Emilee Williams Art

Modern Floral Watercolor 5

2017-10-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

I got a new handmade watercolor pallet from Designs by Rachel Beth on Etsy and I couldn't wait to try it. I'm pretty excited about how this one turned out-- especially the yellow rose shape. That one didn't turn out so great the last time I tried it. I think using a smaller brush helped.

Modern Floral Watercolor 4

2017-10-20T05:00:00.000-07:00

I tried a different flower shape on this one I like it much better, but I'm still struggling with what to put in the middle. This doesn't quite look right to me. This composition isn't quite right either, but I feel like I'm getting closer...

Modern Floral Watercolor 3

2017-10-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

In this one, I used another color pallet that I planned out before I started. I tried a different flower shape too. I wish I'd added a little variation in the leaves and some smaller flowers, but I'm pretty happy about this one overall.

Modern Floral Watercolor 2

2017-10-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

This is my second attempt at a modern floral watercolor with one of the pallets from my last post. I think the colors and composition are better, but I don't love the shapes of the flowers. Also, I wasn't sure what to do in the middle of the red flowers, so I just left them empty...

Color Pallets

2017-10-14T14:12:00.001-07:00

I found that one of the issues I had with my first modern watercolor floral painting is that I didn't think very much about the color pallet. I just used colors that I liked and, unfortunately, I didn't like them together. So, I sat down and just planned out a couple of color pallets that I wanted to try. These are combinations of Windsor Newton paints and some handmade colors from Designs by Rachel Beth on Etsy.

Modern Floral Watercolor

2017-10-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

One thing that I see so much of lately is the modern floral watercolors. And they are BEAUTIFUL. Just the simple, gestural flowers and leaves, you know? I love them so much and it makes me sad because I just don't understand. Haha! I mean, they look so simple, but I just cannot make my brain tell my hand to do that and I don't know why. I've decided the only way to figure it out is to just do it-- even if it looks bad-- until I get it. So, don't laugh, but this is my first attempt at a modern floral watercolor. It's bad, I know. But there are a few elements I like.

A few things I learned: think about the color pallet beforehand. I knew I wanted to paint the main flowers in this awesome rose gold (from Designs by Rachel Beth on Etsy), but I didn't think any farther than that. And now I regret it. Also, I think it would have been better if I had thought about the composition a little more. I feel like this one is a little awkward. Lastly, I learned that you just need to keep filling in with different shapes. I almost gave up because it was looking so awkward, but I forced myself to keep going and it improved ever so slightly.

Layered Pines Watercolor

2017-09-29T05:30:00.000-07:00

Another painting that I see quite frequently on Instagram is layered pine trees that fade into the background. I wanted to give it a try and I knew my handmade Succulent Garden watercolor pallet that I just got from Designs By Rachel Beth on Etsy would be perfect.

I started with a wet background and lightly painted in some pine trees. I let that dry and then layered some more pine trees over the first ones, but just a touch darker. After those dried, I added one more layer of pine trees, but much more saturated in color. I painted hints of trunks on the last layer, too. Then, because it was snowing in the mountains here in Utah, I put some white gouache on a brush and tapped it over the top for a hint of snow. Fun! Can't wait to do this again!

Watercolor Cactus

2017-09-27T05:30:00.000-07:00

One thing I've been seeing on Instagram a lot lately that I think is super cute is cacti. I love them because they are simple green shapes with pops of color. I decided to try my own using a little trick I learned at the watercolor and calligraphy retreat I went to a couple weekends ago. With the class, we received two packs of watercolor pencils (from Close to My Heart). My first though was "oh great, watercolor pencils" (with eye roll). I've never been into colored pencils and I've never really had a desire to try watercolor pencils until the instructor pointed something out-- you can use watercolor pencils to sketch your drawing and it will just blend in when you paint your picture. What?! That's one of the best tricks I've ever heard! So, I sketched out what I wanted to paint and just started filling it in:

I added a simple ground color and shadows so they weren't just floating in space:

And then I did something bad... I thought I had a very fine black felt tip pen, but I don't. So, because of some of the things we learned in the watercolor class, I thought it might be a good idea to try to put the cactus' needles in with my new calligraphy nib. That I'm still trying to learn how to use. Nope! Bad idea.

So, as you can see, some of the needles are a little thick. I'm sure that this would have worked great if I knew what I was doing with a calligraphy nib and could control the ink flow better. I think I'll just make sure I get a fine tip pen before I try this again...

Modern Calligraphy

2017-09-25T05:30:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned a couple posts back, I attended a watercolor and calligraphy retreat. I was expecting brush calligraphy, but I got modern calligraphy (taught by Melissa Esplin @melissapher on Instagram) with an actual calligraphy nib-- SCARY! But it wasn't really. It's going to take a lot of work and practice... and nibs! I'm so excited to work with it though!

