Learn to Make Geometric Color Wheels with Watercolor Paint

My new watercolor tutorial on color wheels gives an advanced beginner’s lesson on how to paint artistic color wheels in a full rainbow of colors. 

Learn how to paint extraordinary color wheels using just 2, 3, 4 or 5 pigments. The tutorial include 4 projects, explained over 29 pages, including 77 illustrations and full color photographs of 7 paintings that are all explained in the text. This tutorial includes templates for 4 different projects for you to trace or copy.

Start with detailed step-by-step instructions for a painting that uses just two pigments. From there you will learn to mix three, four, and even five pigments to create increasingly complex compositions. There is lengthy discussion about choosing specific pigments for each of the four projects so you can do the projects more than once and get different effects depending upon the colors you start with. If you love colors, you'll love this tutorial on painting color wheels and making the projects.

Tools & Materials: watercolor paint, watercolor paper, palette with wells for mixing colors, pencil, kneaded rubber eraser, brushes: round size 3 and 6 (or similar), cup(s) of water, water dropper, paper or cloth towel, hair dryer, and a way to transfer the templates (discussed in the text).

Don’t just make swatch charts. Make art.

Color Wheels in Watercolor Paint

My favorite art to make lately has been painting color wheels with watercolor paint.  This probably my favorite one so far. It is a color study of five pigments.

Sometimes I include color wheels into larger compositions.

Sometimes I paint little color wheels to test out colors or an idea for future reference. I made this color wheel to test out a very red heavy color wheel.  It uses both black and red ink. 

 

I used that color wheel to paint this piece.

I'm making myself a little book of color swatches, including a few color wheel, such as this one.  

I used that one to help me paint this piece.

Some of my color wheels use a combination of traditional watercolor paint and mica paint, which looks metallic and flashes in the light. See the rainbow flash?

This color uses two reds, two yellows, and two blues, mixed in pairs.

Same with this one. Plus a cat.

This color wheel also uses two yellows, two reds, and two blue, plus I used colored pencil on top to add the shading.

Thanks for looking at my color wheels. If you would like to purchase one of my original paintings, with or without color wheels, have a look in my Etsy shop, gwenbeads, under the section on 2D art. 

 

Doodle No. 35 Rooftop Conversation

Remember Cat Planet? This is different planet that also has cats. Sure, you can only see one cat here, but there are more cats on the dark side of the planet. The scale in the right should give you a sense of how big everything is. 

I did something different with the colors on this one. I had a cognitive shift in how layering colors works. I layered colors on the opposite sides of the color wheel, and I’m telling you, it was pretty dicey there for a while because when you mix pink and green, you get brown. Half way through the coloring, I thought it was almost certainly past the point of no return, a total color failure,  At that moment, I took my Kepler dog for a walk to get away from it for a while. When I returned to this drawing, I decided it was salvageable. In the end, I got it right where I hoped it would be when I decided that mixing pink and green was a good idea. 

5” square. 

Drawn with archival Prismacolor black ink, Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils, Finetec and other mica watercolor paint on Aquarelle Arches hot-pressed 100% cotton 140 lb paper. 

Sold

Doodle No. 28 Moth Fractal

3.5” by 5.5”

Moths and a few copies of my dog, Kepler, inhabit a #fractal. The lizards and other doodles along the sides and top are very much in the style of Marty Kenney. 

The last several pieces I’ve done have a lot of coloring, a lot of pigment. This time I tried to use light colors with a lot of white, in part, to see if it would take less time to color, and it did! I’m sure I’ll go back to my saturated colors though. I love color, but this pink is nice for a change.

Drawn with archival #Prismacolor black ink and Faber-Castell #Polychromos pencils on #Stonehenge 250 GSM 100% cotton paper. 

Original available: https://www.etsy.com/listing/717151343/

Pentacluster Beaded Bead in Live Coral

I always enjoy playing with Pantone’s color combinations. Here is their 2019 Color of the Year, Live Coral, featured in the colors combo called Coral Woman by hep svadja. It’s not exact, but just my interpretation.

Find this Pentacluster Beaded Bead.
Learn to make your own Cluster Beads.

Cellini Flower made with peyote stitch

Here is the newest piece off of my beading needles, a Cellini Flower made with several different metallic seed beads including the new Czech etched ones that shimmer and twinkle in the light. If you haven't tried the new etched beads, I really recommend them.  I have them in a few colors, and I'm totally in love.

Find this flower here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/552902817/
Find the tutorial here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/255173329/

Inspired by Opals - Beaded Textile Bangle Bracelet No. 57 Felted Wool Silk

I love opals, and I adore artwork that looks like opals, art that is almost white but has subtle colors, to make it not just white. Yesterday, I was pouring over some white-ish polymer clay art by Richelle of Shipwreck Dandy.  (Photos used with permission.)
 

Aren't they pretty? Drooling over these babies, I was inspired to make something like that, art that appears to have an inner glow, but I don't have any polymer clay. I do have wool and silk, however, in a nice array of colors. So, I made this bangle bracelet.

Silk and some sparkle fiber give it a nice luminosity. You can't tell from the photos, but it shimmers. Felt is a perfect base for some bead embroidery. So I added some real opals beads and seed beads in one spot.

There are also some Swarovski crystals and more seed beads.

I'm actually quite tickled that the finished piece met my vision. 

These pieces are for sale.  Click on the photos to go to the listings.  Thanks for looking!

I can't stop beading Ginkgo Leaf Earrings

Fifteen pairs of Ginkgo Leaves later, and I'm still making them.  They are such a fun way to play with colors!

I made this pair on the airplane, one earring going out, and one coming home. 

You can find this pair here in my Etsy shop.  I also have a tutorial for the Ginkgo Leaf Earrings for sale if you would like to learn to make your own.

New Tutorial - Ginkgo Leaf Earrings Beaded with a Variation of Cubic Right Angle Weave

With nothing more than seed beads and thread, make these Gingko Leaf Earrings with this original variation on Cubic Right Angle Weave (CRAW). This tutorial is very detailed, written for advanced beginner beaders who have a basic knowledge of beading. Knowledge of CRAW is strongly recommended.

Each leaf is nearly inch wide (23 mm) and 20 mm tall. They’re small, and CRAW creates a lot of negative space. So they’re light, making them comfortable to wear as earrings.

The tutorial is 14 pages, with over 90 full color illustrations and photographs, a COLORFUL FEAST for the eyes. The tutorial gives highly detailed illustrations, photographs, and written instructions to make the earrings. Included are 14 different pairs of Gingko Leaf Earrings in different color schemes. That I have made so many pairs is a testament to how much fun these are to make and wear. Since they use mostly size 11° seed beads with just a few colors of 15° and 8° they are a wonderful way to explore color combinations with just seed beads.

I beaded Ginkgo Leaves from time to time for over three years before I figured out how to write it down on paper. In my blog, I said I'd be "insane" to write a tutorial for this design. This is actually because I didn't really understand how to do it. As I posted more and more pairs of these earrings on the internet, bead weavers wrote to me, asking me to write a tutorial. So, I kept making pairs and eventually, I drew some pictures, and my method became clearer to me. Months passed, and I made more pairs, and drew more drawings. Then I made more pairs and eventually I understood the method, and I was able to draw all of the steps in a way that makes sense. Then I took photos to match the drawings, and wrote it all up. This tutorial is the culmination of a long process to document these earrings so that other bead weavers can enjoy making them too. This tutorial is also super colorful. I used a rainbow pair for the step photos and illustrations in the hopes that you will enjoy looking at this the tutorial as much as making and wearing the earrings.

Sweater Hoodie Pullover No. 11 Beach Sun Rain Wind Sand

My first completed project of 2016: this pullover sweater hoodie is mostly wool with a touch of cashmere. That's me... Hi, happy new year!

