Hello! and "Happy New Year"!
I've been wanting to write this post since the beginning of the year, but I wanted to take care of some health challenges that I was hit with back in November.
Back in November I had my annual Mammogram and got a call from my doctor telling me I needed to go in for a biopsy because an initial test suggest an area of tissue on both breasts wasn't normal. So I had to see an oncologist first and then have the biopsy done. Needless-to-say, this all happened a week before Thanksgiving. So scheduling an appointment took some time. It wasn't until a few days after Xmas I got my test results. Thank God everything came back negative. But from all the stress of waiting I got sick. I'm finally starting to feel better.
Over the holidays I started to explore Holbein watercolors and Holbein Gouache. I've used Holbein watercolors in the past, mostly just Opera. After taking a long look at some of the colors I decided to buy a few tubes that I thought would be great colors for flowers. I was happy with the results and decided to buy a few more tubes of watercolor, along with gouache in the same colors. It was during this buying spree I noticed that Holbein sells a Palm box watercolor set, but with a price tag of $500.00, I decided I didn't want to spend that kind of money. It was by chance I was looking for something on E-bay that I came across the same set brand new for only $175.00. While you know I had to have it. It came all the way from Japan. I spent an enjoyable afternoon playing with my new watercolor set.
The small watercolor above the Holbein watercolors is something
I created by cleaning my brush on the watercolor paper each time I changed color. I think due to the lighting, the watercolors appear dull, but that was probably due to the lighting at the time of taking the photo. I'm so use to using a smaller watercolor set, so it will be interesting to see how many colors I actually use. If I find I'm not using all the colors I might take those out and put in some Holbein gouache.
New Projects
In my studio I do have a large set of Holbein gouache. On January 1, I started to do a page a day only painting in gouache. I happened to discover http://www.augustwren.blogspot.com/ Jennifer Orkin Lewis just a few days ago who was doing exactly that. One 30 minute painting a day in gouache. So that's what I plan to do for a whole year.
Besides doing the painting a day, I will continue to explore different ways to use watercolors.
I also plan to re-open my Etsy shop selling prints of my watercolors and also join Society6 to sell my artwork as art prints and more. I like the fact that they produce and ship the products.
This year I'm also taking a watercolor workshop with Jean Haines http://www.watercolourswithlife.blogspot.com/ in April @ Daniel Smith in Seattle, Washington. I probably will take other workshops and do some online classes.
So I'm hoping this year will be good and productive.
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