I've only done a very little bit of practice so far. I got almost all the way through the alphabet in lower case before I decided I just wanted to write some words. It happened to be the first day of autumn when I was practicing, so what better words to practice than "welcome autumn" in all lower case letters (because I don't know any upper case letters yet).

I will say... it's intimidating to start but so mesmerizing once you get into it.

I feel like there is a little improvement between the first and second "welcome autumn", but I do need to work on my hairlines (that l... yuck!)

Purple Tree Watercolor

2017-09-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

My fiancé asked me to paint him a purple tree, so how could I not. I think it was a pretty good idea...

Watercolor and Calligraphy Retreat

2017-09-21T05:52:00.003-07:00

For my birthday, my mom bought me a ticket to a watercolor and calligraphy retreat last weekend. I was so excited and I was not let down. Not only was the instruction amazing, but we received so many calligraphy and watercolor supplies. I'm in love with all of them.

We started with calligraphy and I was expecting brush calligraphy, but we used calligraphy nibs! It was scary, but so fun and exciting. I've already practiced some of the things I learned and I can't wait to really dive in. More on that later.

The watercolor class was in the afternoon and we painted pink flowers referencing a painting that the instructor had already painted. As usual, I focused way too much on the details. I really want to focus on painting more loosely. I learned a lot about gouache (including how to pronounce it) and we got an amazing pallet of colors.

The instructors were Natalie Malan and Melissa Esplin. I'll definitely be watching for more of their classes. I can't wait to do this again.

Geometric Pastel Minimal Watercolor

2017-09-18T15:49:00.001-07:00

I sat down and painted a few backgrounds to layer some pastels on. I really want to explore colors, textures and layers and I feel like pastel is a really good way to add those things to watercolor. This is my first try. I expected to do a lot more with the pastels, but I was happy with this and I think I need to try it on a larger piece of paper because of the thickness of the pastels. I'd also like to work on keeping more of the negative white space to utilize that layer, too.

Splitting Rims

2017-09-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

I've been trying something new with my pottery lately that I'm pretty excited about. I've been splitting the rim on pretty every piece that I can. The idea came to me when my boss asked me to make a candy dish for her. I wanted to make something a little more special than just a plain bowl.

A few years ago, I split the rim on a few pots and I didn't have the best results-- mostly because the rims were too thin, I think. This time I've left the rims as thick as I can and I'm hoping for better results. Here are some photos of some bowls that I haven't finished yet, but I'm hoping to glaze soon!

Minimal Abstract Watercolor

2017-09-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

I cannot overstate how much I love watching watercolors run together and what they look like when they dry-- satisfies every time. This is one that I originally did to experiment with some pastels over the top. These are probably my favorite colors to paint together and I just couldn't bring myself to do anything over the top of it when it was done.

Pastels!

2017-09-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was cleaning out all of my art supplies at my parent's house and I came across a bunch of oil pastels. I thought it would be a lot of fun to play with layering colors and composition with watercolors. So, here's my first one! I can't wait to keep playing around with these!

The background was done with my Let's Go Camping handmade watercolor pallet from a few posts back. I just love those colors!

I will need to find a good fixative to keep the pastel in place...

Simple Leaf Watercolor

2017-08-30T06:30:00.000-07:00

I'm having so much fun with my new handmade watercolor pallet that I mentioned a few posts back! I started with a simple painting of leaves and such. It was harder than I thought to come up with six different types of leaves/foliage so I had to turn to Pinterest for a little help... I love the simplicity of this one.

Fall Trees

2017-08-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

One of my all time favorite things to paint is trees. They are simple but effective and you can combine pretty much any colors and they look great. Two posts back, I wrote about a handmade watercolor pallet I purchased on Etsy and I used that to paint these trees (with a little brown from my own pallet). I see many more of these in my future-- especially with fall coming up!

Blending Colors

2017-08-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I talked about an amazing new handmade watercolor pallet I bought on Etsy. One of my favorite things to do with watercolors is just simply watch them blend and bleed together. I like to find two or three colors that look interesting together, paint them really close together-- touching in one or two places, watch them blend together and then let it dry. This is one of the first things I did with my new pallet and here are the results:

Handmade Watercolors

2017-08-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

I've seen a lot of Instagram accounts for people who make watercolor paints recently. Honestly, I didn't even know that was possible and I am obsessed. I HAD to order some. So, I ordered a small pallet of handmade watercolors from an Etsy shop called Designs by Rachel Beth. Her watercolors are so beautiful and perfectly matched. She releases new watercolors every Friday-- how cool is that?!

I bought a small pallet called Let's Go Camping and let me tell you, the colors are perfect! I don't camp and the colors still remind me of camping! I'm so excited about that Toasted Marshmallow!

She also included a sample of her Neon Pink that is amazing! So bright and vibrant. I was truly surprised how vivid the color is.

