Bethany's Fruit Series

In the last couple of weeks since I started my maternity leave and the girls have been on school holidays, something remarkable has happened. I've been spending all my time with them, and we've been doing heaps of crafting, and it's been really amazing!

Not unexpected. I never said unexpected :-)
But super cool!

We've been experimenting with different crafts and lots of techniques. The girls have always enjoyed painting the best of all, so I thought we could take it to the next level and try and learn a thing or two about the technical aspects of waterpainting.

We just starting simple. After all, the girls are only 8 and 5 and they're not really that interested in colour theory or which brush is best or what paint to buy... they just want some simple tricks to paint some more realistic pictures, but mainly just to have fun! So literally all I taught them was the idea of creating layers of colour. Starting with a lighter colour and then layering different tones of the same colour over the top.

Seriously. That was it.

Bethany got the idea into her head about painting different fruits, so we looked up examples of other people's work on Google for inspiration and then I left her to it. And over the next few days these are the pieces that resulted...

A pineapple, kiwifruit, mystery red fruit (it began life as a cherry, but we've decided it probably looks more like an apple!) and a passionfruit.  Not bad for a first effort hey?

I was so impressed even with just the first one (the pineapple) that I immediately made it the wallpaper on my phone. And the whole collection has been added to my inspiration board in my scrap room.

Since I started sharing them on Instagram it seems like a lot of you agree that these are pretty cool. And there were even requests for copies so that you could do the same! So I'm pleased to announce that at the bottom of this post you'll find the links for you to download each of the four fruit! Then you should be able to use them for whatever you would like - art prints, phone or computer wallpapers, journaling cards etc etc. Can I please just request that if you download her pictures that you leave a comment to let us know, and to tell us what you plan on doing with them? I'm sure Bethany would love to hear! And if you are on Instagram, it would be absolutely awesome if you shared something there and tagged Bethany or me into your post. My user name is 'natalieelph' and Bethany and Moriah share an account where they post all their artwork and photos with the user name 'elphiekids'.

And just to prove that anything her sister does, Moriah can do too, she came up with her own series of fruit paintings!

So proud of my two artistic girls :-)

Link to Apple pdf
Link to Kiwifruit pdf
Link to Passionfruit pdf
Link to Pineapple pdf


PS. I've also been asked what we used to create these paintings, so here's some links to the products:

Transparent Watercolour Papers Waterbrush Watercolour Paper Pack

InLinkz.com

We use this system for almost all our waterpainting for a couple of reasons. I find the colours in the watercolour papers really vibrant, you get heaps of variety in the set, they're very easy to use and because it's virtually mess-free!

In comparison, Moriah's painting was done with a cheap supermaket set of 12 watercolours in a palette, a normal brush, and plain ol' printer paper. Good results, but you can definitely see the difference.

Hope that helps?