Creating the One Stroke Way - Days 9 and 10

Welcome! I'm glad you have stopped by. I'm taking some time this month to do a little creating each day. 

Today's Creation - Coneflowers

(You can see what I have been up to thus far on Day 1 of 31 Days of Creating with One Stroke Painting.)

Did you see the sunflowers I painted on Day 8? Just look at what 11 year old Esther created out of my practice sheets. 

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Using a wordprocessing program on our computer, she printed a verse over the top of the painted sunflowers, cut them into strips and glued them to color paper for a little extra pizazz. Beautiful, aren't they? She's tucking some of them away for Christmas gifts. 


I tried something new today. Coneflowers. I began by double-loading my 3/4" paintbrush with green and a bit of yellow and painted in stems and leaves. Just random-like. 

 Then, with a #12 brush, I double-loaded a dark blue and some white. Leading with the white edge, pushing and dragging and standing the brush up to a point, I made a fan of petals at the top of the stems, reloading my brush often. This formed the backside layer of petals. I flipped the brush and led with the green, pulling along the white, making a second row of petals right on top of the first, to form the frontside row of petals. For interest and variety, one flower is made using a burgundy-wine color and white (same technique).

To finish the flowers, I used a 'scruffy' brush (short, full bristles), dipping it dry into the yellow and white. Pounce, pounce, pounce I went, trying to create the 'cone' or center of the flower. A little green and burgundy was added for some dimension around the base of the center.

I was not totally happy with the outcome, but as a first try, I'm happy enough. Actually, my first reaction was one of disappointment. I left the pages to dry and came back later in the day. The colors and dimension, shading and highlights seemed to stand out a bit more then. Much to my surprise, I DID like the results. Not perfect, maybe not masterpieces, but they make me smile. Not a bad accomplishment for one day.

If you'd like to know more about the One Stroke Painting method created by Donna Dewberry, or if you are interested in her workshops, instruction books or other products, you can check her website at http://www.dewberrycrafts.com/

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