So the first thing I did was make a chart of sorts to see how the colors look on paper in a little bit bigger swatches and how they blend.

Check out that pink!

I love how that Toasted Marshmallow mixes with other colors

Needless to say, I will be purchasing many more handmade watercolor pallets. In the meantime, I can't wait to play with this one!

Brush Lettering

2017-08-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

One of the new things I've been wanting to try for a while is brush lettering (or calligraphy?). I took calligraphy in high school and I really enjoyed it. I hadn't thought about it again until recently when three things happened:

Awesome videos on Instagram. If I'm being honest, these videos convinced me that I needed to try. I'm just mesmerized by the different styles, color and creativity.
Thank you notes. I include a thank you note with every order I send out from my Etsy shop. I think it would be fun to have hand-lettered thank you notes rather than trying to decide between 100 different styles at Target.
I am getting married next year (!!!) and I love the look of hand-lettered envelopes for invitations... this one is a stretch, I know.

So, to get started, I bought a Lettering for Beginners (that's me!) book and Tombow brush pens. Also, I learned on Pinterest that there are a lot of resources for free, printable lettering practice sheets. Tombow actually offers some so I printed those out because they go with my pens, duh!

Starting is always hard for me so I just jumped in. Thankfully, the Tombow lettering sheets start with straight lines-- I can handle those.

A few things I learned:

The brush pens take a little breaking-in. When I started, it seemed like no matter how hard I pushed down, my pen strokes weren't quite wide enough. Also, they seemed to "stick" (for lack of a better word) to the paper so my strokes weren't smooth. Both of those issues seemed to resolve themselves after a few letters.
Don't think too much. I found I did much better when I didn't try so hard and just wrote the dang letter.
Take your time. It's tempting to rush through the letter to get to the next one, but my letters always looked worse when I didn't slow down and take time to do each stroke right.
Some letters are way more difficult thank others. I wonder if everyone struggles with the same letters? For some reason P was really hard for me. I LOVE B and H though!

I couldn't resist trying to write full words before finishing the practice sheets. I thought I'd start practicing for my thank you cards. Obviously, I need to practice a lot more. Don't judge too hard...

Meraki Pottery

2017-08-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

Meraki is a Greek word for the soul, creativity or love put into something. It is the essence of yourself that is put into your work. This seemed like a fitting word for my pottery when I was thinking of names for my Etsy shop. Each piece I make has some of my soul, creativity and love. Thus, my Etsy shop is called Meraki Pottery.

My goal is to make pottery that is simple and functional. I like to make pieces that are really simple with something just a little different.

Here are some more recent pieces of me:

A Box of Sunrises

2017-08-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I mentioned that I had only painted once in the last three years. They were very special paintings that I finished earlier this year, in March.

My fiancé, boyfriend at the time, Greyson, asked me to paint him a sunrise for a tattoo he's been wanting to get. And he'd been asking for a while... a long while. I'd been too afraid to paint it for fear of him not liking them and also just the thought of someone tattooing something on their body that I painted is... not intimidating at all.

I decided his birthday was as good a time as any to give him the sunrise if I was ever going to do it. But, I couldn't just give him ONE sunset after he'd been asking for so long. So, I painted him as many sunrises as I could to make up for all the times I put it off and all the times I said I'd do it but chickened-out. And I gave him a box of sunrises for his birthday.

So, ladies and gents, here you have it. In all it's glory. The only thing I've painted in three years:

After a Long Hiatus...

2017-08-14T19:18:00.003-07:00

Oh wow... were to begin?

I'm returning to my blog after a long break... three years long. Oops! I may not have been blogging but I have definitely been busy making things. Over the past three years, I've been doing pottery. A lot of pottery. And I love it. I'm passionate about it and I'm going to keep doing it.

Lately, I've been feeling like something is off or missing in my life and I think I need a change. I'll be honest, I have only painted once in the last three years. ONCE. I think that's a big part of my problem. I have all these thoughts, ideas and feelings floating around in my head and I have nowhere to put them. I literally daydream about color, texture, pattern and layering.

Pottery satisfies a big part of my need to be creative. I have a desire to create things that are tangible, that make sense and that have a function and pottery is great for that. At the same time, I feel a need to create things that don't really have a purpose and that don't necessarily make sense. For me, it is a way of expressing feelings and emotions that I can't put into words. You see, I'm not very good at that. Painting and playing with color is meditative for me. It helps my brain unwind when it is so tightly wound around things that just don't matter.

I'm hoping this blog will be a way for me to document my experiments, figure out what works, put all of the thoughts in my head in one place and find a direction for my art.

So... here we go again!

Golden Sky Landscape

2014-05-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

This is actually a small corner (about 1/4) of a larger painting. The rest didn't turn out great...but I really like this part.

Purple Flower Landscape

2014-05-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

I'm back on a landscape kick. It's just so relaxing to come home from a stressful day at work and just paint where I'd like to be.