Growing Flowers Indoors, Capturing them in Ink and Watercolor

This red daisy was left to me when my Mother passed away last summer and it has continued to bloom at regular intervals ever since then.

It spent the summer out in the garden with some violets and lily of the valley in a big, old galvanized watering can by the tea table.

It's spent the fall and winter here in the house with me.

This time as it blooms I started with a drawing in markers, and followed with watercolors.

Next, I tried drawing on top of the watercolors.

With a little bit of effort and a few supplies you can enjoy parts of your garden all year around.

Wednesday

It's day 2 working with this flower. I'll be using watercolor and gouache today, maybe a bit of pen and ink along the way.

I set up in my mini studio(just a long, wide shelf I use as a workbench) in front of the window today. It's my favorite place to work and has the best lighting in the house.

Here's the inside of the card sitting next to the flower. It's the way I decide how well I'm doing with the drawing or painting.

It's not an exact likeness but i think I've got the main look and feel of it.

Here you're seeing the envelope compared to the flower.

And here's the envelope against the inside of the card.

After that I couldn't resist doing a bit of outlining on the envelope to sharpen the image.

 Next you're seeing the finished envelope along with the front of the card. I concentrated this time on learning to get the contours on the leaves which as you can see still more or less eludes me.

You can see how nice the deckle edge from the inside of the card frames the front of the card.

Here you catch me in the process of outlining and get a chance to compare the outlined areas with the rest of the image.

Last but not least, here's a photo of the finished and outlined card and envelope set.

I'm saving this set for a special occasion.

Feb. 5, 2020

Here's an envelope and inside of the card. the lower edge of the card will stick out with a deckle edge behind the front of the card and has the effect of framing it.

I'm taking a different approach with the front and trying to create a design that would work well for fabric as well.

The major roadblock to this is that the leaves are an unusual shape and I haven't figured out how to paint them yet.

That's O.K. practice is a good thing and I'll just keep doing it until I can come up with the right look and feel for them.

Outlining them seemed to help and gave me a chance to take a closer look at the leaves.

Here you see the envelope and the front of the card together.