Midnight Drive – Watercolor

It’s been a while since I shared a watercolor painting so I thought I would share three! This first one is a painting I did to start off Inktober/Artober. I haven’t really continued with doing that daily but have taken inspiration from the different prompts and I think that’s the most important thing, to love what you’re doing and to continue to be inspired. Then I have a painting I did of treetop mountains, and lastly a bookmark of a thistle-like plant.

This painting that I’ve called Midnight Drive was for the prompt of ‘moon’ and was my best attempt at recreating a view out the car window when driving the back roads late at night. I tried seeing if I could create a kind of halo from the moon by using water in my brush to pick the paint back up after I had painted out the sky. I think it worked ok, but I would love to look into other methods that might recreate it better. I still feel like there is too harsh of a transition between the sky and moon. Otherwise I love the colors that came out in this painting!

A watercolor painting of light blue sky and soft green hills filled with pine trees.

This painting I am calling Daylight Forest. I actually started this painting in the hopes of drawing trees in fog but it wasn’t coming out quite the way I expected so I changed directions in the middle of the painting. I’m still debating whether I like the brown trunk line running through the trees or not. It definitely gives them a different look and it doesn’t quite feel like it goes with the rest of the painting. I’m glad I gave it a try so I could see how I like it overall!

A bookmark with a watercolor painting of a purple thistle plant.

This bookmark was a fun experiment in what happens when you make your paper a little too wet! I didn’t intend to start with such wet paper but I had just gotten a new brush for adding that first wet wash and it added quite a bit more water than I realized. I love the way the color spiders out but it does remove any crispness from the lines and creates a kind of fizzy pixelated look. This worked well for the purple thistle-like flowers but made a mess when I attempted to create a leaf. I tried to “fix it” by adding more thistle flowers but I created a kind of biological monster. It was a good learning experience and I still think the final product has a kind of whimsical nature to it.

I hope you enjoyed these paintings! Maybe it will inspire you to create something today. Let me know in the comments below if you make something. Wishing you creativity and joy.