1. I love salt!  I am a salt snob.  My dining table has little bowls of red, black, green salts from around the world.  Some are Hawaiian volcanic salts, some are colored with bamboo leaf extracts.  But my favorite salt is the French, Fleur de sel, which is the hand harvested “flower” of the salt crystal.
2. I planned a watercolor painting trip in 2009 to Provence, France and it was a wonderful trip.  Everyone loved the hotel, the painting, the wine, the camaraderie…. The worse thing that happened, happened to me.  My purse was stolen with lots of money, my passport, my credit cards and basically any way of paying for all the things I was responsible for as well as all my identity.  This happened the day the students arrived!
3. I was almost kidnapped when living in Greece in the early 1960s.  While playing outside, a man drove up on a motorcycle and offered me a ride.  I really wanted to go!  I told him that I had to go ask my mom and when she came out he was gone.  
4. I never took an art class until I was in my 30s.
5. My first art class was a watercolor class.  I just wanted to paint.  If I had known you had to draw something first, I never would have taken that class.  
6. I was born in Japan.
7. My husband doesn’t know I blog.

I just had fun painting this little square watercolor with a touch of mixed media painting of these little olive trees.  I saw them in the outside market in Provence.  They were in growing in beautiful terracotta pots.  I used gold acrylic paint for the lettering and lifted out the pattern with a stencil.

Why not give your loved ones a hand-made gift of a watercolor card this Valentine’s Day?  This card is easy to make and you can make several in one afternoon.  This project uses watercolor glazing techniques and negative painting.  See below:

Negative painting around hearts

• Start with a piece of watercolor paper (I use 140 lb Arches paper) torn to the size you want. 
• Tape your paper to a workable surface around each edge using a removable painter’s tape.  
• Paint a colorful watercolor wash and let this dry.  I used new Gamboge, permanent rose, permanent magenta and cerulean blue.
• With a pencil, draw some heart shapes, some large, some small.  Overlap some hearts.  Negative paint around each heart.  This means you paint the background around the hearts, creating heart shapes in your painting.  Let this dry.
• Draw a few more hearts and negative paint again around all the hearts.  You can negative paint these hearts several times to make a rich, glowing background.  Painting over your last layer is called watercolor glazing.
  

  Glazing and negative painting

• Now decorate the hearts in fun ways: polka dots, checks, stripes.  I was inspired by my friend, Laure’s blog, Painted Thoughts. You can either use watercolor or colored pens and markers or a mix of both!  Have fun, doodle, think of your loved one.  Here is your opportunity to put a smile on their face!  And after reading Jenn’s facebook post from Cloth, Paper, Scissors – PUT A BIRD ON IT!
• With an ink pen, draw around your hearts and outline the tape before pulling it off the edges.

My final valentine for my husband.  Hope he likes it!

Now that your sponge watercolor trees are dry, it is time to add the sky color.  The trick to keeping the tree leaves looking fresh and colorful is to start with clear water around the edges of the tree leaves.  Then paint in your sky color, starting from the outer part of your painting and paint towards the leaves.  When you get to the clear water, tickle the color with your brush into the clear water to get it to make an soft edge.  Don’t forget to paint in some sky holes between the tree branches and leaves.
This is a fun exercise to do as a painting warm-up!