Find Peace & Clarity in Simple Watercolor Flower Art

Welcome to BETTER WITH ART!

I’m Melinda, and my goal is to inspire you to reclaim your creativity and practice self-care through art. With small, accessible projects using affordable materials, you can easily incorporate art into your routine.

This week’s art

This week, I’ll be exploring using an art journal, something I no longer always use on the new BETTER WITH ART YouTube channel separate from my other art ventures.

To begin, I taped down the edges of my page for a watercolor piece. To learn more about the art journals I recommend for my simple form of art journaling visit my recommended materials page. This method limits buckling and provides a clean border, giving the artwork a more polished appearance.

I’m also using a soft round watercolor brush and and a basic 8 set of Crayola watercolors. I usually use a Prang basic 8 watercolor set, available on Amazon, and even cheaper. A water spray bottle and cup of clean water are must-haves for activating and maintaining your watercolors as you paint.

This Week’s Inspiration

The inspiration for this piece was an image on Instagram that reminded me of dragon scales or an abstract view of a zinnia. I need to find the artist.

I decided to put my twist on it by creating an abstract flower using reds and oranges, with a yellow heart.

While watercolor painting, it’s essential to avoid allowing shapes you’d like to remain distinct, like petals, to touch too soon. It’s possible to layer watercolors when they’re allowed to dry thoroughly, or you dry them with a hair dryer or craft heat tool. But wet just blend. Which can create really interesting effects, which I use a bit within my petals.

As I worked on this piece I realized that to achieve closer to what I’d had in mind, I should have started with smaller petals in the hearts of my flowers.

But that’s okay—creative self-care art-making isn’t about perfection; it’s about expressing ourselves and enjoying the process.

The Beauty of Imperfection

Have you ever noticed when observing nature closeup, how often it shows us that imperfections can be the most beautiful elements, just like in the flowers and greenery we admire.

My art doesn’t always look like what I had in mind. My creative self-care art can end up was what appears to be a mess. No, my art journey doesn’t always go as planned, but I love every unique aspect of it.

Making art for art’s sake as a form of creative self-care is about the making, entering into the process and allowing it to quiet the noise outside and within. What we end up with on our page is important as an accomplishment of taking the time, but what it looks like, well, that’s not where it value lies. So let go of trying to force anything, and just relax into it.

Playing with Color

I’ll be adding different layers and experimenting with colors, inspired by complementary colors that enhance and calm each other simultaneously. Despite unforeseen hues (like a swampy green), it’s all part of the creative experience.

Extending the pleasure of making is great for our mental health, and the more we make art, the more we learn about making it. But even if you have a few minutes, you can practice meaningful creative self-care. Just a few minutes here and there each week helps.

Sometimes, even if we love making art, it can be difficult to not view art-making as a frivolous activity. A waste of time. There are so many more important things to do, right? That’s the trap I fell into. For years. Despite knowing how balancing it could be for me, I refused to establish a regular art practice because there was always something else I felt I should be doing. I felt like I could never catch up to life’s demands and needed to try to do all the other things.

It can reduce stress and provide clarity. I’ve learned this after years of ignoring my creative needs due to life’s demands. Art is essential for our mental well-being.

Connect

If you’ve found art-making beneficial for your mental health, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to share your experiences in the comments. You can also join the Better with Art community via our private Facebook group. It’s a welcoming only-encouraging space with some lovely souls in various stages of our art-making and creative self-care journeys. If you hop over to YouTube, be sure to subscribe so you won’t miss any upcoming creative self-care content. Every new subscriber helps spread the message that making time for art is valuable.

You can also hang out with me on Instagram, join me on Facebook, or find inspiration with me on Pinterest.

Because we are BETTER WITH ART.