this became my inspiration for a spring watercolor!

I am still very much a newb to watercolor and I often watch tutorials online for help. I started with a base for each flower and will often practice on a scape piece of paper, on the side first to get a feel for how much color is being put down and then I can adjust it. If you are going to attempt something like this my biggest tip is less is more. I learned quickly that these looked much better when I used less color. I would add smaller petals on top of my base to get the multi-petal look of these flowers, working inward. That was the hard part. Watercolor is often a "trust the process" process. 😉 It doesn't always look right as you go, but can look as you want in the end. It's like spending all day making egg salad and then you don't want any, because you are tired of staring at eggs all day! 🙃

You go back and look and you're like, "Wow, that looks pretty alright!"

I knew I wanted to add in some leave, but very much winged it and started making random leaves all over. Then I decided to create some green space here and there. Then I finally decided to outline the leaves and I'm happy with the result. I left the flowers "naked" as to keep their soft and delicate appearance.

The paper you see pictured is actually a watercolor post card. That and the paint I used was from https://www.adreamoradayart.com/ . She is a huge inspiration to me starting watercolor and she has tons of very approachable watercolor shorts and videos online. Please check her out! I started watercolor because of going to a paint and sip hosted by https://www.instagram.com/raincrow_studio. I thank these super talented ladies for introducing me to this lovely hobby and making it approachable enough to try!

See you next time!