New YouTube Watercolor Tutorial

I was inspired by all the cherry trees in our neighborhood. They are just barely past their full bloom and the recent downpour of rain, hail and windy weather has already caused some of the blossoms to come sprinkling down

Naturally, I realized the emergency and got busy filming a video tutorial on how to paint a tree full of cherry blossoms in watercolor. I used the vibrant colors in the Prima Tropicals set. It's just freshly uploaded and you can see it right here!

Update: Uh oh, Saturday I tried using a feature on YouTube and now it deleted all but 5 minutes of my 14 minute video. Working on it! Sunday----Okay, Fixed!

How, you may ask did I come by all the lovely cherry blossoms in the video?

Since we haven't got a cherry tree of our own, I snipped a few branches off our star magnolia, also in bloom, and hustled over to offer our neighbors a trade!

I traded some branches of our star magnolia (r) for some of our neighbor's cherry blossoms!

Although I have this list in the description on the video, here are the (unsponsored) products I used:

Brushes
Silver Black Velvet Voyager Travel Brush #6 round--squirrel and synthetic blend feels like sable
Richeson Grey Matters synthetic #12 round--made for plein air, non reflective ferrule

Paper
Fabriano Studio 140# CP, cut into 4x6" postcard size

Watercolors
Prima Tropicals Set
Two additional colors: Cobalt Blue, Manganese Blue (both Daniel Smith)

EDM - Day 8

Boots

Micron pen, Tombow dual brush pen, black ink waterbrush, watercolor

I'm smiling to myself as I sketch these boots. I wore them to my watercolor class recently, because I needed something comfortable to patrol the room during an intensive and active series of timed drills that I assigned to my students. One student said, "From now on, if I see you wearing those boots I'm going to run the other way!" I'm happy to report that everyone survived and actually outdid themselves.

EDM - Day 7

A Gadget Used for Cleaning

iRobot-My little sweeper roams around the hardwood floors, vacuuming up dust and crumbs, bumping gently into chairs and doorways. Undismayed, he nonchalantly backs up and simply pirouettes to continue in another direction. Invisible rays emanate from the two white towers, fooling him into thinking a wall is there. He makes a quarter turn and on he goes until he reaches my area rug with a dark border. He thinks it's a cliff and stops dead in his tracks. I let him think it over for a few moments and then send him back to recharge at his battery dock. 

EDM -Day 4

A Game

So let's start with a guessing game. Can you guess the game I illustrated here for the Every Day in May Challenge?

Tip: Mine is related to the truly "old school" version of the game that actually goes back to the Han dynasty. The new version of the game is the subject of an episode of the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory in 2008 (as rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock).