Inspiration - Sunset and Fireflys - Artful Journeys Prompt Week #35

This weeks prompt got my blood boiling! I had this grand idea of a watercolor sunset background and the bold black silhouette of a corn field and the fireflies brightly lit up in the field. I thought it would be easy! I am a pro! I can do watercolor sunsets with my eyes closed!

WRONG!!!

I grabbed my Strathmore 400 Series Watercolor Journal and started up! I wet my page to get it ready and started adding color, it was one of those days... even the skills I think I have down pat are impossible to accomplish!  I was overworking the color I could not keep a light hand!  I tried to fix it and I picked up too much color! This is what I ended up with, all the colors to bold, no dreamy color what so ever, and a muddy mix of color that I could not pick up and it was sopping wet from trying to lighten the it, this picture is from about and hour of trying to fix my initial error.

I was so frustrated I closed my watercolor journal went and played with my puppy to cool down and came back to it. I opened my journal and I still did not like it for what I wanted to do, but....

The page on the opposite side was beautiful and reminded my of my scouting days when I took a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters , it was so beautiful there! I was inspired! Woo hoo!!

The colors that were bold on the opposite page came over as muted on the opposite page that gave it the dreamy surreal quality that I remember from the Boundary Waters. 

Right away I found my inner Bob Ross, pulled out my fan brush, and started painting some happy little trees using a mix of black and forest green watercolor. 

The muddy mix of color from the page gone wrong was concentrated in mostly one area of my new loveliness, and reminded me of some of the bluffs we had seen during our trip, I always wanted to go to the top and camp out looking over the waterways and see the everything from above.

So I painted the bluff in and put people camping on the top, I even remembered to put their food pack up in a tree! In reality you would put it further from your campsite, but it's my world! Oops! how did they get there!? So, I added the canoe banked at the bottom of the bluff.

I added another tree into the foreground to add a bit of depth, and added my lightening bugs (aka fire flies) here and there. In hind sight I would have left the foreground tree out, the fireflies make it look kinda like a Christmas tree, but, I don't hate it entirely, so that's a positive, right?

I really like how this page ended up! I really was so frustrated with the whole thing, but life is so full of happy accidents!

I know I will end up using the original page for something else, I don't know what but it will be used, I do like how the colors turned out on that page, it just wasn't what was in my head! I am still going to do my original idea at some point, just not now!


Big hugs and mushy stuff!!!

Special thanks to my Puppy for helping me keep my cool! It is impossible to look at him an not smile!

Go on over and check out what the other girls made over at Artful Chicks!