Watercolor portrait art journal project

I'm only getting started with these watercolor portra A6 art journal. I love the fluidity of the water running to the paper. It makes the think of a light summer breeze on a sunny beach. I'm not at home, but unfortunately not on a beach, and not being in my studio is the reason why I'm using watercolor: you need very little to start painting with watercolor, just the watercolor palette, a medium brush and a journal is all you need. Oh, and of course, a glass with water! 

Start by ading color to the sketch. This time I did the sketch before hand, and to be honest, I wasn't going to add color to it. But yesterday I thought it would be nice to try again my Car an d'ache watersoluble crayons. I only have 10 colors with me, but among them you can find the skin colors. 

Continue adding color until you cover the whole face, now it's time to add water....

Because this is a sketching journal, the paper is going to bend when adding water, but if you use just enough to activate the color, then you'll have no problem with it.

Below you can watch a video with {almost} all the process - but bve careful, I filmed using my smart phone, and having a camera in one hand while painting with the other aint easy at all! 

Here is the YouTube video:

Whimsical girl with hazelnut eyes art journal page

I have to tell you I've been waiting for some time to return to soft pastels. But something wasn't quite right or I wasn't in the mood to try them again...until today when I grabbed my soft pastel Koh-i-Noor brown set of 12 soft pastels and some other nice bought in open stock and started to draw a face.

At first she was meant to be an watercolor sketch I started a week ago and didn't quite finished it. But since I wanted to play with soft pastels, I thought why not do transform this page into a gorgeous soft pastels whimsical page?

And I think the result came out pretty surprising, considering the fact that I started with a bare sketch and ended with this page!

And this time I wanted a hazelnut brown eyes girl in my journal, a different face from what I usually draw - fantastic girls with blue, green or greeny-blue eyes. I thought that if my eyes are hazel brown, why not pick this color, too?

And to make things even more interesting, I have captured her on camera! Here you can see the video on YouTube:

        Hope you like it, and if you do, please LIKE IT and SUBSCRIBE! Thank you!

See you soon,

Cristina

Watercolor matching watermelon

Today I had my first slice of watermelon this year. It was even more delicious than I've expected! And then I remembered that I once saw some amazing art journals with watercolor illustrations of watermelon slices, and I thought, why not give it a try?

I took my Canson A5 art journal and started to sketch two slices of watermelon. I didn't work after a model, because the slice I had in front on my eyes on the table was too thin and ...didn't look that well as I wanted. The slice you see in the photo here was cut after I actually sketched the slices, just to take the photo. 

And after I sketched very lightly with a pencil the slices, I went to my favorite part: adding watercolor to it!  This is how it turned after only 10 minutes! I think anyone can draw and paint like this with a little bit of exercise. 

So what do you think? Next time when you have a slice of watermelon, why not beautifully "match" it with watercolor in your art journal?

Till next time,

Much love xx

Cristina

Art journaling redheaded girl

Hello dear creative soul!

Earlier today I've managed to upload and publish a video on YouTube with my latest art journal creation! This time it's a semi-profile gorgeous redheaded girl that turned out so precious.

I have worked a lot on the video for this page, I guess I had 6 or 7 videos to merge and create one final file. But the result is stunning! I am very proud of it, although I haven't managed to add sound until now, the image and annotations help you follow the whole process from the start to the end of it.

I am working in my handmade art journal, just the same as I did here, made out of an old calendar paper, the one that you usually throw away at the end of the year. I had my eyes on this one, as it has thicker paper and as I thought, it proved to make a great art journal. I just have to add gesso and there we go! 

However, because one side of the paper is glossy and the other one is not that much, when you paint on the glossy side you should be careful to add an extra layer of gesso, as the colors tend to peel off the page. unlike the page linked above, this time I'e worked on the glossy side of the paper and at some point I have peeled out some color when I pressed too hard on her eyes and hair. But as you probably know, that is not a problem and the situation can be fixed with some acrylic paint. 

Now let's see the video! It speaks more than I can write about it in here. And I'm sure you're going to love it! Please LIKE IT and subscribe to my channel to follow my artful adventure!

Till next time,
Cristina xx