The Wishling, A Birthday Card In Gouache

whishling painted with gouache — The whishling
A Birthday Card painted with gouache

Hi there, how are you?

First birthday of the year this week, I thought one of Ruth Wilshaw’s tutorials would fit the bill. The title is “The Wishling”, seems right for a birthday.

It took quite a while to paint this one; not because it’s harder than the others but because I didn’t want to muck it up so I left each layer to dry completely before starting the next.

The tutorial called for turquoise gouache but I don’t have any so used watercolour instead. To be fair the turquoise is pretty opaque any way so I don’t think it was too bad a substitution.

Very happy with the greens in this one. I’ve been using a cheap gouache set and the yellow ran out so I bought a winsor & newton tube to replace it. It has much more pigment (as you would expect by the price) and as I learned from my tests last week ”take a tiny bit of blue to the yellow” this way the yellow is not overpowered by the blue.

Very good advice so now I need to remember and follow it,

I’ll replace other colours in the set with better quality paint as I use the cheap paints up.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by.

Till next time, have fun x A Birthday Card

Gouache Poppies & Mixing Greens

gouache wild poppies — Gouache wild poppies & dasies

Hi there, how are you?

Last week I started a class by Ruth Wilshaw drawing wild flowers with gouache. I finished the class this week painting poppies and daisies.

I was still having trouble mixing greens so decided to make some swatches to see what colour green I could make. Of course I could use ready made greens straight from the tube but they don’t look very realistic.

These charts aren’t very tidy but they are OK as a quick reference.

The lemon yellow made the cleanest greens, some of them quite nice.

Permanent yellow deep made interesting greens but care needed to be taken they didn’t mute down too much into browns.

The yellow ochre (which did not scan as yellow at all) gave some very muddy colours, even greys in some cases.

gouache mixing greens — gouache – mixing greens

Ultramarine does not play well for green although with lemon yellow there were a couple of decent colours but not enough to use it regularly.

As far as the poppies are concerned I like the top two thirds the rest needs improvement; more practice needed.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by.

Till next time, have fun x

Learning To Paint With Gouache

gouache small pink wild flowers — Small pink wild flowers painted with gouache

Hi there and welcome to 2026.

There have been no resolutions made, not that I ever manage to keep them. Just gently sliding into the new year.

At the end of December I bought a year of lessons from Ruth Wilshaw.

She paints with gouache, usually small landscapes, dome realistic and some fantasy with a few florals for good measure.

I’ve had gouache for some time but always have trouble with muddy colours and thought following some tutorials would help.

The sketchbook I am using is 5inches made by Seawhite, filled with 160gsm cartridge paper.

I chose the wild flower class first, interesting and not too hard.

First I painted a bunch of backgrounds and left them to dry, then painted the flowers on top. The beauty of gouache is you can put light colour over dark. the drawback is the colour underneath sometimes lifts as the gouache is always reactivated with water.

gouache backgrounds — Gouache backgrounds

As usual I found the white flowers difficult because white always muddies everything up. I decided to paint them in two goes as the first pass pulled the colour up from below.

gouache wild roses — Wild roses painted with gouache

The greens could also use some practice another colour I have issues with.

gouache big pink wild flowers — Big pink wild flowers painted with gouache

Hopefully as I go through the classes it will all become easier.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by.

Till next time, have fun x

Happy New Year, 2026

Happy new year everyone.

A new year brings hope and promise, lets hope the coming year treats us all kindly and brings us everything we need.

I wish you all health and happiness for the coming year.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. For the likes, kind comments and support.

Till next time, have fun x

A Few Christmas Cards

christmas cards 2025 — Christmas cards 2025

Hi there, how are you?

Not too many weeks to go now before Christmas so time to make a few cards.

This year I’m going with blue and snowflakes.

The snowflakes were heat embossed with white embossing powder then lots of different colour blue and sparkly watercolours splashed around.

I did sprinkle some salt over the top hoping for a nice frosty look but I think either the paper was too wet for it to work or the sizing in watercolour paper the has deteriorated as the paint is patchy in places.

I’ve managed to salvage enough for the cards, thankfully and because of the design it sort of works.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by.

Till next time, have fun x

Poppies In Winter

watercolour of a winter poppies — winter poppies painted with watercolour.

Hi there, how are you?

This week I ventured out into the garden, it’s very chilly now and the mornings are getting frosty; winter is here.

There are lots of naked trees and plants. The fuchsia flowers dropped in a sudden shiver and over in the corner of the garden are some tiny poppies. Not the seed pods but actual flowering poppies.

winter poppies drawn with graphite pencil.

I had re-potted house leeks into a larger pot in the summer, they don’t need looking after so they were just growing happily and occasionally I’d pull out a small weed or two.

Around about September some very tiny straggly poppy plants pushed their way through, they won’t survive re-potting so I left the there thinking the cold and frost would probably kill them.

Usually they grow to about two feet tall but these are roughly six inches high partly because they are in a small pot and also because the days are colder and shorter. Either way it’s lovely that they are the last bit of colour in the garden.

Nature always surprises me with its beauty.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by.

Till next time, have fun x

Panda’s

Hi there, how are you?

It was the illustrious other half’s birthday this week so we all decided to make him a card. We didn’t have much of an idea what to do till one youngling said “I’m doing a panda”, it was as good an idea as any other so we thought pandas would be the theme this year.

Whilst in the panda drawing mood I painted a few tiny panda studies, these are roughly 2×3 inches in size drawn from various internet photos.

To paint the bamboo you have to get the water to pain ratio right or it doesn’t work so I did quite a few practices on scraps of paper, this one was the one I liked best; I’ll keep this one and stick it into my sketchbook for future reference.

practice-bamboo — some practice bamboo on scrap paper.

It was interesting to see our different ways of interpreting our pandas, chubby ones, hungry ones and the one above which was the card I made. All very different in styles.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by.

Till next time, have fun x

Inktober2025 25-31

inktober 24 inferno — Inktober 24 inferno

Hi there, how are you?

Inktober is at an end for another year

The goal this year was to follow the prompts, something I don’t usually do. Normally I’d just do my own thing.

I gave myself the chance to opt out if I couldn’t think of anything but surprisingly I managed drawings for all 31 prompts.

25 inferno – a lupin by the name of towering inferno. They’re fiery orange red in colour, very pretty.

26 puzzling – a blue footed booby feeling very puzzled indeed

27 onion – onions have really pretty flowers

28 skeletal – if you leave poppy pods in the garden they slowly degrade and disintegrate till all that’s left is the skeleton.

29 lesson – birds learn their songs by listening to each other and adding the new song to their old one.

30 vacant – empty shell, vacated by it’s last owner.

31 award – awarding myself a trophy full of flowers for completing the challenge.

Most were drawn on cereal packets in the sketchbook I’d made a few weeks ago. The grey card worked well with ink and the back was painted with black acrylic.

Eventually though I ran out of pages so other cereal packets were needed. These were more of a beige colour and they weren’t quite as easy to draw on.

Some of the prompts were difficult to say the least and I wanted the drawings to resonate with me and the style I work in. For that reason some of the links to certain prompts were less literal and even a little tenuous.

Overall I’m very happy with the drawings I’ve done and it’s always nice to see the interesting ways other artists interpret prompts.

To catch up on previous weeks

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by.

Till next time, have fun x