Football Player - Watercolor Portrait Work in Progress

Last month a friend of mine commissioned me to paint her grandson who is a star football player and he's only a sophomore in high school! He's a nice kid and very big. :)

Made a couple of changes here. The boy on the right needed to be African American with a mohawk and I flipped the kid on the lower left.

I painted AJ's face first thinking I'd tackle the hard stuff right away but that was actually the easiest part for me. The background was painted wet in wet and I used a spray bottle to get that cool orange streak.

AJ finished painting

Need Some Fresh Painting Inspiration?

I've been saving color swatches from Design Seeds on a color board I have on Pinterest for a while and today I decided to use one as inspiration for a new butterfly baby painting to add to a collection I'm working on.

I know designers make inspiration boards all the time and I've made a few when I have designed scrapbook paper collections, but I think this is a great exercise if you need some fresh painting inspiration.

As you can see, I went for really simple and I got lucky. My butterfly reference is very similar to my  inspiration palette, though I'm not convinced that this is a real butterfly species. I think someone may have tinkered with their butterfly photo. Anyway, if I hadn't found the right color, I would've just used my reference for the drawing and then painted it with my inspiration colors.

This was a very satisfying little experiment and I hope this gives you a little encouragement if you're ever stuck on what to paint. Just go to Pinterest or Design Seeds and find some inspiring color palettes and reference photos. You might want to set a timer though so you have time to paint. ;)

Pink & Yellow Butterfly Inspiration Board

The finished baby butterfly