Studio Kit

Last night I decided to paint something "really fast". I had been working on a fiber project so it was about 11:00 p.m. when I started, and I didn't want to get to bed really late.

I didn't do a preliminary drawing, just worked wet on wet loosely following a reference photo.

By 12:30 the painting was done, photos were taken and cropped, and it was ready to be blogged!

So I think the painting took about an hour - my fastest yet. And I'm happy with the result! Yay!

See you tomorrow.

Kit

The paper I used for this painting is twice as large as what I've been using all month, so it took me twice as long! :)

If I seem to be a bit obsessed by foxes at the moment, I am. lol Of course, this one is more like the baby of a fox and cat, which may explain why current obsession given my love of cats!

It's interesting - I read this article by a watercolor artist (I've read so many lately, I can't remember who it was) - and he said that you should spend 50% of your time on your drawing: that your painting will never get better than your drawing. This makes sense to me (if you're the type of watercolourist who draws first, which I am).

And as if to prove him right; I had a really difficult time drawing the face on this fox - getting it at just the right angle, with his face snugged up into the corner of the tree was beyond my current abilities.

Eventually, I gave up on all of my scratching and erasing - I was seriously afraid to damage the paper. And sure enough, when I painted it - the painting was worse than the drawing. Alas.

So I have a kitty-fox tucked up in a tree. :)

Why so serious?

Tonight, as I was trying to figure out what to paint for today's watercolor, I realized that in my pursuit of getting "better", I was losing me.

So, I decided that just for tonight, I would make something that made my heart happy - not worry about whether it was "good", or an "improvement", or whether I was learning something - so I painted that crappy background, acknowledged it was crappy, and kept on going. Then I just let go, and painted that totally adorable elephant, and then I painted the balloon.

And I lost the plot. lol I worked and worked and worked and overworked that balloon, for literally hours (including the time for the layers to dry) and at one point I sat back and realized that was the best I was going to get without totally destroying the paper, which is when I realized that I'd completely forgotten what the point of the evening was.

So I have a really cute elephant as a result of just letting go; and a balloon that is so HEAVY that poor little elephant would fall out of the sky as a result. lol

P.S. - this was my inspiration photo:

(which I found on one of those wallpaper sites) :)

Day 15. Phew! It feels like me, and I actually like it.

:)

I've discovered that I get the best results when I'm not totally exhausted. Go figure.

I do find that this process is a bit too much, actually. Painting every day wouldn't be so hard if I knew what I was doing. But I have no time for my real art, either. And I'm starting to think that what I need is a drawing class, not a watercolour class!

Sad coneflowers are sad. lol The reference photo was beautiful, I promise! :)

Day 11 - this little bug ate a hole in the leaf, and then peeked out.

"Someone has been eating the leaves on your tomato plants...huh. I wonder who...have you checked in with that butterfly over there. HE looks a bit sketchy..."

Soooooo, yesterday was quite a day (bygones!) and I couldn't paint. So I did days eight and nine today.

On the Facebook page for World Watercolor Month, someone said the other day that newbies like me needed to put their big girl panties on try a portrait. You know me - always up for trying anything (after all, like my fiber work, it's just fiber and paint, not brain surgery, and I'm not afraid to make mistakes or show them to you) so I decided to try one today.

Obviously, I royally screwed up the hand on the right - I tried to fix it, but the paper kept pilling, so I guess it's toast and unfixable; but otherwise, for a first try I'm pretty chuffed with it.

The bunny, "Day 8" (although technically also Day 9), was me trying to figure out how the medium works again. I saw somewhere (YouTube perhaps?); that if you "draw" the outline first with water and then apply a really wet paint, it will follow the water line. And it DID. lol

It was kind of a cool thing to watch, but I'm not sure what the application for that might be. (It will probably become clear at some point in the future). His proportions are off (or maybe he's just a very FAT bunny), and his smile is lopsided, but I think he's pretty cute just the same.

So, a good Day 9.

See you tomorrow!