It all started with a crazy striped yellow, blue, tan and white sweater of thick, soft lambs wool. It was a really nice quality wool, thick and still soft, and it had a lot of usable fabric. I cut it apart and stitched the patches back together with a bunch of other sweaters to make this wearable, cozy piece of art. The focus is the long patch pocket on the front that I embellished with symbols of the beach: sun, water, and wind. I used a variety of hand stitching techniques including applique (raindrops), reverse-applique (sun), embroidery (sun) and couching (sun and wind).

The cut is a tunic dress that drapes slightly longer on the sides and back. It has a roomy hood that isn't so big that it will fall over your eyes when you wear it. When the hood is down, it forms a large wide collar that frames your face and keeps your shoulders warm. The sleeve ends are finished with soft, cozy cashmere is bright aqua.

The hood has a single brass and metal button. The picture button is large and antique (c. 1890) with birds, flowers, and trees on it. It's one of the nicest buttons in my collection, but I decided to let it go because the birds added something special to the beach theme of the piece.

The colors are an assortment of beach colors including sand, golden yellow, pale blue, gray, and bright aqua. The seams are bright aqua.

The seams and hems are professionally sewn with four polyester threads on my serger sewing machine. Some of the finer detailing, I first edged on my serger and then stitched by hand with aqua wool yarn. The hand stitching adds visual interest and gives me more control when assembling the pieces so that everything sits as I like. The hand stitching is on the sleeve hems, the pouch pocket and the inside of the collar. This sweater very well made, comfortable and warm.

Size: Medium. Laid flat, the bust measures 20", waist 18.5", hip 21". I am modeling this piece in the photos, and I'm 5'5", US size 8-10.

This work was inspired by the amazing sweater coats of Katwise, with help from her tutorials. Find her on Etsy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/katwise
The inspiration for the combining the needlecraft techniques on the pocket came from Alabama Chanin. and her books. 

Ginkgo Earrings in Pantone's 2016 Color of the Year, Rose Quartz Serenity Lint

Last night I tried playing around with the ‪Pantone 2016 Color of the Year. 

This year they picked Rose Quartz, so pale pink. So I used a sparkling pale pink cubic zirconia at the top of each earring, and a row of milky pink Swarovski crystals along the bottom edge.

As always, Pantone offered up some of the other colors to coordinate it with their Color of the Year. This year, they include Serenity (a pale bluish periwinkle), Silver Gray and a pale, dingy green color they call Lint. So here is my first attempt at working with these colors that were handed down from above.

Ah, lint... I still can't believe they named a color Lint. I don't know about you, but the lint around my house comes in lots of colors besides pale, dingy green.  I almost hope they pick Lint as the Color of the Year in 2017.

The tutorial for Ginkgo Leaf Earrings is for sale in my Etsy shop. Thanks for looking.  Have a better than average December.

Victory Pod Earrings on a Hetty Friedman Scarf

I recently purchased a scarf made by Hetty Friedman. It's made of hand dyed, handwoven rayon chenille. The colors scream AUTUMN, and I fell in love with it from the moment I first saw it in Hetty's Etsy shop. The colors in this scarf include teal, jade, curry, blue, orange, and brown. When I saw Hetty's photos, all I could think is, "Could the colors of that scarf really be that pretty!? I must have that scarf!" And so they were!!!

As I do, I made a pair of earrings just before I bought the scarf, and as accidents will happen, the scarf matches the earrings perfectly. Since I just happened to be writing a tutorial for how to make this pair of earrings, I photographed the earrings on the scarf. Tada!

I fell in love the colors in these photos. So I wrote to Hetty, and she kindly gave me permission to share these photos with you. Thank you Hetty!

I couldn't stop taking photos of the earrings on the scarf, just for the sake of eye candy. Photos like these make me unreasonably happy.

This cat video also make me unreasonably happy.

If you want, you can learn to make Victory Pod Earrings with my new tutorial, but you'll have to find Hetty if you want a new scarf.

Thanks for looking. Have a great holiday. Spread some love. Be nice to each other.