'Key Leaf' Key Cozies!

I was searching the internet one day, looking for a keychain cover for my keys to prevent them from scratching my cell phone in my purse.  Since I was unable to find what I was looking for, I decided to make one myself and the 'Key Leaf' below was born!!

The 'Key Leaves' are handmade using felt and wooden lady bug buttons, which I painted.  The key ring is attached with a 'stem' of waxed cord that can be attached to another key ring if desired.  They will be available for sale soon so please comment and let me know what you think!

Watercolor 1 at Filoli - Session 3

The third session of Watercolor I at Filoli focused on formulas to mix grays for shadows as well as different greens.  We then used the mixtures to paint 5 different leaves which are shown below along with the ingredients for all mixtures.

leaves and watercolor of hot press watercolor paper

Watercolor 1 at Filoli - Session 2

For the second session of Watercolor 1 we practiced layering graded washes on 3 different shapes to build dimensionality.  The 3 shapes were to be rendered to different degrees and the finished trio is the furthest to the right below.

watercolor on paper

Ocean Beach - San Francisco

Today was a gorgeous day in the Bay Area, which I decided to spend with my friend Lisa at Ocean Beach.  It was a great day and well worth the approximately 3 hours spent on public transit to make it happen.  The following quick study was completed from our spot on the sand.

watercolor on paper

Watercolor 1 at Filoli - Session 1

Once the palette was established, we began watercolor practicing 3 different wash techniques - flat wash, graded wash and blended wash.  For the first assignment, we were to choose 3 botanical subjects to practice the washes on, building layers to various degrees as shown below.

'Tomato' - flat wash

'Belgian Endive Leaf' - graded wash 

'Mango' - blended wash

Watercolor I at Filoli

Today was the second meeting for Watercolor I at Filoli and we continued our work on wash techniques from last week and began some color mixing.

Unfortunately, I turned in all the work I've done so far before photographing and won't be able to post pictures until next week.  In the meantime, the following is an image of the palette we will be using for the course.  The colors are labeled and the paints are all from Winsor & Newton except for Leaf Green (Holbein) and Sap Green (M. Graham).  The palette is from the Michael Wilcox School of Color.