Dan's Custom Watercolor Bouquet Painting

I had another order back in March for a 8"x10" custom watercolor bouquet painting - my most popular listing on Etsy. (Check out the listing here!)

This painting was created for Dan, who wanted a painting of his wife's wedding bouquet, including the blue ribbon, heart charm, and small photograph that were tied to the bouquet on the day of the wedding.

I started with a light layer. I wanted to keep the colors as light as possible, for the most part, because the bouquet was all pale pinks, pale yellows, and whites.

I started adding in a few darker spots for the stems, the centers of the daisies, and a few shadows here and there, but still kept in as light colored as possible.

Once I was happy with how the flowers looked, I went through and added more white to lighten it up - using white acrylic paint over the layers of watercolor.

After I was done with the acrylic, I used a fine tip black calligraphy pen for the writing on the charm, as well as some details to the photograph.

Some details of the finished painting are above - and here is the complete painting, below!

Earring Close-Up Watercolor Painting

I recently found some old paintings I created for college studio classes hiding in plastic portfolios in my art closet, and I decided to put some of them (the best ones) up for sale on Etsy.

"Earring Close-Up" 18"x18" Watercolor on Paper
Andrea Arbit

Purchase this painting in my Etsy store here!

This square watercolor painting was an assignment for either Watercolor II or Watercolor III. We had to choose a small object and focus on the tiniest details of it, magnifying it to the point of abstraction. We were also encouraged to have fun with the colors, using a color palette that was not true-to-life.

The image is of part of a heart-shaped earring my husband gave me as a gift. The light yellow-green part at the top (which casts a shadow onto the orange background) is the fishhook that goes through the piercing. You can see the little plastic piece that goes onto the fishhook to keep the earring in place - it's the darker green cylinder in the upper right corner. The rest is the actual earring - the heart shaped outer edge, and the curlicue plants and leaves that decorated the inside of the heart. I cropped it to just that top portion of the earring to further abstract it. You don't have to know that it's an earring to appreciate the sweeping lines of the composition.

"Earring Close-Up" Watercolor Painting - Detail

The actual earring was silver and gold colored, but for the painting I decided on a fun, candy-like color scheme, with greens and blues making up the parts of the earring and pinks and oranges for the background.

"Earring Close-Up" Watercolor Painting - Detail

Because it is 18"x18" square - which is a bit of an unusual size - you would probably have to purchase a custom mat and frame at a local frame or art supply store. But for the bright colors and interesting subject matter, the price can't be beat - for this piece and others from early college classes, I have reduced the standard prices by up to 50%. For a painting this size, I would normally ask $299, but because this is an early watercolor, I'm asking only $199.

This is not so much because the painting technique is of a poorer "quality" - they're still of excellent quality - but rather because it is not my typical style and because the watercolors used for these early paintings were "student grade." As you can see, even these "student grade" paints can achieve bright, highly saturated colors!