Carol Sue Witt

    I love trains! Join me on the journey to Holiday fun with my whimsical "All Aboard"... Send a nice greeting card from a store or take a family photo. All are worth the effort and cost to your recipients and the message is the most important part. But if you plan ahead, you can send your original artwork on a card. It's not that expensive and it shares a special side of you... your view of the world. Honestly, friends and family will look forward to your annual scene and it may be framed. A 5"x7" card fits into 8"x10" ready made framing so you are giving a gift, too. I have been creating one for many years for my family but im proud to say I've also created the annual card for a friend's company, Weir International Inc, for 29 years! Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for health and happiness in 2026 !!

  Hydrangeas are amazing, fresh or dried, in an arrangement or as the subject of a painting. They are not easy to recreate so it's a bit of a challenge. Using many reference photos, I made my way through a month long journey this summer to attempt this. The end result is satisfying and incorprates some of my best efforts. Here are a few of my steps starting with these huge, healthy blooms from my daughter Leslie's yard. They inspired ,"Entwined" this summer.                      I usually finish a painting more quickly than most painters, but not this time. I reimagined the background many times and can now see the value of that time. It was well spent! Reference photo: early Summer in Pacific Grove, CA. Steps: I wanted a design that filled the page and also used my favorite palette of colors...Hansa Yellow, Green Gold, Opera Pink and Prussian Blue, All are transparent and play nicely together.  I admit the leaves captured...

 A little sparkle and shine can be a great addition to the normally dry and flat finished look of your watercolors. There are several techniques that create or at least imitate a shine. From varnished and waxed topcoats to tricking the eye to actually using watercolors that have a glitter effect, these all can showcase a wet surface or a shine on bird feathers or damp foliage ...the possibilities are endless. And here are a few: Water surface: using the movement of water by value change can give an appearance of shine and highlight. Reflection on metal  ...and Glass All of these "tricks" work but actually adding an inheritantly shiny item to your image steals the show. What  we are going to focus on in this blog is using sheets of gold foil glued into your watercolor in a purposeful way. Much in the style of illuminated manuscripts from centuries ago, we will try to enhance with gold foil.I am following this YouTube artist , Theodora Gould , who shares her techniques a...

  Starting in January with a visit to The Oklahoma City Cowboy Museum, I’ve been trying to add visits to see other artist’s work. Just this past week we stopped by Inspiration Gallery and other galleries in Fredericksburg, Texas. Both had no watercolors on display. I should say all 3 of these carried bronze and clay statues and 99% oils, all Western themed as well. I did chat with the knowledgeable staff and they assured me that watercolor is well liked….but doesn’t sell. They brought up the difficulty with glass covering the artwork which is actually no longer an issue. We now use acrylic or plastic glazing almost exclusively or protect our images with wax or a fixative. It is a dilemma for watercolorists despite some fabulous artwork coming from amazing artists even in my home state of Texas. Let’s talk this out and see if we can uncover some of this negativity. Size limitation: Large pieces are in demand Watercolor "paper" (actually cotton fiber) has been made for hundreds...