Spring has arrived and I’m celebrating with a pink theme full of cute animals, painted in watercolour.
This month I tried using my scanner to get the images I post here, but noticed that it did not pick up the subtle colour variations in my paintings as well as it should have. Entire areas of my art are left either blank or grey and while I tried to do some colour correction, that didn’t work out as well as I’d like.
Unfortunately I only noticed this issue after I’d already started using my journal (and wish to keep the actual content private), but I have photographed the decorations so that you can still see the actual artwork in their intended colours.
Each of the images below has two or more versions, which will alternate automatically. You can hover over each image to pause the cycle, or click it to take a closer look.
On the cover page I wanted to include some flowers and what screams ‘spring’ more loudly than daffodils and crocusses. Croci..? Anyway, where I live these are the first signs of spring and they really lift my spirits after the gloomy winter months, so I gladly included them here with the bunny.
One of the more obvious spring animals is a chick, which in this case just got out of its egg. As with almost all of my paintings this month I am so happy with how it turned out, it was a joy to see every day.
To stay in the ‘baby animals’ vibe, I included this little lamb. Figuring out how to convey its white curls without having to paint in negative space with a background colour was tricky, but with some layering and very subtle nuances in off-white mixes I think it came out very cute and believable.
For some reason I thought that pink would be a nice spring-ish colour to use for this theme. I actually kind of imagined it a lot more pastel, but ended up making it quite vibrant. I really don’t mind, it lifted my spirits throughout the month, as did this cute mother hen.
It’s hard to pick favourites when it comes to my own art, but I think that these little fellas pull on my heart strings just a little bit harder than the other animals – cute as they are. I really love how they turned out and their expressions never fail to make me go ‘aww’ when I look at them. Too cute!
This smug little piggy was challenging and intimidating to paint, but in the end I think it came out alright. I ended up adding some dirt on its feet, because no matter how cute and pink, what pig doesn’t like stomping around?
Seeing me off into May, this adorable big nose begs to be petted. She’s a little bit of an outlier compared to the other paintings, but I love her no less for it. What a sweetheart.
I hope you enjoyed seeing what I did for my April pages and that I resolved my unfortunate scanning problem in a way that was nice for you to view. Feel free to let me know in a comment how you like them!