I have one single subscription to an artist’s website. She teaches classes on her website and I love them. The website is called Watercolor Mastery, and the artist is Emily Olson. I was first introduced to her art and classes while watching YouTube, where she shared a short about how she painted a rhinoceros and baby.

I love to paint animals, and I loved her technique and the use of dark colors she used that gave her painting depth and realism. I was intrigued and I started following her on YouTube and then finally subscribed to her website and classes.

I have grown so much as an artist by watching her paint, along with a number of other artists on YouTube and classes I’ve taken, but I had never gone back to that original, inspiring painting until just recently.

I chose a different reference photo for my painting, but one that was inspiring to me, and then got started. I wanted this to be a great painting, so I started out with a plan, and worked through the painting in a more mindful way than I have done recently since most of my recent painting projects have been more practice than finished product.

The one thing that I didn’t do, and wished I had as I went along, was stretching my paper. With smaller paintings, and practice pieces the slight buckling of the paper really doesn’t bother me. But with bigger, more finished projects I appreciate the stretched paper that doesn’t warp or buckle.

This painting took me approximately 10 days, but really only about 4 hours. I just don’t have 4 hours to sit and paint at one time! It definitely went through an ugly phase, as most paintings do. I’m grateful I’ve learned to work through those stages as one of my favorite parts of painting is the finishing details.

I love how this painting turned out, and I am so glad that I finally had a go of it. I learn a little bit more from every painting. This one was no exception. Along with the reminder to stretch my paper before I start, I enjoyed utilizing the darker shadows (which I used to be scared of), and the hard lines of some of the shadows (which also sometimes scare me!).

This watercolor piece is available for purchase, along with all my other art, and I look forward to seeing what kind of products I can put it on for the summer markets. As always, it will be available in the form of note cards.

One note: picture quality is not great because I took them with my phone, at night, when I was tired!