Lyndhurst on paper

This is my first attempt in drawing our house and garden with watercoloured pens (Stabilo). I used one of my photos as reference. It took me a while before I could get the angles and perspective of the house in the right proportion. The house is located on a hill so you're looking up from than the garden.
The size of the drawing is A4.

Reflection trio

Today I submitted a painting the My Favorite Tale contest on the artists social network. It's created in acrylics on canvas, including gold, silver and copper and pearlescent medium.
The concept is inspired by one of my photos of a building reflected in water.

My favorite tale is how I started my picture library PictureNature from a passion for photography. In three years time the collection grew enormously and I was working with 60 photographers before the collection was sold to another library. It was a hard decision to step back from something I created from scratch. Looking back, I now realise it has ignited my passion to be creative again. Photography is now a medium to help me develop designs for my paintings. This piece of art symbolizes the way I reflect on the last three years with so many emotional ups and downs. Water is a symbol for emotional wellbeing and also source of life. It acts as a mirror as well, but then showing you things in a different way that might inspire you with new ideas and opportunities. Life is sometimes tough, but if you handle it well and listen to your inner self, you grow stronger and you will be a step closer to your purpose. If I hadn't had to make this tough business decision, I would have never created this work!

Size of each individual piece: 15 x 15 cm.

Tutorial brick texture in watercolour

A few months ago I joined deviantArt; the largest online social network for artists. Giving and receiving feedback about artwork from fellow (amateur) artists really inspires me to create more artwork, learn more about drawing and painting techniques and to share any skills I have just developed. The brick texture technique is my first tutorial I submitted and the feedback was great, so I thought I'd post it here too. Perhaps more tutorials like this will be added in the future, so if you like to see anything in particular, drop me an email! My deviantArt page can be found at http://fenfolio.deviantart.com/

How to create a brick texture:

What you need

* Watercolor paper
* Watercolor paint in pans in box, the more the better
* small paint roller, about 2" wide
* masking fluid

Creative process

1. Make sketch of wall and bricks.
2. Mask area between bricks with masking fluid (preferrably blue-colored to see difference with white paper).
3. Make paint roller wet and squeeze excess water out with fingers so that roller is just damp enough to hold paint.
4. Place roller on your watercolour box on one side and roll it in a continuous movement to the other side. Don't worry about getting your pallete dirty!!
5. Once masking fluid is dry, roll paint over the bricks in a smooth way.
6. You can follow the steps 3 to 5 again if you're not satisfied with the texture. Experiment with the dampness of the roller. The best result is to have a mixture of completely dry spots with areas of paint (small and larger).
7. Once dry, rub off the masking fluid and fill in the background and add shadows of the bricks.

Have fun!