Fellow learners – Ana's Learning Lab

This blog was started from my desire to learn new things, experiment and discover, and inspire others to the same along the way. I have few people reading it regularly, but even so, I am so happy when some posts trigger small reactions among the people I know. Some go with “wow, cool project”, to “I´d like to try that myself one day!”. My sister went all the way and decided she would like to be a guest-blogger on my blog. I guess curiosity runs in the family 🙂 Enjoy and feel inspired!

“Hi people following my sisters blog, I am Alexandra (short Ale) and I would like to encourage you to try 2 of my fav relaxing through drawing techniques: mandala and zentangle. For some, the terms will not be new, but for those of you who never heard them, here is a short explanation (as I am not google.com, I’ll keep it short :)).

Mandalas originate in buddhism and hinduism and were used as representations of the universe . They typically started with a circle as main form. Inside the circle, different drawings were symmetrically evolving from a single middle-point.

Zentangles are repetitive patterns/lines/circles etc. that can be used to fill in different forms and drawings. A little like what we were doing in school whenever listening to a boring class, remember? You just have to let go your imagination.

Below are some of my drawings – you simply need a paper and some pens to get them done. Have fun!”

Zentangle

Mandala

Zentangle

🙂 Thank you, little sis!

Yours truly,

Ana

Hi everyone! I’m Eileen, a Watercolor Artist, living on Long Island. Just 45 minutes from New York City. Today I am a guest blogger here, but normally I blog about my creative projects at www.mycreativeresolution.com and post almost daily on Instagram (www.instagram.com/mycreativeresolution).

I love playing around with watercolor because there are no mistakes. Just happy accidents, which lead to a beautiful piece! I’ve learned over the years to paint loose and let the watercolor create it’s magic, as opposed to trying to control it too much.

If you are new to watercolor – play with it! It is so much fun!

Painting with watercolor is all about how wet your brush and your paper are.

Try this on a scrap piece of paper:

Dry on Dry – Dip your brush in water, soak up some paint, blot your brush once on a paper towel and then paint a line on a dry piece of paper
Wet on Dry – Repeat the above step, except don’t blot your brush on the paper towel
Dry on Wet – Wet a section of your paper. Dip your brush in water, soak up some paint, blot your brush once on a paper towel, and then paint a line on the wet section of your paper
Wet on Wet – Wet another part of your paper. Dip your brush in water, soak up some paint, dip it again in the water quickly, and then paint a line through the wet area of the paper.

Compare the different lines you created. These four examples show how to create different effects with watercolor.

When I paint, I often start out very wet and let the colors mix and bleed into each other on the page. Then I let the paper dry, and add more paint (with less water), so it’s more controlled. To add finer detail, my brush and paper are much drier.

Here is a project I recently worked on:

I tape my paper to a sturdy board (with painter’s tape). This is to keep the paper from buckling when it’s wet.
To start, I wet the whole paper.
Then with a very wet brush I added sections of color. I wanted them to bleed into each other.
As the paper dried, I added more color with a less wet brush.
When it was completely dry, I added details with an ink pen.