Watercolor for the Soul : Simple painting projects for beginners, to calm, soothe and inspire
Learn how to use watercolor to soothe your soul with this beginner’s guide to painting for relaxation.
This fresh approach looks first at the process of painting as a means to de-stress and unwind. Many people love the idea of painting but hold themselves back from starting because they are worried about not being good enough or not feeling as though as are creative. In this guide for the absolute beginner, artist and teacher Sharone Stevens shows you that watercolor can be accessible to everyone and that just painting very simple lines, patterns and shapes in calming colors, concentrating on each brush stroke, can have a powerful meditative effect, while at the same time allowing you to create beautiful art you can be proud of. She also encourages you to connect more with the world around you, finding inspiration in your every-day life and discovering the beautiful textures found in nature, from tree trunks to fruit and butterflies!
The aim of the techniques and projects in this book is to create art that relaxes both the artist and the viewer of the finished piece. Projects range from simple gift tags, bookmarks, cards and small wall pieces to larger art pieces that you never thought possible – all done with a focus on relaxation – which is so important in today’s fast-paced, increasingly digital world.
Learn how to mix a calming color palette, try simple painting exercises to get into a relaxed flow, and create beautiful artworks that will lift the spirits both during the painting process and beyond, as finished pieces of art.
Author Sharone Stevens is an established art teacher and talented artist who is passionate about using art for relaxation and encouraging others to build a regular creative practice. Her gentle lessons and nurturing reassurance will guide even total beginners through the process of making soothing, soulful modern watercolor art.
Get inspired with these 10 artist web design ideas
Designing websites for artists lets you show off your creative side. Here are 10 stylish artist web designs to get the ideas flowing.
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Creating an artist website presents a unique opportunity to combine an artist’s speciality with creative web design.
For creatives, working on an artist’s web design can be an exciting opportunity. You get to show off a fellow artist’s designs and enjoy more creative freedom than when designing business sites for law firms or a SaaS company. And most artists already have a well-developed aesthetic, so you’re not starting from scratch.
The goal of an artist website is to build brand awareness, showcase the artist’s style, and potentially offer a way to purchase artwork. Visitors should be impressed but not distracted by the artwork so they can find important elements, like purchase buttons and Contact pages.
Why do artists need websites?
A dedicated artist portfolio website is a hub that presents an artist’s work and gives visitors all the information they need, like purchasing and exhibition details. Artists can link to this information from other verticals — like social media and email — to increase their online brand presence and site visibility.
Artists with portfolios can also present their work without being constrained by the Instagram gallery format or needing to produce short-form videos for TikTok.
10 creative artist website design ideas
Whether you’re building a personal website like a portfolio, a nonprofit arts organization page, or a commercial gallery site, here are 10 web design ideas to help you show off your client’s work.
1. Let the art take center stage
Renowned graffiti artist Banksy’s site uses whitespace and high-quality images to draw attention to each piece of artwork on the site.
Aside from offering navigation to Q&A, Licensing, Shows, and Hotel, the sidebar menu groups Banksy’s artwork into two categories: Outside (his famous street art) and Inside (indoor art in various mediums). Clicking on one of these options opens a series of photos set to change every five seconds, giving visitors enough time to appreciate each piece while trying to keep them engaged. This also means the site can present a wide range of art to suit different preferences and reach a larger audience.
2. Make the viewer a co-creator
Unlike Banksy’s no-frills site, Danish art gallery Kunsthal Charlottenborg’s The Female Gaze exhibition site is all about interaction. The homepage opens with a video explaining the exhibition’s concept: a response to the “male gaze,” which characterizes male artists’ portrayals of women throughout history. They invite visitors to take the place of artist Peter Ilsted in his painting “Young Girl Preparing Chanterelles.” Visitors can click to change the model’s pose, background, lighting, and painter’s position.
Visitors create their own artwork, then view how other visitors chose to “paint” the woman. This interactive experience completely flips our usual browsing behavior on art sites, which is to passively scroll through artwork. This immersion helps us understand the artist’s point: Every artwork expresses the creator’s perspective, and this perspective can be altered to understand the subject of a piece in a new way. Plus, playing around with this is fun, so people might linger longer and take in more of the artist’s brand — one more reason this site is effective.
3. Use artwork as a background image
The designer for Carla Elena Name’s site, Luciano Olguin, uses one of Carla’s paintings as a background image, instantly immersing visitors in her work’s earthy, spiritual feel. Viewers who enjoy this style are immediately drawn in to explore more.
The artwork for this Mexican artist’s website is an adapted version of one of her NFTs, shaded darker toward the bottom to increase the contrast with the CTA button, making visitors more likely to notice and click on it.
4. Play with unexpected transitions
Turkish artist Sepehr Roshanshomal’s site designer, Ozge Keles, uses fun animations and interactions to surprise and delight visitors. The homepage shows a full-page artwork, but scrolling down makes the work shrink to a single vertical bar between his photo on the left and a short introduction on the right. Visitors immediately discover everything he offers to decide whether they’d like to get in touch or not.
The user experience becomes increasingly interesting as visitors continue scrolling. On the desktop site, moving down the page causes viewers to scroll horizontally, subverting visitor’s expectations and engaging them further.
5. Make your portfolio easy to navigate
Artist portfolio websites should show off the work while expressing the brand so visitors recognize the artist’s style.
Mystic Ether Design does both beautifully for Old Baby, the New York-based artist Ben Denegen’s online portfolio. Each high-quality image appears against a black background that lets the bold colors in the artist’s style dominate. Visitors can scroll through full-size images using the arrows on either side or go to thumbnails at the bottom of the screen to click on one capturing their attention.
The photos in Ben’s portfolio don’t change on a timer, which allows visitors to appreciate each painting’s details and move through at their own pace, like you would at an art gallery. This subtly suggests he has exhibition experience and, thus, provides highly professional artwork.
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