I’m always looking at different types of artwork online and of course when I see something I like I always want to try it…but as we all learned from my experience painting rocks, a lot of art is harder than it looks. It wasn’t any different with watercolor pens…

I’ll start out with the one I think turned out the best. This is something Mark told me in April, no more than two weeks before he passed away. I made it into a drawing in June, then matted and framed it, so I can see it every day. Also set it as the lock screen for my phone.

Once I had done the first one, I thought I would try the same thing but in a different style. Below was my second attempt at a watercolor drawing.

After having what I thought was a fair amount of success with my first two tries, I discovered that I really didn’t know what I was doing. I started practicing with watercolor brush pens  and watercolor pencils. I had the coolest water brush/pen to apply the water, and it worked great. It went missing after a certain cat was seen chewing on it…then miraculously I found it several days later on the coffee table under some papers…no worse for the wear…as far as I know…I haven’t had the opportunity to use it since then.

Practice, Practice…

These are some practice designs, while I was trying to figure out how the brush pens and watercolor pencils work. Also trying to see which pens would be best to outline the designs with. They have to be waterproof so they won’t smear when you add the water.

Above you see one of Mark’s favorite sayings. I thought I would try it as a watercolor (left)…but didn’t care for the way the colors came out. So in the end I decided to go back to my old familiar Sakura Moonlight gel pens (right), which I think is really more my “style”…

Not ready to give up,  I tried to do a watercolor based on a scripture, Philippians 4:8. Since my water brush pen was missing at the time, I used a small paintbrush to apply the water on this. Didn’t really mean for it to have the tie-dyed look…also found out that if you mix purple and green (which I did not do on purpose) it makes a kind of brown. You can see that around the edges. Will have to remember that for future reference.

So you can see that watercolors may not exactly be my “thing”… but I’m going to give it some more tries before I decide for sure. Maybe it’s just time for a Starbucks break : )