My One Week Challenge: Creating Watercolour Illustrations Everyday
Why give myself this creating watercolour illustrations challenge? During the next few months my life will change quite substantially. There will be quite a lot of uncertainty as we immigrate back to England, permanently. I, my husband and sons will be moving back to England after spending 12 years living in Saudi Arabia. Even though my sons where born in England, we moved abroad to Saudi while they were still very young.
I have launched my wedding invitation & design business whilst in Saudi Arabia. It has as times felt as though I have been on a desert island but at the same time I really should have cherished this time that I had all to myself. It was such a great time of self discovery. I only wish if I could go back in time that I could tell myself trust more in that quiet time and punish myself less for the lack of progress.
None of my other expat (British & American) friends work, let alone have fledgling business that they are working on. However, it truly has been wonderful and I am not looking forward to going back to cold little England with tiny houses!
Yet I have grown up in England and do love so much of it. It’s just all of the uncertainty that comes with moving countries, my children’s schools, finding new jobs and a new home.
What has it been like living in Saudi?
One day, I will have to write an entire blog just on this subject! It’s a pretty big one!
Large, spacious houses are the norm in Riyadh and I have become far too accustomed to living in a large villa. Happily, I have been so incredibly fortunate to have a huge room all to myself to support my creativity. It’s my makeshift art studio. I had hoped to decorate it into a chic art studio/ office, but instead I’ve just reinvested in my business instead of decoration!
Being able to spread all of my watercolour art materials, papers, boxes, you name it all over the room is a joy to me. It stems from my university days. In Nottingham Trent University, on my degree, we had the most enormous tables to spread our work out all over. Now without space, I feel cramped and uninspired. Not the best mindset I suppose!
Following on, why go for this creating watercolour illustrations challenge?
Well, as a comfort to myself during this time, I’m giving myself this challenge.
To be honest, I should be going for a challenge of about 6 month at least, or something more courageous and significant. Yet I’m not sure if I would be able to keep it up and manage to create watercolour illustrations over the coming months. At times I won’t even be able to be near a computer or a scanner to be able to upload any artwork.
Initially I had hoped to stick one month watercolour challenge.
However, I think that may be too much to handle alongside my client work (although it would be great if I could push myself to that). So I’m going to aim for one week of creating watercolour illustrations, which should be enough for me for now. I hope it will be a form of solace, where I can get lost in the art of watercolour and let my mind rest from all the worry of such a big move.
Here it goes. I hope you keep up with me and I hope I can manage to commit to this everyday!
The floral watercolour illustrations will all be more of an abstract nature. I will try to investigate the same colours and floral themes, so I can see how far I can stretch one theme, before I move onto another colour story.
Side note:
I do find it very very challenging to put work out there that is less than perfect. But perfect work eats up too much time to create!!! Anxiously, I know that every piece that I create will be far from what I am comfortable with. That’s OK. They are not all supposed to be my best pieces of artwork. It’s more for play. For development. For solace.
“Art enable us to find ourselves and to lose ourselves at the same time. ” Thomas Merton.
Enjoy the abstract watercolour floral gallery
Sunday June 24th 2019 // Day 1:
This is the only watercolour floral painting where I used some ferns and warmer yellows and blush tones for a change. I definitely would love to return to this colour palette and develop this further after playing with lilacs and pinks for a few paintings.
Monday June 25th 2019 // Day 2:
Here I am playing around only with lilacs and warm, dusty pinks.
Tuesday June 26th 2019 // Day 3:
This time for my creating watercolour illustrations challenge, I focused in on only using one colour. Having a tendency to overcrowd and let my passion flow whilst painting my watercolour floral illustrations often leads to my work being a little over crowded. I wanted something a little fresher. Lighter. Clearer. I believe I have achieved that. This may even end up being my favourite piece!
Wednesday June 27th 2019 // Day 4:
Today I brought in more lilac colours and less blush colours. Trying to play more with looser lilac flowers and adding a few darker green leaves.
Thursday June 28th 2019 // Day 5:
Not too keen on this watercolour illustration, but I promised myself that I would keep this going and not hold back from sharing the less than perfect pieces. I am sorely tempted to delete this one!
Friday June 28th 2019 // Day 6:
Creating watercolour illustrations isn’t always clear sailing! This time, I attempted more blush coloured flowers as the central theme, to fill the entire centre. It needed a spark of interest so I added it a few darker coloured plum / burgundy flowers and a few fern leaves around the edges. I feel as though I don’t have enough inspiration to keep going in this direction, so I might attempt a detailed piece to shake things up a bit.
Here are some other blogposts that might interest you:
Floral & Fauna – Watercolour Illustration
Bespoke Watercolour Wedding Invitations
My Abstract Floral Illustrations
