Watercolor Wednesday: An Origami Crane

 

12x17cm watercolor on paper

DIY Ukulele Felt Picks

For some fast picking on a ukulele you might need a pick. Felt picks are pretty common, but not all music stores have them. You can make your own felt picks with only two ingredients: Self-adhering felt and some plastic. I used felt meant to protect furniture and the plastic of a drain cleaner bottle (thoroughly washing it with water). Later I tried also the plastic of a transparent printer foil and a water bottle, giving the picks different stiffness. the water bottle one was the best form me. I like the picks soft, so the strumming sounds soft, but still stiff enough to do some picking.

First sketch the profile of the pick paper. It doesn’t matter if the outline is not symmetrical.


By folding the sketch in the middle and cutting it out, you get a nice symmetrical form.


Now cut the plastic by using your template.




Adhere the felt on both sides one by one and cut the felt to size.


You can do different designs and forms, depending on your preferences. I liked the Reuleaux-triangle shape best.

Happy strumming!

Watercolor Wednesday: Water Lilly

 

12x17cm watercolor on paper

Watercolor Wednesday: Artichoke Step-by-Step

Today I am going to show you the steps of making a watercolor painting. First of all I start off deciding what to paint. Here I will paint an artichoke. I decided to use yellow, different shades of green, green-blue, violet and grey-blue.

Taking my favorite artichoke, I do a rough pencil sketch.

The basic color is going to be yellow.

Adding light green I start to define a bit more the structure.

Adding darker tones of green I define the plasticity of the leaves.

Additionally I added violet at the bottom leaves of the artichokes and a red background.

Using a mix of black and blue I add the shadows to the artichoke.

Done!

Watercolor Wednesday: A Seashell

This one is for framing and putting on a wall. A seashell painted after a real-life seashell found at the beach of Peñiscula.

24x17cm watercolor on paper

The Ukulele Gigbag

I got myself a Spongebob pineapple style Ukulele, which is not a high quality instrument (putting some good strings on it helped somewhat), but it is a cheap instrument you wont be afraid to hand it to someone else or lug it around.
The gigbag that came with the Spongebob Ukulele was very flimsy, so I decided to make a padded gigbag for it. This is the result:

The bag has a front pouch and a shoulder strap on its back. It also fits well for my “real” ukulele, a Lanikai soprano.

Watercolor Wednesday: The Ukulele Cat

Due to temporal summer heat induced insanity I present you the Ukulele playing cat.

17x12cm Watercolor on Paper