Watercolor Family Trees

At the beginning of May I had this fantastic idea to paint my mom and mother-in-law family trees for Mother's Day. I got all excited while watching YouTube tutorials and Pinterest posts showing how to paint trees. After my first practice my enthusiasm waned.

Sure it looks like a tree, but it does not look a thing like the tutorials I watched. My brush control needed work my, my color mixing turned out muddy, and I could not get the right amount of water in my brush either. I had a long way to go before I could paint a tree I was comfortable giving as a gift.

The supplies I purchased were not the cheap stuff. I wanted the paintings to look good so I bought a Winsor & Newton watercolor palette and some Strathmore paper.

practiced more on 1/4 sheets. time to move onto bigger practice pieces.

I painted some more practice trees on 1/4 sheets of paper (didn't want to waste good paper on crappy trees, so smaller it was.) Soon it was time to move onto bigger practice pieces and I was pretty happy with how they came out.

The end of the week was approaching and so was mother's day. It was the moment of Truth! I was so nervous, but sketched out some trees, mixed some greens and browns, and started to paint. I ended up painting two very different trees for each of our mothers.

Once they were finished I printed the name circles to glue onto the trees. The circle on the trunk has our mom's and dad's names and the year they were married. The six circles in the branches of trees have the names of their parents and grandparents with the year each couple was married.

Mother's Day arrived and we gave the trees to our moms. They loved it. Each tree is prominently displayed at our parents houses and it makes me smile.

Since painting these trees I have been bit by the watercolor bug! I love watching watercolor tutorials, looking at inspiration pieces on Pinterest, and PAINTING! I can't wait to show you what I hav been working on!